5 - Czech political parties

Summary

THE COMMUNIST PARTY

The KSČ had the greatest claim to be the leading force in the national revolution. This, however, should not be interpreted too rigidly as there were spheres in which changes went even further than they expected. Moreover, their leadership was applied within the context of broad national unity and was therefore tempered by the need to reach agreement with other parties. Although this obviously prevented them from establishing a monopoly of power and was a useful check on their exploitation of control over the police and security forces, it was not a major restriction on the Communist's ability to put into practice most of their immediate social and economic policies. In fact, in industry they were soon performing a role with striking similarities to that of a Communist Party in power today.

Moreover, without their contribution there is no reason to doubt that changes in industry would have been much smaller. Although some state ownership was probably inevitable in other respects the revolution could have been little more than a repeat of 1918. In 1945, however, the KSČ did not vacillate and split as the Social Democrats had after 1918. Instead, the Communists acted with unity and decisiveness. The principal reasons for this were twofold: first, the KSČ, armed with the Košice Programme, had policies that roughly corresponded to the needs of Czech society in 1945 and, secondly, the party's organisational structure was such as to allow for united, conscious action to implement those policies.