Václav Klaus was one of the most visible symbols of the transition in Eastern Europe. By all accounts he was a committed and outspoken free marketeer, whose idols were Milton Friedman and Margaret Thatcher. But his uniqueness lay not just in these beliefs but also in the adeptness with which he used and discarded them in his rise to power.

The leaders of the Civic Forum, the umbrella party that was to sweep to power in the first free Czech elections, had little use for Klaus. Though by and large liberal, their mindset focused more on human rights and democracy than the economic freedom that Klaus advocated. Civic Forum's leaders did put Klaus on the party list for parliamentary elections, but placed him in the heavily industrialized Northern Moravian region, which had long been a bastion of the left and was to suffer severely from the transition. If there was a place where Klaus's neoliberal ideas were expected to fall flat, it was among the once-favored sons of the communist regime and soon-to-be-unemployed miners and factory workers.

Yet Klaus brought his neoliberal ideas to the region and won. He told miners that free-market reforms were both necessary and would bring results. When asked about the danger of foreigners buying up factories, he said that if they were willing to put down hard currency for clearly outdated factories, the country should gladly take their money.