Giant_and_Dwarf-FIN

Giant and DwarfCentral Europe, Slovaks, Czechs andDevelopment Aid: Old News or New News?International and military assistance pre-1989. Export and construction ofinvestment complexes. A clear conscience? Czechoslovakia as one of the largestweapons exporters in the world. Angolan captivity for Czechoslovak experts andtheir families 1983–1984.What we call development aid today is not a new phenomenon of post-revolutionarydevelopment for central and Eastern Europeans. Just the opposite. Before 1989, aid to developingcountries reached much larger dimensions than is currently the case, both in termsof financial volumes and the number of people involved in such aid; however, this aid wasdelivered under the name “international aid” or “military and economic assistance”. ManyCzech and Slovak doctors, scientists and specialists in various other disciplines includingbuilders, technologists, machinists and other technical specialists were active in developingcountries as well. The Czechoslovakia of the day was responsible for building entire factoriesand other investment projects in a number of countries; but it certainly was not anything tobe confused with the modern development aid provided by the Czech Republic and Slovakia.By no means were any of the efforts considered to be “gifts” provided to the supported countriesand a majority of these activities were deliveries of equipment and material purchasedwith loans to be repaid in time. My father, as a manager in the Stavoindustrie factory inBanská Bystrica during the 1980s was involved in the construction of many industrial complexesin cities across the Arab world. The names of these places are commonplace in today’smedia but most Czechs and Slovaks simply have no idea of the common history we share.To this day there are dozens of people around Banská Bystrica and thousands across theformer Czechoslovakia as a whole who worked on the construction of chemical works andmachine tool factories in Basra, Iraq, Benghazi, Libya, Homs, Syria and in other cities andcountries. Who knows how many of factories they built managed to survive the wars thathave engulfed these countries in the 21 st century, or remain under threat to this day.196