The Roots of Communism
After the Second World War Czechs faced the communism for real.
Nazi German had occupied Czech and Soviet troops came to Prague
as liberators. Czechs found out soon the real intensions of Soviet
Russia – communism were there to stay. So begun the time
of violation of human rights and persecutions that lasted 40 years
until the Velvet Revolution in 1989.
During that time communists had strong support but it was mostly
illusion. After the Second World War only four parties were allowed
and one of them were communist party. Czechoslovak was supposed
to be a bridge between west and east, where democrats and communist
could live together peacefully. Communist party won first after-war
elections in 1946 with 40% support and the leader of the party
Klement Gottwald became prime minister. In 1948 altogether 12
of non-communist ministers resigned. The posts were replaced by
representatives that were members of different parties but who
actually served the communist party. Thus the communist party
was able to seize power in Czechoslovakia.
The communist party was now the only party in Czechoslovakia.
The real face of the party had by now become clear to everyone.
Normally when something is disliked it is also avoided. Czechs
on the other hand have always been good with adapting to changes
and when they saw that it was impossible to win communism, they
joined them. Amount of party members in Czech communist party
varied from 1,5 million to 2 million that made Czech the most
communist country in world, when it is compared to small size
of the country. Something, that they cannot feel very proud today.
Sounds very irrational thinking but it’s only because Czechs
are sometimes quite hard to interpret. Reasons for acceding the
communist party were quite practical. Party members had privileges
that others didn’t have. They for example had better jobs,
queuing times were shortened, their children got to university
and sometimes it was even possible to travel abroad. The poor
people only wanted to live normal life. Czech movie director Milos
Forman, who has directed for example film Amadeus, clarifies the
Czech way of thinking at time of communist regime. According to
him, if communism would sometimes find its end and would be replaced
by democracy, the new order would also protect the communists.
So there was nothing to lose by becoming a member of the party.
The support of the communist party was mostly false impression.
Members only imitated in the mandatory party meetings those same
things they had heard from central party through radio and other
publishes, which were approved as right opinions. Some of them
literally slept in the meetings. When they were elected to a post
they had to do the job for the rest of their life, even if they
didn’t care about it. And all state structures were kinds
of illusion too since there were also parallel structures, for
example so called second economy. For example, people used to
go in the jobs that were appointed to them during daytime but
in the evening they did what they really were good at. This way
they developed economical nets, where for example university teacher
could have been a plumber of neighbourhood in the ‘moonlight’.
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