This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book demonstrates in practical terms the pass to which Czechoslovakia has been brought by twenty years under the Soviet-type economic system, for by 1951 the final touch had been applied to that process which, initiated in 1948, left her people with an economic system that took scant note of realities. The show trials of the 1950s served in Czechoslovakia to stamp out any independent thinking on economic and political matters and to ensure that only those willing to toe the Moscow line would be allowed a say in running the country. The vast bureaucratic apparatus set out to plan all industry, to apportion plant and manpower to the enterprises, to fix all prices at the stroke of a pen (for some 1.5 million lines of goods), to decide all aspects of foreign trade, and so on.