Introduction

Summary

A considerable amount has been written, both in Czechoslovakia and in the West, on the events in Czechoslovakia in the 1945–8 period. This is not surprising, as in three different respects it is of great importance for modern European history. The events of February 1948 had considerable international significance at the time in the division of Europe into opposing blocs. The governments of the United States, Britain and France even issued a joint declaration suggesting that the February events were a threat to their own political institutions. They were subsequently quoted as a major argument for setting up NATO. Today the period has a second international significance as certain Western European Socialist and Communist Parties have hoped to unite in implementing socialist changes within a multi-party system. Although Czechoslovakia's experience after 1945 can neither prove nor disprove the feasibility of a similar social transformation in another place and at another time, it remains a unique example of a democratically elected multi-party government implementing socialist changes in what, even then, was one of the most advanced countries in Europe. This experience is therefore invaluable for the sharpening and clarification of a number of theoretical concepts that have recently become more topical.

The third reason for attaching importance to Czechoslovakia's immediate post-war experience is that events in the late 1960s and in more recent years too have served to highlight the inadequacies of the model of socialism developed since 1948. Study of the 1945–8 period may therefore provide useful ideas for the evolution of a model of socialism more suited to conditions in Czechoslovakia and possibly other Eastern European countries too.