Communist Czechoslovakia
In 1946, as soon as the Czechoslovakian Communist Party won the elections, four decades of Communist rule had begun. The Communist Party won 40.17% of the votes and was followed by the National Socialists (23.66%), the People’s Party (20.24%) and the Social Democrats (15.28 %).
The new government led by the communist Klement Gottwald included, besides communists, the National Socialists, the Democrats, the People’s Party and Social Democrats. In his first parliamentary speech Klement Gottwald said: “We Are Fighting and Are Going to Fight for a Proletarian State, for a State of Workers, for a State of Peasants”. Though the transfer of power was constitutional, it will be shown further that at several points the Communist system had to be maintained through force.
In 1947, the U. S. secretary George Marshall suggested a European Recovery Program (also known as the Marshall Plan). The Marshall Plan offered economical aid to all allies, including the Soviet Union, in return for certain political reforms. Actually, the United States, that enjoyed one of the most pragmatically creative phases of its modern foreign policy history, had invented with the help of the ERP a new method for projecting its power into Europe. During the period of Marshall Plan’s implementation, about $13 billion of economic and technical assistance ($130 billion in 2005 prices) had been invested in the European countries countries that had joined in the Program. In the framework of Marshall Plan, the USA had evolved into a wide-ranging effort to modernize Europe’s industries, markets, unions and economic control mechanisms.
The Soviet Union had refused to participate in the Marshall Plan, and Czechoslovakia followed Soviet Moscow’s decision and joined eastern bloc.
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia: Founded in 1921, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSI: Komunisticka strana Ceskoslovenska) was from the very beginning a mass party, counting 300,000 members. KSC enjoyed popular support as a result of its mass party strategy. As of 1950, 22.7% of the Czech population over 18 was party members. In the 1960s, the percentage of the membership in the Communist Party had declined; however, in 1971 11.6% were still party members, and in 1980 the percentage was 14.0% compared to the stable figure of 9.3% in the Soviet Union.
By the end of 1948, the Communist Party seized power and held absolute control over all aspects of the Czech economy, education, housing etc. The only non-communist minister, Jan Masaryk (the son of Thomas Masaryk), was defenestrated.
Under the communist rule, Czechoslovakia became one of the most egalitarian societies in the Eastern and Central Europe and in comparison to Western capitalist countries. However, during the communist era Czechoslovakia suffered from gradual decline in productivity, well being, environment and institutional capacity.
Standard of living in Communist Czechoslovakia: As the most industrially developed (together with the German Democratic Republic) of the Eastern block countries, in 1948 Czechoslovakia enjoyed a relatively high standard of living. The standard of living in the western part of Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia) was significantly higher than in Slovakia in the east. Bohemia and Moravia were predominantly urban and had well-developed manufacturing and productive agricultural sector. Contrary to that, the Slovak region had become industrialized only in recent decades, and therefore it lags behind the Czech area.
From 1948 until 1989, the Soviet model had come to characterize the standard of living in Czechoslovakia. Communist Czechoslovakia had made little real improvement in well being over half a century.
From the beginning of the Communist rule, private businesses, land and housing were nationalized. Since the new regime denied the market as a legitimate device of welfare allocation, the aim was an abolishing the landlord system and reordering social relations. As a result, most housing and all urban and rural land were nationalized. State farms and cooperatives, whose members held formal ownership but no use rights, replaced the private farm. The state took possession of most forests as well.
During the Communist era, the state was the major housing builder. The state and the mostly government-owned enterprises acquired and operated multifamily housing. Only single-family homes (together with a small number of apartment houses) remained private and could have been sold, leased, or inherited. Apart from that, there was no real estate market: exchange of dwellings, land, or other space was precluded, and there were no real estate institutions. In the 1980s the government sponsored a residence exchange service to be opened in Prague, but housing rents were (and still) supervised.
Education in Communist Czechoslovakia: The communist Party had also seized power over the labor market and higher education, and exploited it to grant party officials as an opportunity to promote or hinder their educational and occupational careers. One of the main objectives of the Communist Party was the elimination of educational inequalities based on social class. In order to achieve this goal, state authorities nationalized church-run schools, abolished tuitions, and provided financial assistance and housing to needy students.
The communist leadership initiated an educational reform. Training in academic subjects was incorporated into the curricula of a large number of vocational schools, permitting them to provide the maturation certificates that allowed students to apply for admission to higher educational institutions.
During the first two decades of communist rule, attendance at academic secondary schools rose to 40 percent. Policies that increased the number of seats in educational institutions reduced inequalities in the allocation of schooling.
Political Regime in Communist Czechoslovakia: Communist Czechoslovakia was characterized by the centralized economy and absence of democracy. In the religious sphere, atheism was officially promoted.
The Ministry of the Interior and the state police played an important role in the establishment and consolidation of the totalitarian system. A standing police organization was integrated with the secret police. The majority of ministry staff members were also part of the secret.
The most important repressive section in the Czechoslovakia’s secret police was the elite State Police. This section held huge power in the government. Fear was one of its most popular tools, since stories of repression, violence, and execution during the first years of the new Communist regime caused panic among Czech citizens. The State Police employed secret collaborators, agents and informers that ensured the elite State Police effectiveness in all areas of society.
The elite State Police also carried out searches of homes, arrests, and prosecutions of its victims, with the cooperation of the Soviet KGB. The State Police’s aim was to ensure that social, cultural, and scientific institutions were functioning in accordance with the political and ideological limits of the Communist Party. The enemies of the regime were politicians, journalists, and wealthier citizens who weren’t the CCP members.
Minorities.
Sudeten Germans: The summer of 1945 carried out the “Wild Transfer” of Sudeten Germans. During the transfer, Czech soldiers, partisans, and civilians drove approx. 700,000 ethnic Germans out from their homes. President Benes declared in a typical 1945 speech in Tabor, “We must de-Germanize our republic … names, regions, towns, customs-everything that can possibly be deGermanized must go”.
During the communist era, the practice of Sudeten Germans’ ejection had been continued. North Bohemia’s villages were neglected and dismal, old buildings had ruined and the new ones seemed gray and standard. Czechs and Slovaks replaced some of the Sudeten Germans’ communities as part of the resettlement policy.
Slovak: Under the federation, social and economic inequities between the Czech and Slovak halves of the state were largely eliminated. However, most Slovaks saw themselves as separate entities from the Czechs not only in cultural but also in political terms. Usually, Czechs voted mainly for Czech parties and Slovaks for Slovak ones. From 1946, almost all Slovak politicians demanded an increased Slovak autonomy. The institutional asymmetry between the Czech Lands and Slovakia symbolized the political separateness of the Slovaks. Even the communist leadership encouraged the promotion of Slovak culture and the celebration of Slovak National events, reminding the Slovaks of their different history and identity.
Jews: Only a few thousand Prague Jews survived the WWII. In 1948 the CCP won the general elections and the state of Israel was established. These events caused the beginning of a major wave of Jews emigration. Those who chose to stay were forced to cope persecutions of the Communist regime. Many Jews spent the Stalinist fifties in Communist concentration camps.
In the late 1940s, Rudolf Slánský, the Jewish communist leader, was blamed for economic and industrial problems of Czechoslovakia. In November 1951 Slánský and 13 other Jews were arrested and charged with being Titoists, Trotskyites, and Zionists in the trial suspected of being rather anti - semitic. Slánský was executed in the 1952. Slánský and his co-defendants were rehabilitated in the 1963.
Another wave of Jews emigration occurred in the years 1968 – 1969. After this emigration wave, only 5,000 Jews remained in Prague.
Romanies (Gypsies): Romanies (Gypsies) suffered during the communist regime (and before) from significant racist intolerance. They weren’t recognized as a separate nation but rather as an ethnic minority, so their political and cultural rights were hardly discussed.
Since the cultural difference and special needs of Romanies were mostly neglected, their integration in the larger society was ineffective. The Roma population has been suffering high rates of crime, illiteracy and unemployment.A large number of Gypsies were Romanies in the black market.
Official policy promoted forced assimilation of Romanies, trying to increase the participation of Roma children in preschool, kindergarten, secondary school and summer recreational and educational camps. The government was also put an effort on integration Romanies in the official labor force.
Contrary to that, there were discrimination practises of transferring Romanies to remote geographical regions, such as Most in North Bohemia where Romanies were settled in the 1950s. These residents had remained poor and isolated, intensely disliked by their Czech neighbors.
In the 2005, a government investigator had published a research supporting the claims of Gypsy women, who accused Czech doctors of coercive sterilization during the Soviet era.
