COMMUNISM IN EASTERN EUROPE POST-STALIN DEVELOPMENTS IN THE SATELLITES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01445R000100110001-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 70
• Document Creation Date: November 17, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 19, 2000
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: December 31, 1958
• Content Type: REPORT

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ji
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Senior Research Staff on International Communism
COMMUNISM IN EASTERN EUROPE
Post-Stalin Developments in the Satellites
CIA/SRS-7
PART II/W
y .. , 8o _x_144.5 R
TOTAL
a _1
N? 276
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WARNING
This material contains information affecting
the National Defense of the United States
within the meaning of the espionage laws,
Title 18, USC, Sees. 793 and 794, the trans-
mission or revelation of which in any manner
to an unauthorized person is prohibited by law.
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 3/`3L
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15 January 1959
MEMORANDUM FOR: Recipients of SRS-7, Part II/D
"Communism in Eastern Europe"
(Czechoslovakia), dated 31 Decem-
ber 1958.
Please change the number on the cover of this study
to read "Part II/ E" instead of "Part II/p "
SRS/DDI
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COMMUNISM IN EASTERN EUROPE:
Post-Stalin Developments in the Satellites
PART IIID
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
This is a speculative study which
has been discussed with US Gov-
ernment intelligence officers but
has not been formally coordinated.
It is based on information available
to SRS as of 20 November 1958.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Pal
Part II/D - CZECHOSLOVAKIA
1
The Situation at the Beginning of 1956
1
The Effect of the 20th Congress of the CPSU
in the CSR
2
The June 1956 Party Conference
10
The Second Five Year Plan
16
The Czechoslovak October
19
The Year 1957
23
The Year 1958
.
35
The Eleventh Party Congress
41
The Situation in Czechoslovakia in the Fall of 1958
45
The Standard of Living
50
The Slovaks
51
The Party
5Z
Comment and Outlook
54
Summing Up
62
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PART Ii/D
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
1. Among the European Satellites of the USSR,
Czechoslovakia is in a class by itself, since it is the only
one in which the Communist regime was not imposed by
Russian bayonets and which was a highly developed indus~
trial country, practically unscathed by the war. Czecho -
slovakia is, therefore, the best example of Communism in
action under the conditions envisaged by Marx, although it
misses.being a perfect example because of the country's
geographical proximity to the USSR.
The Situation at the Beginning of 1956
2. Economic conditions had improved in Czechoslo-
vakia in 1955. According to official claims, the growth of
gross industrial production equalled the previous peak year's
(1953) figure and the real wages index rose from 59 to 72,
while the cost of living dropped from 139 to 130. The highest
level of pre-war agricultural production was claimed to have
been exceeded in 1955, for the first time. Complaints of food
and other shortages were comparatively rare in Czechoslo-
vakia, by far the most prosperous of the Satellites. In
political and intellectual spheres, there were no signs of
ferment, in striking contrast to Poland and Hungary. Not
that everybody was satisfied in Czechoslovakia, far from it,
but there was less economic cause for dissatisfaction. There
had been no split of any consequence in the Party, in which
the Stalinists, headed by Antonin Novotny, the General Secre-
tary, and Viliam Siroky, the Prime Minister, held complete
control, with President Zapotocky presumably smoothing out
eventual disagreements.
3. The economic plans of the regime, announced in
February 1956, mirrored a conviction that the troubles which
had set in after Stalin's death in 1953 had been successfully
overcome. Krutina, at the time Minister of Agriculture,
announced on February 6 that 349 new kolkhozes had been
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established during the past year, 25.4 percent of the total
farm land being now collectivized. "We shall continue on
this road. We shall set up new collectives with still greater
vigor and strength... Krutina announced, disdaining the
assurances of "voluntariness`' customary in the Orbit.
4. The 1956 budget, introduced on February 9, showed
a 17.4 percent increase over 1955 in investment in heavy
industry, but, true to the Khrushchev line, an almost iden-
tical increase in agricultural investment. As further proof
of the regime's solicitude for the people, a price reduction
on a number of consumer goods, estimated to increase
purchasing power by 6. 5 percent, followed on April 1.
The Effect of the 20th Congress of the CPSU in the CSR
5. The top leadership of the Czechoslovak Communist
Party, being one of those which was quite satisfied with
conditions as they were and in the happy position of being rid
of Stalin's contemporary, Gottwald, apparently decided that,
so long as the 20th Congress had reaffirmed the admissibility
of different roads to socialism, it might as well differ from
the USSR in the matter of de-Stalinization. When, therefore,
the regional Party meetings held on March 5 to discuss the
lessons of the 20th Congress revealed considerable lower
level interest in this particular subject, the official press
service, CTK, issued the following day a lengthy report in
which the chief points were applied in general terms to
Czechoslovakia, but Stalin was defended rather than accused.
While the report admitted the necessity of overcoming "all
the remnants and the recurrences of the cult of the individual"
and agreed that "in the later period of his activities, Stalin
committed many mistakes, shortcomings appeared in his
work, such as in the principle of collective leadership, " it
also declared that it was necessary to see "the positive role
which Stalin played. " His was the "historical merit" of having
"resolutely frustrated the attempts of enemies who tried to
destroy the Party and Soviet State. " In other words, Stalin
had, according to the report, saved Russia and Communism.
How much did his mistakes and shortcomings weigh in the
balance?
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. 6. As more and more details of Khrushchev's
indictment of Stalin leaked out and news of developments
in Poland kept coming in, feeling in Czechoslovakia rose
considerably. The Party leadership found it expedient to
howl with the wolves for a while. In a report issued on
April 10, the Central Committee of the Party gave an ex-
tensive criticism of Stalin's mistakes and admitted that the
cult of personality had seriously corrupted the Czechoslovak
Party. Two days later, the Party mouthpiece, Rude Pravo,
carried the further admission that the security organs had
frequently violated socialist legality and that a special
commission appointed by the Political Bureau had been
investigating trials for the last 18 months. It had been
found, the paper stated, that it was Rudolf Slansky, the
Party.leader executed in November 1952, and two of his
associates, who had introduced the practice of violating
socialist legality, and that these violations had continued
even after his exposure. Persons found to have been
innocent had been released.
7. The providential discovery that Slansky had been
responsible for the death of many innocent people presum-
ably made it impossible for the Czechoslovak Communists
to follow the example of their Hungarian and Bulgarian com-
rades in parallel cases and to rehabilitate him. It was true,
as Premier Siroky admitted to a New York Times corres-
pondent on April 13, that Slansky had been falsely accused
of Titoism and that "certain manifestations of anti-Semitism"
eleven of the fourteen defendants in the Slansky trial had been
Jews - "had been mistakingly introduced, " but Slansky had
on the other hand been subsequently found guilty of another
serious crime. His culpability was, on balance, no less.
Besides, Slansky's and his associates' conviction as. "Trot-
skyite, Zionist, bourgeois, nationalist traitors and enemies
of the Czechoslovak people and of Socialism" stood. Siroky
was apparently not in the least troubled by the fact that all
the foreign. fellow conspirators besides Tito named by
Slansky in his confession - Gomulka, Kostov, and Rajk
had been officially declared innocent, or by the fact that
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Rude Pravo had the day bef ore denounced the sentencing of
people "on the mere basis of their own confession obtained
by illegal methods, without there being any material proof.
That apparently only applied to sentences of which Slansky
was the author, not the victim. Neither did Siroky explain
why the three live members of the Slansky conspiracy, who
had received only jail sentences, were being released.
8. The episode spotlighted the embarrassing situa-
tion which the Czechoslovak holdovers from the Stalin era
shared with most of their satellite colleagues. They were
selfish and foresighted enough to oppose de-Stalinization
and liberalization, yet unable openly to contradict Khrush-
chev, on whose support their continuance in power depended
more than ever. A, concrete proof of their disorientation
was their failure to issue directives to the lower level
apparatchiki who had the difficult task of presiding over
local Party meetings in which the "historic" resolutions of
the 20th Congress were discussed. The result was an out-
burst of criticism at the lower levels, which it seemed
expedient to calm by jettisoning some expendable ballast
and granting some superficial concessions, but without
sacrificing any of the material bases of power.
9. The victim selected to be thrown to the wolves
was the personally unpopular Minister of Defense, Alexej
Cepicka. His expulsion from the Politburo and dismissal
from the posts of First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister
of Defense were announced on April 25, on the grounds of
"shortcomings and mistakes he committed in the execution
of state and party functions. " But the fact that he was a
son-in-law of Gottwald was certainly more important.
Further developments confirmed the danger for an unpopular
dictatorship in making concessions. The next day, the
newspapers carried an article by a former president of the
Slovak Academy of Science strongly criticizing the regime's
educational methods. Rude Pravo (April 27) revealed the
existence of intense dissatisfaction among the workers:
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The trade union movement in. Czecho-
slovakia underwent a crisis recently which
resulted in the isolation of trade union offi-
cials from the membership and the rest of
the workers. The chief cause of this crisis
was the fact that the workers were unable to
express their own views because of the
intense centralism of the Central Trade
Union Council... Cases in which trade union
functionaries forget that care for the workers.
in the wage sector is also an indivisible com-
ponent of trade union work continue to
multiply.
Prace, the trade union paper, which had, on April 10,
admitted that trade unions "silence criticism, suppress
intra-Union democracy, and deprive the members of the
right to free factual debates, " called on April 27 for the
"democratic regeneration of the National Assembly and
the National Committees. "
10. Intellectuals also were restive. The Czecho-
slovak Writers' Congress, meeting April 22-29, deplored
the damage to literature caused by the cult of personality
and condemned the "code of esthetics" which was supposed
to guide writers as an "incredible collection of half-truths
and regular inconsistencies. " Two writers, Jaroslav
Seifert and Frantisek Hrubin, insisted that writers should
represent the conscience of their nation and accused them
of having betrayed their mission by indulging in evasions
and lies. Even the Congress. chairman, Jan Drda, con-
sidered a Party stalwart, declared that in the future,
writers. must reflect the people's "justified dissatisfactions."
and take into account the conflicts and "contradictions'.' of
everyday life. Although the Party had, in a message read
by President Zapotocky, announced its intention of giving
writers "more freedom" and encouraged them to be "bold
and fearless" in their creative work, it was getting more
than it bargained for. Zapotocky took the floor a second.
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time and rebuked the more outspoken writers for their
wholesale condemnation of the past and for their failure
to understand the Party's present policy. Nevertheless,
Hrubin and Seifert were elected members of the new
''collective leadership, it while two orthodox writers spon-
sored by the regime were blackballed.
11. In a commentary on the Writers' Congress,
broadcast by-Radio Bratislava on May 2, 1956, the writer
Ladislav Blasko declared that it had manifested two dis-
tinct trends. One trend was permeated with the old spirit
of comouflage and pretense.
In contrast to this trend, the Congress became
a fighting arena where opinions were exchanged...
Many writers admitted their mistakes... and it
is clear/that they lived through everything which
today is passing through the minds of our people.
12. Student meetings were even more outspoken.
Typical resolutions: demanded, besides greater freedom
for students, numerous political reforms: release of
political prisoners, `permission for opposition parties to
function effectively, an end to newspaper censorship and
to jamming, access to banned Western literature, and
freedom to travel abroad. Some resolutions protested
against the unjustified idealization of the Soviet Union and
the privileges accorded Soviet citizens, and asked pointed
questions about the Jachymov uranium mines.
13. Even the Communist Youth League was the scene
of stormy sessions. Mlada Fronta (April 27) reported that
besides excessive study hours, compulsory attendance and
overcrowding, the "unpersuasive and dogmatic lectures in
Marxism-Leninism" and the Minister of Education were
sharply criticized. On May 6, the paper announced that
the Minister had received the delegates of the Youth League
and that many of the demands would probably be met.
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14. More sensational still was the permission
granted the students to hold the Majales, a traditional
student parade, for the first time since 1938. On May 20,
columns of students carrying placards reproducing many
of the student protests and demands and dragging floats
bitingly satirizing conditions in Czechoslovakia marched
unmolested down the streets of Prague. The chants of
the marching students: are reported to have included
demands for the removal of President Zapotocky and First
Slovak Party Secretary Bacilek.
15. The Party, represented by Siroky, him-
self a. Slovak, appears to have been completely on the
defensive at the meeting of the Central Committee of the
Slovak Party, held on May 10-11, in Bratislava. Siroky
again put all the blame for the violations of socialist
legality in the years 1949-5Z on Slansky, Stalin and Beria.
It was a modern repetition of the Fall, with Stalin and
Beria in the role of the serpent, Slansky in that of Eve,
and the Party in that of innocent, but weak, Adam.
16. "The root of our shortcomings, " Siroky
declared in. his closing speech on May 11, 1956,
is the fact that the Party as a whole fell prey
to the cult of the individual, dogmatism, one-
sided emphasis on the suppressive functions
of the state apparatus to the detriment of its
economic organizational and cultural educa-
tional functions. In the interest of historical
truth it must again be stressed that the methods.
of violation of socialist legality and illegal
investigations were brought into the Party by
Slansky... who was able to take advantage of
the abnormal set-up of the Party (which had
both a chairman and a secretary-general and
a large presidium) to interfere in the most
sensitive sectors of state and public life.
Slansky, together with Taussigova and Svab,
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placed their people in the security apparatus...
It is right to ask: How is it that these facts
were not unmasked earlier? That Slansky's
work had outlived its creator was possible
because of the corrupting influences of the cult
of personality.
As a further contributing cause, Siroky listed Stalin's
"incorrect conception that class warfare grows with the
building of socialism. "
17. Siroky exonerated Slansky once again of
the charge of Titoism, the mistake having been due to the
fact that it was abased on the provocative and false charges
of Beria, who, V he explained, "organized actions on an
international scaler' -- in other words, controlled the
police of the "sovereign" people's democracies.
18. As a sop to the strong separatist feelings
of the Slovaks the Slovak Party organ, Pravda, had on
May 1 candidly admitted the existence of an atmosphere of
lack of confidence, suspicion, and fear between Czechs
and Slovaks, engendered by the neglect of Leninist
principles -- Siroky promised an increase in the respon-
sibilities of the Slovak National Council, and announced the
release of Novomesky, a Slovak, for good behavior in
prison. But two other Slovaks, Clementis, who had been
executed with.Slansky, and Husak, still in prison, were not
going to be rehabilitated. They had, he asserted, not been
sentenced for "ideological differences but for activities
threatening the results of the Slovak national uprising. "
In other words, their crime had been Slovak nationalism.
19. Unrest among the university students con-
tinued unabated. '"After the 20th Congress, " a student
wrote in a letter published in Mlada Fronta of May 22,
the interest of the people in the truth, in explanations of
as yet unclarified questions, is increasing. First of all,
youth craves the truth. r' Four days later, the paper wrote
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many of the students' criticisms were justi-
fied. However, the Party Central Committee
resolution passed as early as April 16 already
pointed to shortcomings and ways of reform.
Unfortunately, the ferment. and turmoil at the
universities in recent days was in.some cases
misused to proclaim basically wrong ideas
and demands...
What Mlada Fronta failed to explain was that the Party
resolution had been couched in the most general terms,
calling indeed for improvement in educational standards,
but ignoring most of the students' demands for improve-
ment in the schools, and all demands for greater
political freedom. -
20. The government's first reaction to the
Majales which had demonstrated the degree of popular
dissatisfaction with the regime more spectacularly than
anything else, especially to the foreign journalists_
present, was revealed by Premier Siroky in a press.con-
ference on May 24. He denied that students had or would
be arrested and added:
It is no great harm for the people's democratic
order when young people consider things and do
some thinking and it is no disaster whenyouung
students are critical of us... The students have
the right to express their ideas aloud and we
have the right to. declare: We agree with you in
this or that matter, and we disagree in this
and that.
But after more mature reflection, the Party leaders thought
up something better: On June 13, Radio Bratislava revealed
that "organs of the Ministry of the Interior have arrested
a group which produced the so-called students' resolutions.
The group consisted of four "former capitalist elements,
all well over 40, who '"had anonymously sent resolutions
with demands aimed at the regime to various offices and
organizations, pretending that these were students'
resolutions. "
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21. The arrest of those allegedly respon-
sible for the manifestations of student dissatisfaction
was the first concrete example of the attitude toward
the Czechoslovak thaw finally decided upon by the Party
leaders during the last week of May and the first week
of June. It was made public in the course of the National
Party Conference which had to be postponed to June 11,
five days later than scheduled.
The June 1956 Party Conference
22. In opening the conference, President
Zapotocky repudiated any insinuation that the Czechoslo-
vak Communist Party, the CSCP, might ever have been
wrong on any important issue, by the simple device of
claiming the corrections of mistakes as proofs of infalli-
bility. Zapotocky asserted, for example, that "the
liquidation of the abnormal relations - I do not hesitate
to say 'incorrect attitude' - toward Yugoslavia as a
country building socialism, " as well as the switch back
to priority for heavy industry by the 10th Congress in
June 1954 had been "correct. " In a similar vein, First
Party Secretary Novotny mentioned in his speech that
some Party organizations, chiefly in Prague, had
demanded that an extraordinary Party Congress be con-
vened. The organizations, Novotny claimed, represented
only 15, 000 out of 1.4 million Party members. More-
over, he said,
such a demand would only be justified if it were
necessary to alter the general line of the Party,
if the Central Committee did not want to solve,
or was incapable of solving, grave problems of
our country, or if in a large section of the
Party differences of opinions arose... This is
not the case... the Central Committee and the
Party are in full.agreement.
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Novotny asserted that the 20th CPSU Congress in
.February 1956 had been "a memorable landmark in the
development of the entire Communist movement... had
dealt firmly with the noxious and harmful influences of
the cult of the individual, the consequences of which,
deforming the true noble face of Socialism, penetrated
widely into the activities of all Communist Parties,
but he also claimed that, the 10th CSCP Congress in
June 1954 having already established the correct line,
"we have nothing to change in it... " This was supposed-
ly proved by the fact that industrial and agricultural.
production had increased in 1954-1955, chiefly by
"removing many serious disproportions in industrial
production, " and that "total personal consumption" had
increased by 25. 7 percent.
23. From the premise that whatever mis-
takes had been committed in the past had long since been
corrected, the conclusion followed naturally that criti-
cism, while recognized as extremely beneficial in theory,
had to be sharply. curtailed in practice.
A whole series of confused views had appeared.. .
generally speaking it can be said that these.
views reflect the petit-bourgeois criticism of
Party policy. In certain cases, they even
lead to malicious attacks against the Party and
its principles.
Novotny continued:
Voices have been heard, calling, under the
pretext of freedom, for a return to pre-
February 59481 conditions... Certain Com-
munists were at fault for failing to silence
these alien voices at the very start.,.. They
failed to realize such instances are not
criticism, but attacks on the Party line, on
Socialism in general.
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Those guilty were
mostly people burdened with petty-bourgeois
and bourgeois ideology, as well as people not
sufficiently mature in their class conscious-
ness and political views... that is, some
students, some members of the intelligentsia,
some officials from various government depart-
ments and institutions.
Novotny specifically refused the demand that the press
"comment freely on all questions... including the Party...
We have always rejected the independence of the press
from the Party and its ideas, and still firmly reject
it, " for, he asserted, the Party expresses the people's
will.
24. The agitation among the students was
described by Novotny as the result of attempts by
"reactionary elements... to infiltrate the students.. .
They were condemned by the overwhelming majority of
students and university workers... Our people will not
tolerate any kind of abuse of our universities.. " The
compulsory lectures on Marxism-Leninism, he promised,
needed to, and would be, "improved, " but there could be
no question of abolishing them. But, he continued,
"another important task is to improve the selection of
students. The composition of university students
according to their social origin does not correspond to
the class structure of our society. "
25. Novotny thus provided both an excuse
for the anti-regime attitude of the student body and a
warning to any students who might persist in it that they
faced the risk of being classified as of undesirable social
background. Turning to the intellectuals and artists,
Novotny declared that the Party would not regiment art.
It was clear, however, that intellectual freedom would
be severely limited, for he also claimed for the Party
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the "full right to express its views about the work of
our writers and artists. " The Party's views turned
out to be that some of the opinions expressed at the
recent Writers' Congress had been "distorted in the
direction of an unprincipled liberalism" and that "even
some of our Communist writers failed to show deter-
mined opposition to attacks against our People's
Democratic system. "
26. The underlying justification for the
"hard" line adopted by the Party was presumably to be
found in Novotny's statement that, although Stalin had
of course been wrong to maintain that the class struggle
grew sharper as Communism advanced,
in our society, a class struggle exists and
will exist so long as we do not effect the
complete socialization of the means of pro-
duction, so long as remnants of the exploiting
classes remain in it, and so long as the
capitalist world remains in being.
The means of production as yet not completely social-
ized were the remaining private farms, and .the
"remnants of the exploiting class" were the kulaks,
although. Novotny himself admitted that "capitalist
exploitation of the village population has been practically
eliminated.. " Much more important undoubtedly was the
fact, not listed among the reasons justifying the con-
tinuation of the class struggle, but admitted further on
by Novotny, that it included "the fight against the
vestiges of capitalist views in the minds of the people
and the recrudescence of bourgeois ideologies, the
re-education of the old and the education of the new
intelligentsia, the struggle against bureaucracy, etc.
Novotny thus admitted that in Czechoslovakia bourgeois
ideologies had been gaining ground, and that the old
intelligentsia had not been re-educated or the new one
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educated. Novotny left no doubt that extension of
bourgeois freedoms would not be tolerated in Czecho-
slovakia. According to him, what was decisive in
democratization, was
the participation of workers, farmers, and
other working people in the administration
of the state. From this decisive standpoint
we have done more for real- and not merely
formal-democracy than was, or could have
been, done even by the most democratic
republic.
27. Very generously, however, the Party
leadership was prepared to correct certain shortcomings
which had crept into the practical application of the
right principle? Novotny conceded that the basic
principle of democratic centralism had been distorted,
and that the local national committees had been left
inadequate powers and financial resources in such
sectors as agriculture, local economy, health services,
culture, education, and the like. Especially in
Slovakia, centralization had been excessive. Decen-
tralization of authority would, Novotny hoped, reduce
not only costs but also the inflated and paralyzing
bureaucracy.
28. To prevent any recurrence of Security
Force excesses, Novotny promised strict Party and
government control over the apparatus - implying
apparently that the Party had been unaware of, or
unable to check, its activities in the past. Additional
guarantees were to be provided by appointing "examining
magistrates" and by declaring confessions insufficient
to prove guilt. Novotny warned, however, against any
underestimation of the "important part played by the
Security authorities in guarding our People's Democracy.
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Z9. Concerning the Slansky trial, Novotny
asserted once again that there were "no grounds for
his rehabilitation." This in spite of his statement that
"the activities of Slansky and his associates were
described completely untruthfully in connection with
Yugoslav personalities, " and that "certain persons
were named who in fact had nothing in common with
Slansky's activities, " i.e., Konni Zilliacus and the
Field brothers. Since Rajk, Gomulka, and Kostov had
already been exonerated, one was left to wonder with
whom Slansky could have maintained the treasonable
contacts of which he was declared to have been guilty.
This could not inspire much confidence in, the honesty
of the investigation and rectification of past illegalities
stated by Minister of the Interior Barak to. be under-
way. As for the present, Barak prudently limited
himself to the assertion that "today, there are no more
instances of violation of socialist legality in the course
of interrogations. "
30. Presumably as an earnest of its good
intentions, the regime sacrificed the Prosecutor
General, Vaclav Ales, who had been promoted in 1953
for his good work as prosecutor of Slansky, together
with the Minister, of Culture, Ladislav Stoll, accused
at the Writers' Congress of Stalinist oppression of
writers.
31. On the other hand, it was revealed
duringthe discussion of the Party statutes that a
proposal to allow secret ballotting for all Party organs,
as in, the USSR, was turned down with the revealing
explanation that "experience has shown that by insti-
tuting such secret ballots a number of organizations
could be misused ric/ by the election of candidates
who offer no guarantee that they would fight for the
correct policy of the Party. "
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32. A slight concession was made to the
workers. They were promised a reduction of the
work week to 46 hours, effective October 1.
The Second Five Year Plan
33. The regime's economic program
embodied in the Second Five Year Plan was expounded
by Premier Siroky on June 12. As in the rest of the
Bloc, the accent was on heavy industry and agriculture.
By 196Q?production of capital goods was to increase
57 percent, that of consumer goods 40 percent, and
agriculture 30 percent. Investment was to increase
61.5 percent over the 1951-1955 figures, absorbing
about a quarter of the national income, which was to
increase by 48 percent. But Siroky admitted that in
the absence of substantial manpower reserves, "nearly
nine-tenths of the increase in industrial production is
to be achieved by a rise in labor productivity, " which
demanded "a substantial rise in the technical standard
of industry and the national economy. Fe
34. But Siroky had to admit that as far as
the individual Czechoslovak was concerned, the pros-
pects were less rosy. He said:
rMa.ny proposals/ contained suggestions for
building :new factories, railways, roads,
cultural and social institutions, houses, and
schools. In many cases, these demands
are justified, but at the same time it is
obvious that the proposed expansion of capital
investment... reaches the limit of what is
tolerable.. .It must also be said that we see
no way of taking in hand during the Second
Five Year Plan a comprehensive solution of
the problem of reconstructing and modernizing
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some branches of light industry...
the Central Committee and the
Government are fully aware of the
housing shortage... Income is not the
only sign of the living standard.
35. This position limited the possibilities
of improvement of the living standard to the field of
food. By a curious coincidence, agricultural pro-
duction and real wages were to increase by the same
amount by 1960, by 30 percent. It remained to be seen,
however, whether the increase in agricultural invest-
ment would not be outweighed by the effect of the
intensified collectivization campaign announced by
Siroky. The socialized area, covering at the time
about 40 percent of the cultivated land, was to become
"decisively preponderant" by 1960.
36. The promise of greater powers to
Slovak national organs was implemented by a constitu
tional amendment passed by the National Assembly on
August 1, 1956, which granted them more autonomy in
economic and social matters. But no "contradictions"
between the legislative enactments in Prague and
Bratislava were to be tolerated, and it was Prague
which decided what was "contradictory.''
37. In striking contrast with Poland and
Hungary, the manifestations of popular discontent
with regime policies, which had been very outspoken
in April and May in the CSR, ceased completely after
the June Party Conference. This did not mean, how-
ever, that the people were satisfield with the regime's
petty concessions, only that they were not prepared
to challenge its: "That's all you get. " Bruno Kohler,
Secretary of the Party Central Committee, addressing
the graduates of the Party University in August,
warned the malcontents that they could expect no
further concessions. Firmness was necessary, he
told them,
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because some ideological workers
are succumbing to various reports
//from other Satellites/ and, without
thoroughly comparing them with our
conditions, are drawing conclusions
for the policy of the Party... However,
in our country we have to proceed
according to our own conditions. It
was precisely this principle which was
strongly stressed by the 20th Congress
of the CPSU.., ;
The whole ugly campaign of the imperialists, using
the measures against the cult of personality to fight
socialism had failed, Kohler asserted, "because of
the ideological firmness of our functionaries and
Party members. "
38. The existence of considerable unrest
among the workers was conceded by President Zapotocky
at the September 28, 1956, meeting of the Party Central
Committee. "Because of lack of clarity and misunder-
standing of the correct principles of compensation for
work, there arise in plants various disagreements
which sometimes end in partial or even several hour-
long strikes. " It goes without saying that Zapotocky
"definitely condemned the notion. " Chiefly to blame,
according to him, were the trade unions which had
failed to make it clear to the workers that they were
committing the absurdity of striking against them-
selves, since they were both the ruling class and the
owners of the means of production) But he also had to
admit that "the vast majority of the workers today
are dissatisfied with the trade union organization. "
The reason was perhaps supplied by the Central Com-.
mittee decision which described the task of the trade
unions as that of leading "the broadest masses of the
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working people to an active participation in
Socialist construction" and not to "defend the
interests of the workers against their Socialist
state. " 1
39. By a remarkable coincidence, coal
production, which had been substantially in excess
of plan during the first half year, dropped sharply
below plan in September. Z Faced with a serious
threat to the entire economic program, the govern-
ment tried desperately to recruit additional mine
workers, the shortage of manpower being chiefly
blamed for the situation. But as it never was claimed
that the number of miners had dropped between July
and September, the explanation was far from con-
vincing.
40. Further evidence of the trade unions'
lack of success in their task of enlightening the
workers was provided by the meeting of the Central
Trade Union Council October 19-Z0, in which its
chairman admitted that several more cases of work
stoppages had occurred, in protest against increased
work norms. There was no mention of reprisals
against the strikers.
The Czechoslovak October
41. Whether the regime would have been
so lenient toward the ungrateful workers had it not
been for developments. just beyond Czechoslovakia's
eastern and southern borders, may be doubted. That
lRadio Prague, September 28, 1956.
2Radio Prague, September 22 and October 8, 1956.
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the Party leaders were worried about the workers'
attitude maybe inferred from the Trade Union
Chairman's revelation that "since the second quarter
of this year, average earnings have been increasing
faster than the productivity of labor.1 At the same
time, however, the Party leadership was, giving
everybody due warning that no political agitation
would be tolerated in Czechoslovakia. This was done
under the guise of a campaign against alleged
espionage activities which offered a. convenient
opportunity to remind everybody of the existence of
the secret police. The campaign started with a
Rude Pravo article on October 5, followed on the
13th by the news of the arrest of a large group of
imperialist agents, on the 17th by an article in the
Bratislava Pravda, on the 19th by another article in
Rude Pravo, capped by the announcement on the 21st,
of the'iexposure of an American spy ring." After
that, the regime felt it could safely inform the people
that they should not expect Polish and Hungarian
developments to result in any changes in Czechoslo-
vak policies. Further improvements in the economic
situation. could not be brought about by "futile unrest. "
The Soviet Union would always be regarded as the
"first country of Socialism, " by the side of which
Czechoslovakia marched on "as equal partner. "
.42. The warning proved effective, for
apart from the arrest of two further groups of
"American agents" in the latter part of November,
the authorities had no occasion to crack down. Some
concessions to popular demands were indeed made by
the government, but their timing - three weeks, after
the crushing of the Hungarian revolution - does not
make it appear as if they had been primarily inspired
by the immediate need to head off an armed revolt.
Moreover, two of them, the reduction of the number
1 Prace, November 17, 1956.
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-1W IM40"
of employees of various ministries, and two
amendments to the Penal Code increasing the
rights of defendants, announced by Radio Prague
on November 24 and Z9 respectively, had been
promised in the spring. The third concession, a
reduction in the prices of food and of some articles
such as watches and radios followed the general
pattern throughout the Soviet bloc and may have
been timed to take people's minds off dreams of
political. freedom..
43. The Central Committee of the
CSCP, meeting in plenary session December 5 and 6,
was fully justified in congratulating itself on its
success. The final resolution stated:
The firm unity of the working people did
not allow even the smallest attempt by
enemies from the remnants of the defeated
exploiting classes to damage our people's
democratic regime. Our Party, working
class, and the entire working people
honorably stood the test of the past few
days.
44. The resolution reaffirmed the
CSCP's support for Soviet policies, endorsed the
Kadar regime and strongly criticized Tito's Pula
speech of November 9, in which he differentiated
between Stalihist:. and anti-Stalinist Communist
parties, as "a case of obvious interference in the
internal affairs of these parties. rr Novotny had
admitted the day before that it was clear Tito had
had in mind the Czechoslovak Party as well when
he had spoken of Stalinist methods. Nevertheless,
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Novotny asserted the Yugoslav strictures would not
prevent Czechoslovakia from striving for cooperation
between the two countries. As to Hungarian develop-
ments, he listed among the mistakes of the Rakosi regime
the worst excesses in violation of socialist legality,
inadequate attention to the activities of reaction, insuffi-
cient links between the Party and the people, neglect of the
Patriotic People's Front, and unwillingness to accept the
friendly advice of the CPSU. He criticized Gero strongly
for his failure to take effective action to consolidate Party
control, to exercise vigilance, and to deal with justified
dissatisfaction of the people, and the Party as a whole for
weak leadership, deficient organizational and ideological
ability, and lack of contact with the masses. Novotny's
sharpest criticism was levelled at the Nagy government,
which had committed the unforgivable offenses of with-
drawing from the Warsaw Treaty and proclaiming Hungary's
neutrality.
45. Implicit of course in Novotny's speech
and in the final resolution was the boast that the Czecho-
slovak leaders had not been guilty of the mistakes made
by Rakosi and Ger1l. On second thought, however, they
must have realized. that they were themselves committing
the mistake of complacency, for a few days later, in the
joint Czechoslovak-East German declaration published on
December 21, 1956, they admitted the "need to learn from
events in Hungary. " But the only lesson they drew was
the duty "to increase political and ideological vigilance.
The need for it was illustrated the very next day by two
articles. In Slovenske Pohlady (December issue), the
Slovak writer Jan Poliak asked whether the fact that not
a single spark of doubt and fear had come out into the open
was not "proof of passive acceptance on the part of
mercenary propagandists? " K. J. Benes writing in
Literarni Noviny, the Czech Authors Union weekly, of
December 22, denounced the destructive effects of the
Socialist system on the individual as well as on society
and asserted that the Hungarian tragedy had caused a deep
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moral shock, particularly among the young, the remedy
for which was to aim "a critical surgeon's knife at our
own ranks. " The Soviet Party Congress, Benes wrote,
had awakened the moral subconsciousness of the people to
what had been "rather academically called violations of
socialist democracy and legality. t" Needless to say, the
Party rejoinder voiced by Rude Pravo of December 24 was
not complimentary to the author of the article or the
editor of the magazine which had published it.
The Year 1957
46. Less.than two months after protesting
against being classified by Tito as Stalinists, President
Zapotocky, accompanied by Novotny and Siroky, journeyed
to Moscow and seized the opportunity to revisit the Lenin-
Stalin mausoleum, on which occasion he felt the need to lay
wreaths on both tombs. The wreath on. Stalin's tomb bore
the inscription: To the Great Fighter for Socialism==
J. V. Stalin.
47. Another object of the visit was apparently
to work out an economic plan to counteract the effects of
the Polish and., Hungarian uprisings on the Czechoslovak
economy.. Czechoslovakia had suffered least among the
satellites, but the shortfall in domestic coal production was
nevertheless a serious handicap. It was aggravated by the
decline in Polish coal shipments, to which the chairman of
the Planning Commission, Simunek, attributed most of the
blame for the need to revise the Second Five Year Plan.l
The final Soviet-Czechoslovak declaration, issued on
January 29, stressed that the agreement was. based on "the
principle that coordination of the economic plans of the two
countries... is important for achieving maximum speed in
the development of production forces. ". The USSR agreed
to increase its deliveries of raw materials, particularly
1 Tvor?ba, January 10, 1957
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of grain and aluminum, and to supply coal, in exchange
for machinery and finished products, but there was no
mention of Soviet credits, which Czechoslovakia obviously
did not need, to match those extended to the other
Satellites .
48. A few timid attempts to argue in favor of
greater freedom of expression were made in Literarni
Noviny (Prague) and Kulturny Zivot (Bratislava), but they
were promptly silenced by the Party press. The effect-
iveness of their admonitions was greatly enhanced by the
background of arrests and trials which succeeded each
other during the winter. Most of the victims were charged
with espionage activities, but in one case eight persons
were accused of having exhorted people to demonstrate
against the government in October 1956, and of having
appealed to the UN to put the suppression of personal
freedoms in Czechoslovakia on the agenda.' Another group
of ten was accused of having established an illegal sepa-
ratist, Catholic, and fascist organization.2 Two prominent
Slovak writers and Party members were reported to have
"resigned" ? from the Slovak Writers' Union.3 On April 26,
the Slovak Central Committee announced the expulsion
from its leadership of a leading Bratislava professor,
Andrei Pawlik. At the same time Karol Bacilek, the
Slovak Party chief, told a meeting of the Slovak Party
Congress that "certain measures" had been taken against
Party officials for "shortcomings" in the work of
Kulturny Zivot. He further stated that remnants "of the
1Radio Prague, March 11, 1957.
2Radio Bratislava, February 28, 1957.
3Kulturny Zivot, March 4, 1957.
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most dangerous manifestations of bourgeois nationalism,
the Ludaci group - a fragment of the separatist Hlinka
Party - were still carrying out acts of sabotage and trying
to infiltrate literature and the Party apparatus.
49. The Congress expressed its agreement
with the views expressed by both Bacilek and Novotny,
adopting a resolution stating that revisionism and bourgeois
nationalism were the principal ideas which the Party had
to combat. However, this did not silence the Slovaks, for
in its next issue (May 11), Kulturny Zivot demanded that
Marxists "criticize not only bourgeois and petty bourgeois
ideologies but also the dogmatic distortion of Marxism.
50. Although not officially designated as such,
May was in fact "German Bogey Month, " a propaganda
theme which served the double purpose of bolstering the
Communist campaign against West German rearmament
and of emphasizing for the benefit of non-Communists the
value of Soviet friendship. The visit of a Polish delegation
.headed by the Prime Minister at the beginning of the month
provided a peg on which to hang a joint declaration stressing
the dangers of German remilitarization and "revanchism. "
This was followed by a meeti-.ag of Polish, Czechoslovak,
and East German parliamentarians in Berlin (May 9-11),
which ended with the adoption of a similar declaration,
emphasizing concern over the nuclear armament of Germany
and the inviolability of the frontiers of the three countries.
In the latter part of the month, it was Premier Siroky who
visited Berlin and helped to produce a joint communique
of similar import.
51. The German danger was naturally not
absent from the resolution adopted by the Czech Party Central
Committee which met June 13-14 to reaffirm its unflagging
determination to fight all manifestations of liberalism.
The keynote of the meeting was sounded by Jiri Hendrych,
one of the Central. Committee secretaries, who proclaimed:
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"We shall not tolerate the hostile campaign carried out
under the slogan of the fight against so-called 'Stalinism'.. .
We shall defend the great revolutionary merits of Stalin
and his important contributions to the development of our
country... " The final resolution affirmed the urgency of
an ideological counteroffensive against revisionist tendencies
which were not altogether absent even in the Czech wing of
the Party, and against the new imperialist tactics which
made use of national. communism, people's capitalism and
other slogans to delude the people. The fundamental bul-
wark in the ideological struggle, the resolution declared,
must be proletarian internationalism, with closer coopera-
tion between Communist and workers' parties. Particularly
necessary was the establishment of an international
Communist theoretical journal. The resolution stated that
the achievement of a classless society was far from accom-
plished, since important capitalist remnants still existed,
notably the kulaks.
52. Considering that Minister of Agriculture
Bakula had told the National Congress of Collective Farms
three months before that "the political and economic
influence of the kulaks has been considerably reduced and
curtailed, rl it is obvious that the kulak was being set up
as a bogey to justify the Central Committee's appeal for a
more vigorous reaction against the lingering effects of the
"Thaw. " The resolution called, among other things, for an
end to criticism used as an instrument of "anti-popular
counter-revolutionary elements, if a more vigorous education
in villages toward socialist agriculture, stepping up of
atheistic propaganda, increased concentration on ideological
1Zemedelske,Noviny, March 23, 1957. According to Jiri
Hendrych, writing in Rude Pravo of April 25, 1958, the
number of "real estate owners, kulaks, and entrepreneurs"
with their families had dropped from 1, 300, 000 in 1930 to
93, 000 in 1955, that is from 10 to 0. 7 percent of the popula-
tion.
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conversion of youth and on. socialist realism in. literature and
art, and a sharpening of party propaganda work in the. pre s s
and radio.
53. From the statements made in the speeches
preceding the resolution, the Party leaders had good reasons
to tighten the screws. Comrade Rehanek found it "particularly
sad to see how some teachers are still under the hold of
clericalism. " Comrade Skoda criticized the law journal
Pravnik which appeared to interpret socialist legality. "as being
instituted mainly for the defense of the citizens, " apparently
oblivious of the fact that the "educational role of justice. rests
on the fact that the courts pass sentences in different ways on
laborers and workers and on. enemies of.the people. " Com-
rade Homolka deplored "growing tendencies toward formal
styles /especially in painting/ outmoded long ago. "" Comrade
Urban protested against "liquidatory tendencies" in some high
schools, which were in general very weak "on the educational
side. "" Some comrades occupying chairs of Marxism-
Leninism had even become, after the 20th Congress, "supporters
of the most varied distorted views and doubts. " Comrade
Vecker declared that the number of Party members in the
youth association declined from year to year, and had dropped
to five percent. Comrade S-tencl stressed the need to "attract
and. win over youth for mass. and social organizations.. but
on a voluntary basis and not by force!'; there was an alarming
number of "groups of juvenile tramps" - for example, 40 in
Bratislava alone - whose activities were "either criminal or
anti-state. " Comrade Bertuska declared that liberalist %
tendencies appeared "in the work of some state apparatus
workers" who interpreted "the theory of the class struggle
from the point of view of revisionism and social democratism. "
He joined Comrade Skoda in his criticism of the administration
of justice. There were "liberalist tendencies" among judges,
and even public prosecutors interpreted judicial guarantees.
""narrow mindedly for the exclusive benefit of defendants. "'
Comrade Fierlinger held out little hope of improvement, for,
he said, "what is worse is that the influx of students from the
legal faculties to the judiciary not only failed to improve the
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composition of the cadres, but on the contrary has worsened
it. " Finally, Comrade Stoll berated the new philosophical
theories appearing recently in Literarni Noviny which were
"permeated with the spirit of lordish haughtiness and intel-
lectual slight, mainly toward Party functionaries, referred
to as dogmatists, bureaucrats, or formerly as Stalinists. "2
54. Perhaps the most interesting revelation of
the Central Committee meeting was the confirmation of the
statement made by President Zapotocky to the students of the
Prague Faculty of Law that "Youth has many wrong ideas. "3
The only one, however;, which he appears to have tried to
correct, in an article in the May issue of the University
journal, Vysoka Skola, was that Czechoslovakia was being
exploited economically by the USSR, especially in the "parti-
cularly important" matter of uranium deliveries. But the
students had to take his word for the assertion that conditions
were actually "very favorable, 11 for they remained a well-
kept secret.
55. The last step to put the Czechoslovak house
completely in order for the impending visit of Soviet dignitaries
was taken on June 26. What happened behind the scenes is
not known, but on the stage of the hall in which the members
of the Writers' Union met that day, Jan Otcenesek, its first
secretary, disavowed the attitude taken by some of the
speakers at the preceding Congress in April 1956 and applauded
by the participants, while President Zapotocky recalled Mao
Tse-Tung's statement that "poisonous weeds must not
flourish. " The climax: of the performance was the public
apology of Frantisek Hrubin, who had drawn the greatest
On July 6, 1957, the Czechoslovak Parliament passed an
act providing that in the future all judges would be elected
by National Committees and recalled at their pleasure.
?,Rude Pravo, June 20 and 21, 1957.
3 Svobodne Slovo, May 21, 1957.
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applause at the preceding congress by his call for intellectual
freedom but who now vowed that he had never intended to act
against the Communist Party. He was followed by the self
castigation of the editors of the literary magazines Literarni
Noviny and Kveten, who conceded that the Party criticism of
their work had been correct.
56. Another loose end was tied up when eight
Salesian monks were jailed and the pending trial of other
Salesian clergymen and nuns from the Liptal convent was
announced. The charges included dissemination of literature
hostile to the existing order, teaching boys to hate the regime,
being "a Vatican spy center" and being "financed from the
U.. S. t'1
57. The purpose of the visit of Khrushchev and
Bulganin, from July 9-16, was probably correctly explained
by Khrushchev when he said, "You came to see us and we
have come to see you, not in order to settle any contentious
questions, for we are in full agreement. . . We have been and
we are meeting as faithful friends." Novotny in his reply
"proudly reaffirmed The CSPR's/ adherence to the great
example of the rCPST//, the most experienced detachment of
the international Communist movement and its national
center."
58. Those who had jumped to the conclusion
that, because Molotov had been one of the victims of the
June purge in Moscow, Novotny's position was in danger
were thus proved completely wrong. Moreover, he alone
among the Czechoslovak leaders shared the limelight with
Khrushchev, who declared how glad he was "that the Central
Committee of the /Czechoslovak/ Party has at its head such
a loyal son of the Czechoslovak people as Antonin Novotny.
Since President Zapotocky also assured his listeners on
July 11, 1957, that the Warsaw Treaty would again be invoked
1 Rude Pravo, June 25-27, 1957.
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"if the need should arise... in the interest of strengthening
socialism and crushing any attempt to stage a counter-
revolutionary putsch such as happened at the time of the
Hungarian events, " Novotny's position seemed unassailable.
59. The final joint communique, issued on
July 16, 1957, expressed mutual support for the measures
taken by both Central Committees, denounced factionalism
and revisionism, and emphasized the need for greater
economic coordination. More interesting perhaps was the
remark made by Khrushchev in the course of his visit -
incidentally only a few weeks after the further degradation
of Malenkov, the hapless advocate of the more abundant
life - that people with full bellies were more apt to appreciate
Marxism. The remark may well have been inspired by the
contrast between conditions in Czechoslovakia and in other
Satellites.
60. During the remaining summer months, the
energies of the administration appear to have been chiefly
devoted to spy and treason trials, of which there were six
in August alone, and to the stepped-up collectivization drive.
Siroky boasted on August 9 that over half the agricultural
land was now socialized, but he called for intensified
efforts, necessary in order to achieve by 1960 the 30 percent
increase in agricultural production called for by the plan.
61. The situation was different in Slovakia.
There, according to the report of Pavol Majling, member
of the Slovak Central Committee, to a Committee meeting
on August 22 and 23, only 43. 7 percent of the land was
socialized. The fault lay, if Majling is to be believed, with
"poor mass political work. " It must have been very poor
indeed, judging by the remarkable result he described. This
was that medium farmers continued to hesitate to join coopera-
tives while numerous kulaks unfortunately did. Poor mass
political work was also blamed by Mailing for the serious lag
in compulsory farm deliveries.
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62. With regard to industrial output, "the over-
all targets were fulfilled, or even greatly exceeded, "
Majling announced, but he failed to explain how this was to
be reconciled with his subsequent complaint that there were
serious lags in the production of coal, building materials,
and certain engineering products and "frequent shortcomings"
in railway transportation. In the all-important engineering.
industry, 100, 000 square meters of floor space were not
being used. On the other hand, the situation with regard to
the "number of housing projects which remain partially
completed... was allowed to worsen progressively. " The
main cause was the "low, level of building management and
organization. " Badly lagging also were building activities
in "fuel industries, engineering, transport, and water con-
servancy. " As in the past, "the number of uncompleted
projects kept growing" and."resources were being unduly
dispersed. "
63. Turning to the consumer industries,
Majling deplored the decadence of the once flourishing
damask and luxury furniture industries, which used to be
highly prized by the "most fastidious customers abroad. "
Now their products were so poor that they were unsalable
abroad, but they continued to consume expensive raw
materials. As for the products and services of producer
cooperatives, Majling added, "the services to the public
are being neglected" and "shortcomings in the quality of
work, long terms of delivery, and over-charging persist.
64. Nevertheless, Majling was not discouraged.
The "expanding socialist emulation in connection with the
coming 40th anniversary of the great October Revolution"
could be counted upon "to defeat the unfavorable tendencies
which are revealed by a decrease in the fulfillment of tasks
in the past period. "1
1 Radio Bratislava, August 23, 1957.
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65. It may be added here that building in the
Czech lands was lagging as badly as in Slovakia, and that in
the main Ostrava-Karvina coalfield, the only one producing
coking coal, the deficit in black coal production reached
165, 000 tons by the end of August, according to a Ministry
of Finance statement. The problem facing the authorities
was indeed hard to solve. The wages paid to the miners
were high enough to permit a great deal of absenteeism,
but still insufficient to attract the amount of new labor needed
by the mines. By September 1957 the only solution the Party
had been able to think up was a spate of eloquent appeals to
the workers' patriotism by a number of important personages
attending the elaborate celebration of Miners' Day.
66. A comprehensive plan to remedy the "serious
defects" from which some important Czechoslovak industries,
including the vaunted machinery industry, suffered, was
outlined by Novotny in his report to the Party Central Com-
mittee on September 30, 1957. Novotny reminded his
audience of the improvements in. the standard of living
achieved during the past year - price reductions, wage
increases, a shorter work week, higher pensions and im -
proved health insurance - but declared that its further
improvement "must be far better insured than hitherto by
the consistent detection and utilization of the immense
reserves of our national economy. " Ways to fulfill these
desiderata were apparently easily found, for the final reso-
lution announced that gross industrial production was to rise
56 percent by 1960, rather than 50 percent as provided in the
Second Five Year Plan, that average wages were to rise 8. 3
rather than 6.4 percent, but that costs were to be reduced
by only 12. 6 instead of 14. 8 percent, and labor productivity
to rise by only 39.1 instead of 42 percent. At the same time
capital investment was to be reduced by 4 billion korunny.
This, it was implied, was to be achieved by concentration on
immediately productive enterprises, but there was no
explanation of the apparent incompatibility of increased gross
production with lower labor productivity, higher costs, and
reduced investments. Presumably it was to be brought about
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by "better utilization of productive capacities... and by a
substantially better utilization of fuels, metals, and other
raw materials... " This, in turn, was apparently to be
achieved by means of an industrial decentralization pro-
gram similar to the Soviet program. As an afterthought,
Rude Pravo added a campaign against industrial theft,
bribery, and speculation, crimes it attributed chiefly to
the mistake of appointing too many experts of bourgeois
origin to managerial posts.1 At the same time, although
land socialization had proceeded at an unprecedented rate,
the collectivization drive was to be further intensified. 2
67. The prospects of a better life were
apparently too remote for the younger members of the
Czechoslovak population who craved more immediate satis-
factions, failing which. they sought escape in alcohol or
relief from the drabness of life and regimentation in attacks
on the police. Lidova Democracia of October 22, 1957, in
its belated report of a violent brawl between "hooligans" and
the police which occurred in Prague on October 12 and had
been observable from foreign embassies, spoke of the young
people being drunk, but also accused them of being influenced
by "Polish bait" - an allusion to the student unrest in Warsaw
provoked by the suppression of the liberal journal Po Prostu.
Minister of the Interior Barak, in a press conference on
October 21, conceded that occurrences with "antistate trends"
had recently taken place in Prague, and confirmed that "344
hooligan gangs" were known to exist in the country. Rude
Pravo, of October 22, reported that 142 arrests had been
made in. various larger cities since the 17th.
1 October 23, 1957.
2 In a letter "to all working people" (October 18), the
Central Committee reported the socialization of 61.4 percent
of all agricultural land.
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68. President Zapotocky died on November 13.
Novotny's election to the Presidency, while retaining the
first Party secretaryship, was the outward confirmation of
the undisputed pre-eminence he enjoyed since Khrushchev's
visit. It was chiefly interesting as an indication that even
the appearance of collective leadership was no longer deemed
desirable in Moscow, where Khrushchev himself was soon to
cumulate the premiership and first Party secretaryship.
69. Novotny's first acts as President did
nothing to belie his reputation as a harsh taskmaster. An
order of the day to the armed forces, issued on November 29,
echoing the note sounded in Moscow after Zhukov's ouster,
called for intensified indoctrination of officers and men, and
tighter control over them by the Party, the need for which
had been stressed by an editorial in the army daily Obrana
Lidu two days earlier.
70. The usual Presidential amnesty, announced
on December 1, benefited in practice only petty offenders,
and even these only if they were not guilty of "anti-state"
crimes, including theft of socialist property. A decree of
November 30 tightened Party control of the local public
security organs.
71. An early state visit to the capital of the
Slovak brother nation was clearly in order, especially as
the motive for ignoring precedents by electing to the Presi-
dency the Party secretary instead of the premier, could be
claimed to be the fact that Premier Siroky was a Slovak.
Novotny, therefore, proceeded to Bratislava with an imposing
retinue of high Party and government officials to take part in
a series of ceremonies designed to flatter Slovak national
pride, but also to expatiate endlessly on the themes of the
indispensable Slovak solidarity with the Czechs and of the
need to combat foreign efforts to inflame the remnants of
Slovak bourgeois nationalism. The appeals to Slovak solidarity
were particularly timely in, view of the concurrent decentrali-
zation of economic management which the Slovaks could easily
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abuse in their own selfish interests. There was also the
danger that the Slovaks might not give a very friendly wel-
come to those of the Czech employees who, having lost their
jobs in Prague as a result of the campaign to reduce exces-
sive administrative staffs, were slated to be sent to help
Slovak enterprises.
72. Unity on a wider scale was also the keynote
of Novotny's address to the Central Committee on
December 20. In accordance with the recent Moscow Twelve-
Party Declaration, he called not only for a more determined
struggle against revisionism on the part of all Communists,
but also for resolute pursuit of the united-front strategy,
including attacks on the "national bourgeoisie, It under Soviet
leadership of course. The only Socialists excluded by
Novotny were the Yugoslavs, whom he failed to mention when
he called for more frequent conferences of Communist
parties.
The Year 1958
T._
73. Proof that Novotny's state visit to Slovakia
and his sermons on the sins of nationalism and revisionism
had not achieved the desired result was forthcoming at the
next meeting of the Slovak Party Central Committee, held
January 9-10, 1958. First Secretary Bacilek charged that
important economic and government posts had been infiltrated
by '"numerous former capitalists, kulaks, and ex-officials of
the Slovak Fascist state,-" and that bourgeois manifestations
had been visible in "the films, press, radio, -and television.'"
The victim this time was a deputy chairman of the Slovak
Board of Commissioners, Sebesta, who was abruptly dis-
missed. A new twist to Party policy in dealing with Slovak
recalcitrance was revealed in the announcement by Minister
of the Interior Barak, on February 7, that 34 former followers
of the Slovak separatist leader, Hlinka, had been arrested,
and would be tried for their 15-year-old crimes. A few weeks
later five Slovaks were sentenced to imprisonment for sub-
versive acts and terrorism in the 1949?1956 period. At the
same time, announcements of arrests and sentencing of "spies"
in the entire Republic continued unabated.
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74. The severe reductions in force in the
central government departments in connection with the
proposed reorganization and decentralization of the
country's economic structure, scheduled to be completed
by April 1, and in full swing in February,. provided the
regime with an excellent opportunity to combine the useful
with the agreeable. The criteria for the dismissals were
frankly admitted by Party Secretary Cernick, in the
January 1958 issue of Zivot Strany, to be political. The
decisions, it appears, were not taken this time by the
personnel or cadre chiefs of the departments, but by special
commissions including at least one member of the Party
Central Committee. The order of precedence for dismissals
began with "unreconstructed bourgeois elements" and ended
with persons who had served under more than one of the
former regimes. Although the number of victims was con-
siderable - the staff cutbacks in the Production, Communica-
tions, and Health Ministries and their subordinate organiza-
tions in Prague alone were of the order of 54 percent,
affecting 36, 500 people - very little was heard about them.
Those dismissed, being under police surveillance, preferred
to keep silent. Ostensibly, the operation was not restricted
to "unreliable elements. " A Rude Pravo editorial of
February 26, 1958, stated that "we decidedly must not
confuse them with the Increasingly large number of honest,
good workers who are going to leave the central apparatus
in order to make it smaller, more flexible, and more
economical. " But judging by the criteria applied in the case
of dismissed school teachers, such as having relatives
abroad or in prison, practicing a religion, having been a
former member of the bourgeoisie or even "having failed to
enter actively into the construction of socialism, " it may be
surmised that political considerations were actually decisive
in practically every case.
75. Political considerations must be interpreted
broadly, for according to reliable reports, the Party seized
the opportunity to thin. its own ranks by getting rid of inactive
and unreliable members who had joined after the war for
opportunist motives. They lost both their job and the Party
membership to which they probably owed it.
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76. The 19th anniversary of the creation of the
whilom Slovak state provided the regime with a suitable
opportunity to step up the campaign against Slovak national-
ism. At the press conference called on March 14 to launch
the subsequent violent publicity campaign against this heresy,
Barak amplified his earlier announcement on the subject.
The "exposed" former Hlinka guardists, whose number had
now reached 47,. were accused of the mass murder of over
400 people, including 14 French, British, and American
soldiers, whose deaths had hitherto been charged to the
Germans. The evidence, on which the majority were sen-
tenced in groups after a series of trials extending over a number
of weeks, seems of doubtful value, in view of the fact revealed
by inquiries in Washington that eight of the ten alleged
American victims had returned to the U. S. while the other
two names could not be identified.
77. In his report to the plenum of the Party
Central Committee which met April 2 and 3, Novotny outlined
the main theses of the full report he was to deliver to the
forthcoming 11th Congress. of the Party, setting-forth the
tasks to. be accomplished toward the attainment of the Party's
immediate goal, "the completion of socialist construction in
Czechoslovakia. " There were five main tasks: a decisive
victory in socialist production relations in the countryside;
the removal of the "remnants of antagonism in class relations";
the liquidation of the kulaks and the "exploiting elements in
the towns" - i.e., doing away with one of the antagonists;
a further rise in living standards by a "substantial rise in
labor productivity"; a "broadening of socialist democracy, "
and "the completion of the cultural revolution and the
broadening of the moral and political unity of the people.
78.. The two things to which Novotny attached
particular importance were first "the crucial political task"
of bringing agricultural production. "up to the standards of the
foremost countries of the world, " and second, the "streng-
thening of Party control over the economy, effective Party
supervision and consistent application and implementation of
the directives and resolutions which have been adopted. "
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These theses were to be discussed during the following wee-."3
at lower and medium level Party meetings, whose views
would be taken into account in the final draft of the report to
the 11th Congress.
79. Novotny seized the opportunity to. mention
the quite unrelated subject of nuclear disarmament which had
been for some time a favorite topic of Czechoslovak propa-
ganda. In the words of Radio Prague (April 3, 1958), "he
drew attention to the danger to peace of the feverish atomic
equipment of the NATO) countries, and particularly the
decision to equip the West German Bundeswehr with atomic
weapons. " It was of course Novotny's duty as a Communist
to support the Soviet campaign against atomic weapons, and
as a Czech he was especially interested in keeping the
country in which the Sudeten Germans had found refuge as
weak as possible.
80. Prime Minister Siroky delivered a report
on the reorganization of the national economy. The new
system was supposed to have gone into force on April 1, 1958,
but much remained to be done. Among the measures still
awaiting implementation, Siroky mentioned the creation of a
State Planning Commission and of an Economic Council.
From his statement that "with this council's important super-
visory functions, great significance attachs to the intensifi-
cation of the activities of the Ministry of State Control, the
Ministry of Finance, and the State Bank, " it seemed to follow
that reorganization meant chiefly a change in the method and
amount of detail, and not in the degree, of central control.
81. In Slovakia, at any rate, economic reorgani-
zation seemed to be far from contributing to Socialist unity.
As one of the reforms consisted in the merger of individual
but related enterprises into larger "production units, "
having their headquarters "in the centers of their production
branches, "1 most of these were naturally located in the
industrially more advanced Czech lands, with the result that
1 Radio Prague, February 26, 1958.
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many Slovak enterprises were subordinated to Czech enter-.
prises, much to the displeasure of the Slovaks. In Kosice,
even the Party organization voted a resolution disagreeing
with the "affiliation" of the local plants to a "parent" in
Brno. l
82. The trial of the alleged members of the
Hlinka guards culminated during the course of April in the
sentencing of five: of them to death and 22 to long prison
terms. The proceedings: and the attendant publicity revealed
an intention, not only to intimidate Slovak nationalists,. but
also to discredit the Catholic Church, whose priests were
accused of having blessed the murders. 2
83.. On the other hand, a concession to Slovak
nationalism was made in the revised Military Service Act,
which authorized use of the Slovak language in the Army con-.
currently with Czech, although Czech remained the language
of command.3
84. At the Slovak Party Congress (May 16-18),
the Czechoslovak chief delegate, Deputy Premier Vaclav
Kopecky, adopted the attitude of injured innocence. He simply
could not see any reason for a "iseparatist" movement under
the present regime. "The recognition of the Slovak nation as
a separate entity, " he claimed, "was the result of the struggle
waged by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. " But he
himself implicitly admitted that mere recognition had not
meant much, by proceeding to stress - and to exaggerate -
the importance of "the far reaching measure which /in 1956/
considerably enlarged the powers of the Slovak national
bodies. "
1 Pravda (Bratislava), March 30, 1958.
2 Radio Prague, April 26, 1958.
3. Pravda (Bratislava),. April 12, 1958.
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85. Baci:lek, the First Secretary of the Slovak
Party, expatiated on the benefits derived by Slovakia from
the union. Slovakia's share in the country's industrial out-
put had risen from 13.8 percent in 1948 to 16. 7 percent in
1957, and he revealed that plans were under consideration
to build a large metallurgical plant in Eastern Slovakia -
presumably to complete the "Huko" project which had been
abandoned in 1952.
86. The picture in agriculture was spotty. It
was true that, on one hand, 61. 8 percent of Slovak cultivated
land was now socialized, as against 65.5 percent in the whole
country, but crop production had only increased 2.5 percent
in the last two years, whereas the increase planned for the
1956-1960 period was 34. 9 percent.
87. The Slovak Congress was a particularly
appropriate forum for comments on the wickedness of
Yugoslav "revisionism, " the cause of violent agitation in the
Communist world at the time. Kopecky declared that "revision-
ism only serves the interests of imperialism" and that the
Yugoslav program was permeated with revisionist views.
Bacilek considered the Tito regime to have "placed itself out-
side the ranks of the international Communist movement"
the identical terms used by Rude Pravo in its May 8 editorial
on the subject. Actually, the Czechoslovak criticisms of the
Yugoslav program, although severe, were not as violent as
the Chinese, Bulgarian, or Albanian. But neither were the
Soviet attacks, and the Czechoslovak weekly Tvorba had
pointed out once again in an earlier article on the same sub-
ject, reprinted in Pravda: "In the CPSU we see the inter-
national Communist movement's advance guard, and a model
for us. "1 In the same spirit, the final resolution of the
Slovak Party Congress reaffirmed the "leading role of the
USSR in the socialist camp. "
1 Radio Moscow, May 7, 1958.
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The Eleventh Party Congress
88. The 11th. Congress of the Czechoslovak
Communist Party, which met from June 18 to 21 under the
stirring slogan, "Under the leadership of the CSCP, forward
to the completion of socialist construction, " failed to live up
to expectations. Perhaps the only minor sensation was the
fact. that the slogans chanted in unison at the opening of the
Congress, "Long live the CSCP, long live the Soviet Union,
long live People's China, " failed even to mention the smaller,
but allegedly "equal" and "brotherly" nations of the socialist
camp.l The speeches and the final resolution were mainly
variations on the well-worn themes of capitalist imperialism,
socia ist unity and love of peace, revisionism, the immediate
economic tasks, and party organization.
89. Among the more interesting statements was
Novotny's admission that the "international wave of anti-
Leninist. revisionist opinions grew proportionately with the
anti-Communist campaign of slanders of the bourgeoisie."
However, he claimed, "the dangerous wave of revisionism
was turned back... Our Party nipped in the bud various
revisionist and bourgeois liberal tendencies, which had
started to appear in isolated cases. " The state policy toward
Yugoslavia, which was in large part responsible for the
revisionist wave, would be to continue to maintain such
mutual relations "as will be of benefit to both countries. "
90. The elimination of the remnants of antagonistic
classes was proceeding apace, according to Novotny. In the
past six years the arable land held by kulaks had dropped from
14.1 to 1. 6 percent, the socialization of farmland was expected
to be "basically completed" within two years the figure for
June 1, 1958, was 71.5 percent - and "workers" now made up
62 percent of the country's population. By 1965, industrial
production was to increase 90 to 95 percent, agricultural pro-
duction 40 percent, building 70 to 80 percent and personal con-
sumption 45 percent over the 1957 figures. The housing
problem would take a. little longer to solve, but it would be
done in 1970.
1 Radio Prague, June 18, 1958.
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91. Although the reduction in central office
forces was supposed to have been accomplished by April 1,
Novotny claimed without further explanation that the
economic reorganization was proceeding smoothly, the forces
having been reduced by 9, 500, with 30, 000 more to follow.
However, he apparently attached greater importance to
other aspects of the reorganization, such as "the increased
authority of enterprises and plants, " and "the fact that the
national rPart /committees today administer directly one
full third of the national economy. ""
92. The final resolution implied, although it did
not say so directly, that the final victory of socialism in
Czechoslovakia could be expected in about two years, stating
that of crucial importance for its achievement was socialist
ownership of the means of production, and that the transition
from agricultural small-scale production to cooperative
large-scale production could be completed within that period.
The resolution further implied that all boasts of socialist
successes notwithstanding, there was considerable room for
improvement in the standard of living, particularly necessary
being "a speedier rise of the personal consumption of families
with several children"' - a rather unexpected admission in
a workers' state. Other tasks to be achieved were the solution
of the housing problem, the extension and improvement within
the shortest possible time of "services paid for by the popula-
tion, " the creation of conditions for more employment in the
country, and the improvement of care provided for the
children of working mothers. But even such bright prospects
were not expected to neutralize the enemy, rather the
opposite. The resolution found it necessary to proclaim
once again the Party's resolve to frustrate the attempts of
the "defeated bourgeoisie and of imperialist agents" to thwart
its constructive efforts. "To this end, we must strengthen
our people's army, the security organs, the prosecutors's
offices."
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93. The Party naturally relied heavily for
support on its principal subsidiary organizations, the trade
unions and the Youth League. Nothing particular was said
about the trade unions, but Miloslav Vecker, chairman of
the central committee of the Youth League, confessed that
he was not quite pleased with conditions in his bailiwick.
He claimed a membership of 1, 112, 000 for the organization,
but seemed to be preparing an alibi by "making no bones"
about the fact that the League included a number of youths
who "joined in the belief that it would bring them advantages
or from other mercenary motives, " or "who remembered
socialism only when it is a question of drawing high salaries."
He ended with the rather surprising statement that "just now,
special urgency attacheo'to`the demand'for the education of
youth to be communist. "
94. As far as Party affairs were concerned, the
Congress brought out that it had 1, 422, 199 members, a drop
of some 77, 000 since 1954.1 The proportion of workers,
60.9 percent, according to figures published in Zivot Strany
of June 1958, was comparatively high, and that of farmers,
4.4;percent, comparatively low. Presumably to correct
this imbalance, the probationary period for members of
cooperatives was reduced from two to one year. But although
the Congress, in the words of Rude Pravo of July 29, 1958,
''placed a special emphasis on the importance of admitting
new members, '1 nobody seems to have been able to think of
some way of achieving the aim, unless it be assumed that
the other change in the Party statutes, the insertion of the
statement that "the Czechoslovak Communist Party is the
leading force in our society, " was made in the hope of inducing
more people to join.
95. The new Central Committee elected by the
Congress had 97 full members and 50 candidate members, an
increase of 13 and 22 respectively. The Politburo member=--
ship was also enlarged from 7 to 10, one of the new posts
going to Jiri Hendrych, the Party's ideological spokesman,
and a member of the Secretariat. Another went to a Slovak,
1 Rude Pravo, June 12, 1954. This figure was given by
Novotny in his June 18 report.
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thus raising Slovakia's representation on the Politburo to
three, one of them a candidate member (out of a total of
three such members).
96. Rumors had been current after the CEMA
meeting in Moscow in late May that the Czechoslovaks were
very dissatisfied with some of the decisions on specialization
of production in the different member countries which would
have eliminated some of the Czechoslovak consumer indus-
tries. When, therefore, Novotny, accompanied by a large
retinue of Party dignitaries, but not by Siroky, unexpectedly
left for Moscow on July 2, although he had been there as
recently as at the end of May, it was generally believed that.
the chief purpose of the visit was to obtain a revision of the
decision. However, nothing has since transpired to sub-
stantiate that belief, and Khrushchev, in his speech of welcome
at the Moscow airport, declared pointedly:
It is a pleasure to feel that your present visit,
like our previous meetings, is not bound up
with the need to settle any issues or misunder-
standings, for there, are no such disputed
issues between us and there never have been.
Novotny thoroughly agreed. "Throughout the history of our
party, " he said, "there has not been a single question on
which our views diverged from.:the views of the CPSU. r'
97. The explanation given for the visit, to return
Khrushchev's official visit of the year before, seems, there-
fore, to have been true. Nevertheless, there may have been
a subsidiary motive, namely to show that whatever reasons
might have prevented :Khrushchev from attending the Prague
Party Congress as he had the recent Berlin and Sofia Con-
gresses, disagreements between the CPSU and CSCP had not
been one of them. Just the opposite may have been true,
judging from the compliments showered upon Novotny and by
the pomp of his reception in Moscow.
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The Situation in Czechoslovakia in the Fall of 1958
98. Czechoslovakia enjoys the distinction of
being considered the "model satellite, " presumably because
it is .economically the most prosperous and politically the
most stable of the Soviet dominated countries of Eastern
Europe. However, that does not mean that everything is
perfect in Czechoslovakia, either from the Communist. point
of view of from that of the people.
99. The regime professes to find its greatest
cause of satisfaction in the field of industry.. According to
the figures for 1957, published by the. State Statistical Office
on February 6, 1958, national income. rose by 7.4 percent
and industrial. production by an average of 10. 2 percent,. pro-
duction. of producers goods-.accou-tting"for.9...7_perc.ett and-,of
consumers goods for 10. 9 percent. But the regime complained
that real wages, up almost 6 percent, had been rising faster
than productivity, and. warned that wages would have. to be
'(stabilized" in 1958. The figures for the first six months of
1958 show a further wage rise of 2 percent, :.accompanied,
however? by an 8 percent increase in labor productivity, an
11. percent increase. in production of producers and a 12. percent
increase in production of consumers goods.1
100. Onthe face of it, the regime appears to have
nothing to worry about in industry. However, the picture may
not be as rosy as it looks. In the first place, the veracity
of official statistics is as doubtful. in Czechoslovakia as in
other Communist countries. The trade union journal Prace
of May 15, 1958, related, for example, that an official
delegation which had come to the Jan Sverma mine to find out
why construction was behind plan, noticed a bulletin board
claiming that the plan was being fulfilled 117 percent, and was
told by one of the workers that "we had reported 89 percent
but as you can see /the)Emade it 117 percent. We work under
1 Radio Prague, August 6, 1958.
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different plans. " Incidentally, the delegation also heard
bitter complaints about living conditions, especially the food.
Moreover, present and future trouble is indicated by such
items as the publication of a letter of the Ostrava Party Com-
mittee to the local miners dealing with a 25, 000 ton shortfall
of coal in July chiefly due to absenteeism, 1 by an article in
Rude Pravo of August 27, reporting that employees in the
Ostrava Karvina mines had been shifted or sent to do manual
work for neglecting their jobs or making false reports on
production progress, or by the announcement that a new wage
system is to be worked out and to be introduced gradually
beginning in October 1.958.2 The system is designed to "insure
correct wage differentials" and to eliminate the discrepancies
between wage rates and planned average earnings; it cannot
but have the result of increasing the norms for some workers
and reducing the earnings of others, which explains the
warning of Rude Pravo (August 28, 1958) that, "we must
expect incorrect views to be put forward by some /workers/. "
It is true that the regime has endeavored to sweeten the pill
by implementing the principle of greater worker participation
in management, one of the prerequisites for the completion
of Socialism. But it seems doubtful whether the workers will
be greatly mollified by such concessions as the transfer, by
a June 6 decision, of the administration of the enterprise fund
of the workers, formerly known as the director's fund, to the
workers, for they must administer it through the trade unions.
Other forms of worker participation in management promised
at the Party Congress by Frantisek Supka, chairman of the
'tirade Union Council, such as participation in the reorgani-
zation of the wage structure, are equally to be exercised
through the trade unions, whose main task would consist in
convincing the workers. that their interests and those of
society are identical. As for "the most important form of
l Radio Prague, August 5, 1958.
2 Radio Prague, July 21, 1958.
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worker participation. in management, the organization of
socialist competition, '' Supka did not make 'it clear whether
or not that, too, would have to be carried out through the
trade unions, but either way it was not likely to appeal very
strongly to the workers.
101. Although Bruno Koehler's report on a
meeting in a Prague factory, published in Zivot Strany No. 6,
March 1957, is over a" year old, the dissatisfaction of the
workers with political conditions reflected in the report is
undoubtedly as great today as it was then. Koehler reported
that the workers asked for
an extraordinary congress of the Party and new
Party line... doubts were expressed as to the
obligatory character of Party decisions for the
government, parliament and non-Communist
organizations... a demand was voiced that the
'press censorship and jamming of enemy broad-
casts be abolished... Your organization even
suggested that the need for the workers
militia be revised.
102. In agriculture, the situation was conceded
to be unsatisfactory. The regime continued, it is true, to
chalk up impressive victories in its land socialization cam-
paign ti 57.4 percent of all agricultural land socialized by
the end of 1957,1 72 percent by the middle of 1958.2 But in
1957, at any rate, Rude Pravo admitted that "though there
was atremendous development of farmer cooperatives, we
did not achieve the planned increase in production... the
total agricultural production remained roughly on the level
of 1948. " In its August 30, 1958, editorial, Rude Pravo
admitted that "plant production as a whole". was
1 Rude Pravo,. February 12, 1958.
2 Radio Prague, August 6, 195.8..
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still at pre-war level. There are also great
problems in stockbreeding, cattle stocks are
constantly declining. At the same time, we
are greatly and unhealthily exceeding the plan
of bulk buying of beef. This year also the
number of pigs has declined...
Outlining the causes of the unsatisfactory progress in
agriculture, the February 12, 1958, editorial of Rude Pravo
admitted that "the rapid growth of the cooperatives and the
simultaneous failure to implement the required increase in
agricultural output compels one to ask whether the failure
is not a result of this rapid growth, " but of course it denied
the possibility categorically. Responsibility for these
unsatisfactory results lay entirely, the paper declared, on
the inadequate crops raised on "the hundreds of thousands
of hectares held by individual farmers. 11
103. In its August 30, 1958, editorial, however,
the same newspaper felt bound to concede that
there are many unsolved problems in many
agricultural cooperatives, especially in the
new ones. But in many of the old ones, it
is also necessary to devote constant attention
to the attitude of the members of the coopera-
tive to common farming. Cooperative funds,
too, are a problem. They are insufficient
even for machinery, instrument and building
replacements, and give no possibility for
further expansion of the work of the coopera-
tive.
104. The figures for the 1958 crop are still
unknown but, however favorable they may be, they are
unlikely to contribute much toward reducing the 30 percent
gap still remaining to be filled by 1960, or even the some-
what more realistic 40 percent target by 1965, which was
set by Novotny at the 11th Congress. Yet any serious dis-
crepancy between industrial and agricultural plan fulfillment
is bound to upset the over-all economic plan.
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105. All reports from Czechoslovakia agree
that there, as elsewhere in the Orbit, the spurt in land
socialization in the last two years was only achieved by
means of the strongest, albeit indirect, pressure. What
made the regime, which in 1953 and 1954 had frankly confessed
that collectivization achieved by coercion was self-defeating,
change its mind, has not been revealed. Possibly the explana-
tion is to be found in the increased ability of the USSR, thanks
to the contributions of the former virgin lands, to make up
deficiencies until such time as the peasants become convinced
that the change was for' their own good. How soon the
peasants will eventually see the light is problematical, but
in the meantime they cannot be very favorably disposed
toward the regime. The problem of the "socialist re-
education of cooperative farmers" remains to be solved,
Rude Pravo admits.! Neither can those peasants who have
so far managed to escape collectivization, but who have been
warned that their reprieve cannot exceed two years, be very
pro-Communist.
106. Whether the reorganization. and decentrali-
zation of government and of economic management now being
carried out will ultimately benefit the economy is unpredictable.
But there can be no doubt that in the short run their effect
must be bad. Reductions in forces can certainly increase
efficiency, but not if the criteria are political, or social.
There is no doubt that many of the best qualified employees
have been dismissed and have either swollen the ranks of the
unemployed or accepted menial jobs in their places of resi-
dence rather than give up their dwellings. The recent
reorganization, " declared delegate Bilak at the Party Conn
gress, '''has released many capable people, and we would
like them to work in our province. Some have been assigned
to us, but nobody came."As for those who happened to be
1 July 25, 1958
2 Rude Pravo, June 19, 1958.
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Party members, they apparently did not even lose their
jobs. "It is very harmful, " Bilak complained, "if a com-
rade who refuses. to accept another job remains in his old
position without any consequences whatever... Party
discipline has considerably declined with many functionaries.
107. Another possible drawback of the economic
reorganization which increases still further responsibilities
of national committees is illustrated by the blunt statement
in Rude Pravo (March 11, 1958): "Regional national com-
mittees have had the state farms under their control for one
year. Their work did not improve in the meantime but
deteriorated still further."
The Standard of Living;
108. Although everybody seems to agree that the
Czechoslovak standard of living is the highest in the Orbit,
it is a surprising fact that most Czechoslovaks, in conversation
with foreigners, express dissatisfaction on that score.
Whether the explanation is that the standard of living is indeed
still low in Communist Czechoslovakia although the country
had been prosperous long before the war and had suffered little
damage, or that it is human nature never to be satisfied, the
important fact is that the non-communist Czechoslovaks are
not content even from the material point of view. Most of
them complain of 'inadequate. wages and high prices, and of
very poor housing. They put part of the blame on the
Russians, who are accused, not only of aiding and abetting
the communization of the country, but also of appropriating
the profits from the uranium mines, and of draining Czecho-
slovak resources by forcing the country to supply distant
backward countries with capital goods on unprofitable terms.
109. The intelligentsia appears to have been
successfully cowed, but that does not mean that it has been
won over. This was clearly implied by Kopecky in his speech
at the Slovak Party Congress on May 17, 1958. "Marxism-
Leninism, " he said,
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is a revolutionary theory and can be mastered
best by the working class; this is the task of
the Communist Parties. In the case of an intel-
lectual, a deep spiritual transformation is
necessary if he is to master Marxism-
Leninism. 2
Kopecky further expressed "deep disappointment" at the
part played by Hungarian and Polish writers in October 1956.
Czechoslovak writers, he said, had taken "some steps in the
same direction, "but Four Party and working class showed
unmistakable firmness. and determination and would not
permit the importation of the so-called liberalization."
The answer of many Czechoslovak writers was the same as
that of their colleagues in the other satellites. They
refrained from writing anything "substantial about present
day life, " Zivot Strany complained in its April 1958 issue.
The Slovaks
110. The strongest opposition to the regime is
to be found in Slovakia, with its predominantly rural and
intensely Catholic population. Among the Slovaks, anti-
communism is combined with Slovak nationalism, which
appears to be still very strong and rejects domination by
Czechs, whether Communist or not. Paradoxically, the
special effort made by the Czechs to raise the level of
industrialization, agriculture, and housing in Slovakia to
their own level by proportionately larger investments has
increased rather than reduced mutual animosities. The
Slovaks resent the presence of Czech executives and tech-
nicians needed to build and to run:the new industries, and
many Czechs resent the ingratitude of the Slovaks who show
little appreciation of the privileges they enjoy at their
expense.
1 To "master" is presumably a Marxist euphemism for
to "accept. I
Pravda, Bratislava, May 18, 1958.
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The Party
111. If, nevertheless, everything has remained
quiet in Czechoslovakia for the last two years, this is
certainly due in no small part to the remarkable cohesion.
of the Communist Party, the only one in the Satellites in
which no factions are identifiable and in which no demotions
and, even less, expulsions of prominent figures have
occurred in the last two years,. although Czechoslovakia
has the largest Party membership in proportion to its
population, 12 percent. Neither does one hear of conflicts
and struggles for power between top leaders such as occur
even in the model Communist state, the USSR. Differences
of opinion have indeed been reported between Novotny and
Siroky for example, but the reports are contradictory,
insofar as some describe Novotny and some Siroky as the
tougher and more "Stalinist" of the two. What actually
matters is that differences of opinion at the higher levels
have apparently always been composed, since 1956, at any
rate. The only known exception was the case of Cepicka,
who was dismissed, however, on the charge of Stalinism in
the first flurry of uncertainty caused by Khrushchev's secret
speech. Novotny appears to have. imposed democratic
centralism successfully with the help of Moscow and to be
firmly in the saddle. At the lower Slovak Party level, however,
unity seems to be less perfect. Stefan Sebesta, former
deputy chairman of the Slovak Board of Commissioners, was
dismissed from the Slovak Politburo in May 1958 on the charge
of bourgeois nationalism, and the expulsion of three more
Party officials for "anti-Party methods" and former rre mber-
ship in a Fascist group was. announced on August 19, 1958.
112. One might expect the Czechoslovak Party
leadership to be highly satisfied with the situation, for they
have the proportionately largest, and also the best disciplined,
Communist Party in the Orbit. But there is a large fly in
the ointment. The leadership, Rude Pravo of August 28, 1957,
revealed, is seriously concerned over the unsatisfactory
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growth of the Party, 1 especially over its static and aging
membership, for the percentage of members and candidates
under, 26 years of age is barely 6. 5. But little progress
has been made, judging by the Rude Pravo editorial of
April 26, 1958. According to the editorial, "a demand was
expressed at all district conferences that more young people
should be in the Party. rr Deputy Bilak declared at the Party
Congress that "the 1958 new candidates, admitted in the
first five and a half months of the year, are not enough to
implement all the tasks set by .the Party. rr 2 The percentage
of young men already members of the Party at the time they
are recruited into the Army has dropped from 5.5 percent
in 1953 to 3. 3 in 1958, and the average number of young
soldiers who ,join the Party is, only 3. 5 percent. 3 As for the
next lower age. group, it is characterized by the fact, which
Mlada Fronta was frank enough to admit, that "the greatest
trouble of the Youth L4eague/ is with the meetings which
nobody wants to attend. " Radio Prague, besides com-
plaining of the "serious shortcomings in the' ideological
influences of the Youth League on students,?l practically
admits that Communism instead of increasing ts hold on the
young, is. losing ground: "Some /Youth League/ organizations...
do not fight against bourgeois habits and tastes which, are
penetrating into student life... rr 5 The excuse given by
Rude Pravo in its April 28, 1958, editorial is that according to
older members, "it is difficult to train youth for Party work,
youth who did not know capitalism from their own experience
and who did not pass through the hard school of class struggles.
1 Actually, there even has been a drop, from 1, 489, 2.34 in
1954 to 1, 422,199 in 1958. .
2 Rude Pravo, June 19, 1958.
3 Rude Pravo, June 20, 1958.
4 June 12, 1958.
5 September 1, 1 958.
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Comment and Outlook
113. Of all the European Satellites of the USSR,
Czechoslovakia, has, with the possible exception of Albania,
certainly performed more satisfactorily from Moscow's.
point of view during and since the crisis which shook the
Soviet Orbit after the 20th Congress. The Czechs, who
because of their relatively high standard of living and
education and of their genuine democracy since 1918, were
expected to be the most refractory to Communism, remained
quiet, while the Hungarians and Poles rebelled. The trend
toward liberalism common to all the Satellite Communist
parties was weak in the CSCP - with the exception of its
Slovak wing, where it merged with the strong Slovak nationalist
sentiment - and was easily subdued. After a short period of
vacillation following the 20th Party Congress, the Czech
Party leaders, like their colleagues in the majority of the
Satellites, gradually tightened the screws once again, reverting
in some respects, collectivization for instance, to Stalinist
extremes. While the situation with regard to arbitrary arrests,
torture of suspects, and similar excesses, has improved since
the''Stalin days, the prisons are said to be crowded with
"enemies of the regime. 't Spy trials and vigilance campaigns
largely nullify whatever benefits could be expected from a
limited increase in cultural relations with the West and in
tourism. In the intellectual and artistic fields, the only
gains which have been. preserved are a certain broadening of
precepts regulating forms of artistic expression.
114. The mere fact that the Czechoslovak - and the
Soviet - leadership has deemed it. necessary to tighten censor-
ship and police control indicates, however, that the Communist
regime is not as firmly in the saddle in Czechoslovakia as it
may seem to be. The leaders have undoubtedly serious reasons
for apprehension.
115. It is true that revisionism in the Party has
caused less trouble in Czechoslovakia than elsewhere in the
Orbit. B. Ponomarev, in an article on revisionism in the
June 1958 issue of Kommunist (Moscow), mentions Rumania,
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East Germany, and Bulgaria among the socialist countries
in which revisionist movements have been suppressed, but
not Czechoslovakia, obviously because it was not dangerous
enough there to call for drastic measures. Nevertheless
it exists, albeit in an embryonic form. Rude. Pravo of
June 10, 1958, devoting a long article to the problem, main-
tained that although "revisionist tendencies and incorrect
views" had been. "overcome" in Czechoslovakia, the struggle
had to be continued relentlessly. Revisionism, the news-
paper claimed, was all the more insidious and difficult to
combat in Czechoslovakia because here it had notbeen
"formulated... as a definite system of views.... " although
such attempts had been made "as was shown in the cases of
Kuehnl and Kusin of the Prague economic College, or of
Zd. Dub sky, of the Ostrava Mining College, and other
places. " But, Rude Pravo. concluded, if. the efforts in the
,struggle against revisionism, both on an international scale
and in Czechoslovakia, were intensified, "contemporary
revisionism will be defeated as totally as were the revi.s-
ionists of the past.'' Revisionism, one may conclude,
undoubtedly exists in the CPCS in a latent state, but has
never been allowed to gather momentum. Moreover,
although an indeterminate number of Party members,
especially Slovak, were in favor of liberalization, that is,
revisionism or national Communism, they included no one
endowed with the requisite qualities of leadership. Czecho-
slovakia has produced only one national Communist of any
prominence, Vlado Clementis, liquidated in. 1952. But that
he, if he had survived, or any other Slovak, could have led
a. national Communist movement is unlikely, for Slovak
nationalism is primarily anti-Czech.
116. The "Stalinists, " on. the other hand, were
not lacking in leaders. The three most prominent Party
members, Novotny, Zapotocky, and Siroky, had, one may,
presume, long before the Polish October agreed that
liberalization was a slippery slope and that if they adopted a
hard. line and firmly repressed the movement before it got
out of hand, they could not lose. If liberalism became
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dominant in Moscow, they would be able to invoke in their
favor.the principle of different roads to socialism, which
could not exclude firmness; if Stalinist ideas prevailed, they
could only earn praise. Both Novotny and Siroky - Zapotocky
was too old. apparently lacked the ambition or the courage
to emulate Tito.
117. The high degree of outward ideological
cohesiveness and discipline, which was manifested, once
the struggle for supremacy between Slansky and Gottwald
had ended in 1952 with the victory of the latter, by the
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, is undoubtedly chiefly
due to the unique circumstances that even today the pre-
March 1958 coup members are in the majority, albeit a
small'one, 1 and that Party membership is only slightly
higher now:than before the seizure of power. The proportion
of true, Communists is, therefore,, presumably much higher
in Czechoslovakia than in the other Satellites, where, the
vast majority of Party members are of the bandwagon type.
118. However, as old age takes its toll, the
balance cannot but shift in favor of younger and less
reliable elements.. Figures given by Minister of the Interior
Barak to the June 1958 Congress revealed that in the newly
elected Central Committee, post-war members already
outnumbered their pre-1945 colleagues by 84 to 66.
119. In Slovakia,. the Party membership is only
5. 5 percent of the population, as against 12 percent in the
Czech lands. The Party is finding it particularly difficult
to recruit .an adequate proportion of workers, collective
farmers, or members of the technical intelligentsia,
1 According to Zivot Strang of June 1958, there were on
January 1,' 1958, 1, 422, 199 Party members and candidates,
50.4 percent of whom had been members for over 10 years.
Party membership had been 1, 159, 164 on March 15, 1946,
and had reached a high of 2, 311, 066 in May 1949, after the
coup.
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according to First Secretary Bacilek's report to the
Central Committee on July .4, 1958.
120. The failure of the Czech or Slovak popula-
tion to. rise like the Poles or Hungarians against the regime
is, therefore, undoubtedly to. a large extent due to the
stronger core: of sincere and disciplined Communists. This
condition would explain the non-emergence within the Party
of the necessary prerequisite to a mass movement, that
i.s a large and vocal faction of "revisionists, rr under courageous
leadership, to challenge and intimidate the Stalinist leaders
during the crucial spring and summer of 1956, when they
themselves were not sure whether they could count on
Moscow's backing. Under the circumstances, certain
groups of the population, chiefly the students and the intel-
lectuals, showed. considerable courage in challenging the
Party leadership in the spring of that year.
121. Although the importance of economic factors
among the causes of popular uprisings is a subject of contro-
versy, it may be assumed that the relatively high standard of
living of the Czech workers did tend to offset other causes
of dissatisfaction with the regime and explains, why, unlike
the Polish and Hungarian workers, they abstained from open
manifestations. of discontent. The fact that the currency
reform of 1953, which largely wiped out savings, did. provoke
serious unrest among the, working population seems to prove
that Czechoslovak workers are influenced by economic
considerations in their attitude towards the regime.
122. However, by 1956, economic conditions had
improved, and while they were good enough to give no motive
for active opposition, they were not good enough to. win over
the majority of the workers to Communism. The workers
know that Czechoslovak prosperity antedated Communism,
nor can the Communists in Czechoslovakia - or in East
Germany - claim the merit of "rapid industrialization. +r
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123. Painful as it is for the Communists to
admit that not all workers are devoted to the party of the
workers' power, they cannot conceal the fact completely.
Thus, Radio Bratislava (September 29, 1958) admitted that
among the workers there are "also people with an undesirable
political past who have taken up manual work in factories"
but cannot be considered workers "in the political sense"
and are frequently guilty of "counter-revolutionary"
criticisms. Rude Pravo (September 19, 1958) went even
further and complained that "not only former proprietors,
but also a section of the _working people is affected /by the
petit bourgeois mentality/, sometimes even workers who
have improved their living standards... "
124. Significantly, all Party Secretary Jiri
Hendrich had to say about the workers' and employees'
class was that before 1948 "it was the exploited class"
while today it was "the ruling class. "I He abstained from
claiming that they were particularly satisfied with the
change.
125. The rural population, especially numerous
in Slovakia, wasand is certainly strongly anti-regime, if
only out of resentment of the means used or threatened to
"persuade" them to Join collective farms. Hendrich admitted
as much when he wrote: "To induce a farmer to join a
cooperative is one thing. To make him a socialist coopera-
tive farmer in the true sense of the word, to remold him in
the spirit of socialism, is quite a different thing. "x Under
modern conditions, however, peasant opposition to a
regime can only be passive or individual.
1 Rude Pravo, April 25, 1958.
2 Rude Pravo, April 25, 1958.
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126. Hendrich made no claim to the allegiance
of the bourgeoisie, rather the opposite. He wrote:
We must reckon with the fact that a rather broad
stratum of the people of our country, mainly the
petty bourgeoisie and a considerable portion of
the intelligentsia, are today experiencing in
their daily lives, material positions, thoughts,
and views, complicated changes on the path
from petty bourgeois democracy to socialist
principles.' They still harbor many illusions
about bourgeois, democracy.. .
127. Included in the peasant and bourgeoisie
strata of the population were presumably the "l, 300, 000
real estate owners, kulak.s, and entrepreneurs" who, in
1930, had made up with their families 10 percent of the
population butwere now reduced to a little over one-half
of one percent. The favorable conditions for building
socialism in Czechoslovakia, Hendrich said, had made their
11mass elimination unnecessary. " All that was needed was
a. "policy of restriction and suppression." Most of the
victims of the. recent decentralization and debureaucratiza-
tion of the Czechoslovak economy, which has, in Prague
alone, uprooted or rendered jobless, or threatens to do so,
over 100, 00.0 people, belong to that class.
128. While the Communist leaders may argue
that the advantage of ridding government and business offices
of unreliable elements outweighs the disadvantage of
rekindling fading animosities, the decision to reduce "old-
age pensions and other social security benefits of former
political and economic exponents of the capitalist system, 11
as Radio Bratislava (September 8, 1958) put it, is more
difficult to understand. The only explanation seems to be
vindictiveness.
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129. It is certainly true that the anti-regime
movement seems to have been far less strong in the Czech
lands than in Poland or Hungary, and that up to a point the
attitude of many Party members reflects the intensity of
popular feeling. A number of reasons for the difference
can be cited. In the words of 'Ivo Duchecek:
If there. is such a thing as national character,
the Czechs (and to a lesser degree the Slovaks)
appear, in their modern political history, as.
pragmatists, less inclined than their northern.
and southern neighbors to indulge in spectacular
and suicidal actions... It seems that those who
protest by action are rather the exception than
the rule.l
In other words, the Czechs at any rate are far too practical
people to have engaged in an action which meant almost
certain conflict with the overwhelming might of the Soviet
Union without any assurance of Western help. Although
conditions in 1956 were far different from those prevailing
in 1939, they were bound to remember and to invoke their
experience in that crisis to Justify their prudence in 1956,
and as the fate of Hungary proved, their pessimism was
well founded.
130. Czech pragmatism and materialism are
also strikingly manifest in the lukewarm attitude of the
Czechs toward religion. Communist anti-religious policy,
which in Poland aroused such resentment among the people,
and still does in Slovakia, provokes little opposition
among the Czechs. Moreover, while it is probably true
"A `Loyal' Satellite: The Case of Czechoslovakia, It
The Annals of the American Academy of Political and
Social Science. May 1958, p. 117.
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that few revolutions have been setoff by material
privations, a man who is comfortably off is certainly
less likely to mount the barricades. than a hungry man
who hag, nothing to lose. Most Czechoslovaks are in the
former category.
131. The Czechoslovaks also lack the nationalist
motive which. played such a large, perhaps even decisive
part, in the October events in Poland and Hungary. Although.
the proximity of Russian forces undoubtedly helped, the
Czechoslovak regime was essentially a native product,
albeit the work of a minority, and the constant irritant
supplied by the. physical presence of.Soviet troops was
absent. Neither is it likely that the Russians treat the
Czechoslovaks with quite the same arrogance as the other
Satellite peoples. The material superiority of the Czechs
over the Russians in every respect except power is too
obvious to be denied, and they have never had to come to
Moscow for financial assistance.
132. But treating the Czechs with more respect
than Poles or Rumanians still does not. mean that the
average Czech is satisfied with the relationship. Apart from
the fact that it is Russia which prevents the Czechs from
having a government and a social system of their own
choosing, they are convinced that the Russians. are monopo
lizing the profits from":the uranium mines and are responsible
for the unprofitable long-term credits extended to under-
developed countries to further the Kremlin's political
ambitions. Another item on the debit side of the ledger
is the annexation by the Soviet Union of Carpatho-Ruthenia
in 1945. Today, there is little left in Czechoslovakia,
except in the Party, of the Pan-Slavism and pro-Russianism
of earlier days.
133. On the credit side, the chief item is the
Czech raison d?etat. The Soviet Union is the only power on
which they can count to support the status quo in the
Sudetenland. The question is much less vital for the Czechs
than for the Poles, for the Czechs have not annexed a rich
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pre-Filler German territory, but they certainly do not
want to take back some three million Germans embittered
by heavy losses and long years of exile, and who would
demand far-reaching autonomy, a satisfaction the Western
powers could hardly refuse to their German ally. In
southern Slovakia, too, the situation was such as to give
pause to nationalistically minded Czechs in October 1956.
Any change in the status quo promised to reopen the prob-
lem of the large Hungarian minority inhabiting that area.
Summing Up
134. Summing up developments in Czechoslo-
vakia since the spring of 1956, it may be said that they
revealed strong opposition to Communism among the same
population groups which led the anti-regime movements in
Poland and Hungary,. the intellectuals and the students.
However, the Party lacked a popular revisionist leader, and
the Novotny- Zapotocky-Siroky triumvirate had no effective
opposition to contend with when it decided to halt the
liberalization movement. The majority of Czechs and an
even greater majority of Slovaks are certainly opposed to
the regime, but are unlikely to, take any action for a
number of reasons.
135. The Communist Party is proportionately
the most numerous and at the same time the most discip-
lined of the Satellite parties, and neither Novotny nor
Siroky, who have done very well with the help of Moscow
and lack Tito's assets, has shown any signs of wanting to
give up the bone for the shadow.
136. A conflict with Russia would deprive the
Czechoslovaks of their only support against the Germans
in the problem of the Sudetenland. As long as a German-
Czechoslovak agreement on a mutually acceptable solution
to that problem has not been reached, one can hardly
expect Prague to break with Moscow. To do so it would
have to be sure of unlimited Western support - and of the
West's superior power.
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137. The Czechs are constitutionally dis-
inclined to spectacular but risky gestures and are not
egged on by material privations. There are probably
fewer Patrick Henrys to be found among the modern
Czechs than in most other nations, and it is true that
little could be gained from another abortive revolt.
138. On the other hand, the Communists
th:enis.elves. admit that in spite of the exceptionally favor-
able conditions they enjoyed for 20 years, to develop "within
the framework of bourgeois democracy" the revolutionary
movement, "certain liberalistic, bourgeois democratic,
and reformist illusions were erected which we are apt to
meet to- this day...:It is important that party propaganda
deal with these illusions, especially among the young and
the intelligentsia. "I
139. In other words, according to the Com-
munists, the advantages and disadvantages for them of
Czechoslovakia's inter-war bourgeois democracy, unique
in Eastern Europe, practically cancelled each other out.
The Party could develop greater strength there than in the
other Satellites, but, at the same time, the bourgeois
mentality grew stronger.
140. That, together with the Czech national
character and foreign political interests, would explain
the apparent paradox presented by the relative passivity
in 1956 of the freedom-loving Czechs. For bourgeois
virtues are not of the explosive and heroic kind.
141. Nevertheless, the Communist leaders know
perfectly well that still waters may run deep and that
popular moods may change. They are taking no chances.
Peoples' courts and police are more active than ever, and
the administration and economic management: are being purged
of unreliable elements, regardless of the loss in talent and
Rude Pravo, August 27, 1958.
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experience and of the fact that the Communists are making
bitter enemies out of many people who had, even if
reluctantly, come to terms with the regime.
142. Whether these precautions are really
called for or not, they prove that the Communists believe
they can only maintain themselves in power by force, and
under Russian protection even in the Satellite in which
conditions appeared. most favorable to their triumph. There
was no anti-Russian. feeling - a feeling which was enough to
discredit Communism in most Satellites - the regime had
not been installed at the point of foreign bayonets; Czechs
and Russians were bound by a common interest in keeping
Germany weak, and above all, the country had already
reached a high level of industrialization.
143. The explanation seems to be that although
Communism in Czechoslovakia was unencumbered by any
dam ing Russian associations, this did not make up for the
fact that it lacked even the bait of rapid industrialization
which it could dangle before the industrially more backward
nations of Eastern Europe. Except for the "New Class" of
Party members, few Czechs can expect to derive any
advantages from Communism, while many experience its
disadvantages. As for the Slovaks, the mere fact that
industrialization comes to them at the hand of Czechs is
enough to rob it of much of its potential appeal. Too little
is left to overcome the general hostility of Slovaks to
Communism and all its works.
144. The Czech Communist Party is undoubtedly
one of the strongest, perhaps even the strongest in the
Satellites, and the Czech people show little disposition to
rise against the regime. Yet it is in Czechoslovakia that
Marxism has probably met with its most signal failure. For
leaving aside East Germany with its special problems, Czecho-
slovakia was the only Satellite boasting a large and advanced
workers.' class, and therefore, offered ideal conditions for
the success of Communism according to the theories of Marx.
Nevertheless, it is only byintimidation arid.force that the,Jegime
maintains itself in power, and even if the Czechoslovak
economy has progressed, the gains are far from equalling
those that went into the making of the West German "miracle. "
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