ABSTRACT

Nationalization in reconstituted Czechoslovakia at first did not go so far as in Poland. Although the Czechs referred to their 1945 situation as a ‘revolution’, the degree of continuity between their pre-war and post-war régimes was far greater than in Poland. Their pre-war régime had, of course, been far more democratic, middleclass, advanced, and prosperous than that of the Poles: there was less of a striking nature for them to flee from. Besides, the Czechs had never gone through the revolutionizing experience as a nation of fighting the Germans with arms in hand, nor had they met the full force of the German’s eastern policy. Destruction for them had been purposely selective and on a moderate scale.