ABSTRACT
Among the countries of East-Central Europe incorporated in the Soviet sphere of influence in the aftermath of the Second World War Czechoslovakia undoubtedly went furthest, in 1945-8 and again in 1968, in attempting to reconcile a socialist system with political democracy. However, and this has been a more neglected subject, Czechoslovakia has also produced both in the 1950s and in the 1970s, the most entrenched and lasting brand of Stalinism in East-Central Europe. Paradoxically, both these contrasting features of post-war Czechoslovakia have usually been explained by a reference to the endurance of the country’s democratic tradition. 1 Indeed, the roots of the Prague Spring of 1968 can (as we shall argue) be traced back to the profoundly democratic character of Czechoslovak political culture which has shaped not only the political life of the country before the war but also left its imprint on the labour movement, including the Communist Party (KSČ). Conversely, it has sometimes been suggested that the scope of the Stalinist phenomenon has, in a way, been proportional to the vitality of the ‘bourgeois’ or ‘social’ democratic legacy it tried to ‘overcome’ or rather eradicate. However, a closer examination of the origins and development of communist rule in Czechoslovakia suggests that the latter proposition could be a rather misleading oversimplification.
