ABSTRACT
In May 1946, the first parliamentary elections after the Second World War took place in Czechoslovakia. The only non-socialist party to stand at this election was Československá strana lidová (ČSL), or Czechoslovak People’s Party. It presented itself to the voters as a Czech nationalist, Christian, social-reformist and anti-communist party and mainly appealed to small businessmen, non-socialist intelligentsia and civil servants.1 Its leadership hoped to win a large proportion of the farmers’ votes as the Peasant Party, which had been its greatest rival in rural areas in the inter-war period, was prohibited from being refounded.2 This hope was not, however, fulfilled. The People’s Party won 20 per cent of the vote. Only the Social Democrats had a poorer result, with 15 per cent of the vote.3 While the non-socialist Democratic Party had relegated the Communists to second place in Slovakia, the latter were the clear winners in the Bohemian Lands in this election. Around 40 per cent of the voters voted for the Communists, among them a large proportion of the farmers, whose support the People’s Party had banked on. In fact the People’s Party managed to influence Czechoslovak politics even less in the three years between May 1945 and the Communists’ takeover in February 1948 than its 1946 election result and the three ministerial posts that it attained might have suggested.4
