ABSTRACT
The minority of the population who were Communists or Communist sympathisers were not necessarily bigoted. They believed in the virtue of their cause and rejoiced in its triumph. Inevitably, too, there were doctrinaires with more loyalty to Communist leaders in Moscow than to their colleagues and fellow nationals in Czechoslovakia. As in the post-war years, the National Front provided the government; but it was under the tightest of controls. Of the five non-communist parties, one, the Social Democrats, lost its identity when it was swallowed up by the Communists. The National Front government, like the National Front, regularly backed the policies produced by the Communist Party. Communist control of local government from above was quite blatant. Even the most diehard Communist leaders had to admit to a yawning gap between what was with difficulty available to Czechoslovak consumers and what was widely and cheaply on sale in the West.
