The paper is based on a case study carried out since March 2011 (to be finalized by September 2012), which posed one general research question: How did it happen that the Prague College of the Central European University (1991 – 1995) built on the explicit values of excellence in education and research and on the values of then recent East and Central European “revolutions” - such as democracy, pluralism and open society - had to end its existence?

The results are interpreted in the context of two bodies of literature. First, the literature on post-communist nationalism: The recent history of post-communist countries has made nationalism relevant in a new context (Brzezinski 1989, Molchanov 2000). As Berend shows, the idea that the old communist political elites invented nationalism as a way to come back to power is an over-simplification (Eyial 2003, cit. in Berend 2011: 241-242). Rather, nationalism had been dormant and was mobilized after 1989 by political elites, depending on economic conditions, the availability of other resources for political action and geopolitical position (Molchanov 2000). Post-communist nationalism in the Czech Republic has rarely been a topic in the literature (but see Holy 1996), especially because it is one of the most ethnically homogenous states in Europe. However, the paper shows how nationalism played a part in expelling the CEU.

A nation is defined as a social group characterized by specific economic, political, cultural etc. relations (Hroch 1985). To belong to the same nation means sharing a common culture and common education (Gellner 1983). One of the processes of national identification is border creation and maintenance (Anderson 1983; Conversi 1995). Nations disillusioned in the post-communist period (Berend 2011) are interested in finding their “proper” place in the interconnected Europe (Molchanov 2000: 265). The bold project of Central European University in the aftermath of the 1989 revolutions adopted an explicitly anti-nationalist approach as it crossed borders in many both symbolic and “objective” ways. However, it proved impossible to survive as a truly “central European” institution. The first Czech independent government (after the breakup of the Czechoslovak federation in 1993) expelled the CEU as an unwanted “central European” diversion from its road “back to the West”.

Secondly, the literature on post-communist transformation: The CEU idea was formed originally in 1989 in the revolutionary ethos of anti-communist upheaval and building of a “new world” (Dahrendorf 1990; Ash 1990). The part of the Czech political elite which supported the CEU was restricted to former dissidents. However, former dissidents in strategic places were soon replaced by representatives of the pre-1989 managerial and technical elite, who were not at all inclined to support the CEU. The findings are in line with the scholarship on path dependency and elite change, which shows that the 1989 “revolutions” in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary were marked by a high degree of continuity (Stark and Bruszt 1998; Eyial, Szelenyi and Townsley 1998; for the Czech political elites see Hadjiiski 2011).

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