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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2011
Between 1944 and 1948, six European countries experienced Communist seizures of power. Three were enemies and three friends and allies of Soviet Russia during the war; four were Slav countries; five were predominantly peasant with some remnants of feudalism; with the exception of industrial Czechoslovakia, their prewar record in democratic government was far from exemplary. In all of them, however, the Communists were successful.
What were the components of Communist success and democratic defeat? The case of Czechoslovakia shows clearly that the active interest and impressive display of Soviet power in contrast to the West's hesitant policy not only formed the background but were the chief bases for Communist successes in Eastern Europe. Careful, professional infiltration of democratic institutions and the wishful thinking of the democrats did the rest.
1 A similar fear of German revisionism developed in Poland in connection with their western boundaries, and may develop in France over the Saar question.
2 Speech of November 17, 1948, made at a meeting of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party in Hradcany Castle. It was distributed by the Czechoslovak Press Agency in New York, December 29.
3 Economist, Feb. 12, 1949, p. 287.
4 The Soviet High Command never allowed the Czechoslovak Administrative Delegation to send direct radio-messages to London. Dr. F. Krucky volunteered to use a secret transmitter and send ciphered messages from behind the Soviet lines, risking his life daily. Most of the dispatches quoted in this and the following chapters are from that source. They were filed at the Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs in London. Dr. Krucky, Czech Minister Plenipotentiary in Cairo since 1946, resigned recently.
5 In Foundations of Leninism, Stalin says: “in revolutionary tactics under a bourgeois regime, reform naturally becomes an instrument for disintegrating this regime, an instrument for strengthening revolution.” Translated by Historicus, , “Stalin on Revolution,” Foreign Afairs, Vol. 27, No. 2 (January 1949), p. 197.Google Scholar
6 This agreement was reached in Moscow on March 27, and proclaimed in Kosice on April 5, 1945. It gave equal representation on National Committees to all parties, wherever they were active. The Communists could thus claim 25 per cent in Bohemia, and 50 per cent in Slovakia.
7 This quotation is taken from President Benes' record of his conversation with Klement Gottwald on May 4, 1948 at Sezimivo Usti. The conversation concerned the new Constitution of Communist Czechoslovakia, Benes' refusal to sign it, and his decision to resign. The record of this dramatic conversation was smuggled abroad in the summer of 1948.
8 Some new mass organizations were founded, such as The Union of Czech and Slovak Women, the National Congress of Partisans, a union of former inmates of concentration camps, and a unified youth and sport movement.
9 In What Is to Be Done? Lenin stated: “In order to be fully prepared, the working class revolutionist must become a professional revolutionist … our duty [is] to assist every capable worker to become a professional agitator, organizer, propagandist, literature distributor.” A workingman who is at all talented and “promising must not be left to work eleven hours a day in a factory. We must arrange that he be maintained by the Party.” Lenin, , Collected Works, New York, International Publishers, 1929, Vol. IV, pp. 205, 206.Google Scholar Although Lenin's pattern corresponds to specific needs as they existed in Russia around 1900, his lesson was not lost to Czech and other European Communists.
10 The deserted Sudeten German factories supplied another argument for nationalization.
11 Gottwald, in his speech of November 17, 1948, said: “… February has shown the importance of the state apparatus. … Before the February events … the state apparatus ceased to serve the former ruling class. In February the state apparatus in a sense played a very important role, and thus offered an illuminating example to the working class, that it should-as the new ruling class-take good care of its state apparatus.”
12 Every Communist Party has a Control Commission which operates at every level of the party organization. It supervises not only the political activity of the leaders and the rank and file, but also their private lives. It settles ideological and other disagreements. There seems to be an international link between the Control Commissions which may constitute the basis for the international Communist intelligence. The Head of the Central Control Commission in Czechoslovakia was Jindrich Vesely;, former inmate of Buchenwald and head of the investigation service of the Ministry of Interior. Thus, the party and the state police were directed from one center.
13 Unlike the police, the army was not completely in Communist hands by February 1948. It is therefore impossible to say what the majority of officers and their corps would have done if Benes, as commander-in-chief, had asked them to restore order.
14 Speech of Nov. 17, 1948. It is interesting to note that Gottwald often speaks of “February” without daring to say what it was. He just calls it “February,” or “February events.”
15 Concentration camp friendships often began with a non-Communist's fear of tight Communist cooperation in the camp.
16 During the coup in Czechoslovakia Communist leaders relied most heavily on these “comrades-in-arms,” who were not only loyal, but had the further advantage that Communist propaganda could present them as “martyrs of Nazism” in comparison to the non-Communist leaders who had just resigned from the government, the ones who had “spent the war against Nazism in the lobbies of the Savoy in London.” The two most important quislings of February 1948 were Father Plojhar from the Christian Democratic People's Party and Mr. Naj man from the National Socialist Party, both former inmates of Buchenwald.
17 The July 1950 issue of World Politics will contain a second article by Dr. Duchacek, “The February Coup in Czechoslovakia.”
