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The Formation of a Communist party in Czechoslovakia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2018

H. Gordon Skilling
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Extract

In the new Czechoslovakia a Communist Party did not exist in the early days. Such a party was created only in the fall of 1921, fully three years after the independence of Czechoslovakia had been effected. At the moment of liberation it is not an exaggeration to say that communism had hardly even a foothold among Czech and Slovak workers. A substantial wave of sympathy for the Russian Bolsheviks had swept over the country following the Revolution in 1917, and a radical mood, favorable to socialism, had spread widely among the Czech masses. These circumstances had not, however, encouraged even the beginning of organizing a communist movement among Czechs and Slovaks, or among the German minority.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , October 1955 , pp. 346 - 358
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1955

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References

1 Reimann, Pavel, Dějiny, komunistické strany Československa (History of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Prague, 1931), p. 64 Google Scholar.

2 Fainsod, Merle, International Socialism and the World War (Cambridge, 1935), p.201,CrossRefGoogle Scholar n. 1.

3 Der I. Kongress der Kommunistischen Internationale, 1919(Hamburg, 1921), pp. 4-5.

4 Reimann, , op. cit., pp. 50–55 Google Scholar.

5 See Spurný, Griša, “Thirty Years from the Proclamation of the Marxist Left,” Tvorba, Nov. 23, 1949. See also F. Peroutka, Budováni státu (The Building of the State), (Prague, 1934. 1936), 11,839-41, 1816-18, 1825-27Google Scholar.

6 Der zweite Kongress der Kommunistischen Internationale. Protokoll. 1920 (Hamburg, 1921). The fundamental documents of this congress are available in English in Blueprint for World Conquest (Chicago, 1946).

7 See Borkenau, F., The Communist International (London, 1938),Chapter XGoogle Scholar.

8 The text of this message is given in Czech in Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, , 0 Rakousku a česke otázce (Concerning Austria and the Czech Question), Pavel Reimann and Gustav Breitenfeld, eds. (Prague, 1933), pp. 358-59Google Scholar.

9 The developments of the Czech and German left are based on the following references: Reimann, , Dějiny, pp. 70–77 Google Scholar; Peroutka, , op. cit., III, 1955 ff., 1978-81Google Scholar; Volf, Miloslav, Nae deělnicke hnuti v minulosti (Our Workers’ Movement in the Past), (Prague, 1947)” PP- 271-74;Google Scholar Dolejši, Vojtěch, Třicet let bojů za socialismus (Thirty Years of Struggle for Socialism), (Prague, 1951), pp. 11–30 Google Scholar.

10 For the above, see Reimann, , op. cit., pp. 78–84;Google Scholar Peroutka, , op. cit., III, 2091–2114;Google Scholar Borkenau, , op. cit., pp. 202-04Google Scholar.

11 Text in O Rakousku a české otázce, pp. 389-90.

12 See the later interpretation of these events as demonstrating that a bourgeois democracy is in effect a dictatorship o£ the bourgeoisie and as revealing the social-democratic leaders as allies of the ruling bourgeois class and enemies of the proletariat, in Reimann, , Dějiny, pp. 83–84 Google Scholar. Note also the speech of Clement Gottwald, on November 17, 1948, in which he contrasted the failure of the bourgeoisie in February, 1948 with their success in December, 1920, and explained this by the existence in 1948 of a strong Communist Party.

13 Jindřich Veselý, “Lubochňa—Cradle of the Communist Movement in Slovakia,” Tvorba, January 18, 1951.

14 Peroutka, , op. cit., IV, 2194, 2202–05Google Scholar. According to this source, a message from ECCI to the party in February, 1921, insisted that the party change its name.

15 A partial text of this speech is given in Peroutka, op. cit., IV, 2216-21. A somewhat different version was given in a partial text in Rudé právo, May 17, 1951. Cf. also Reimann, , Dájiny, pp. 90–91 Google Scholar.

16 Partial text in Peroutka, op. cit., IV, 2214-15.

17 Peroutka, , op. cit., IV, 2228–29Google Scholar.

18 For this and the following, see Protokoll des III. Kongresses der Kommunistischen Internationale, 1921 (1921), pp. 12, 198-207, 452-55, 543-49, 631-32, 935-36.

19 Peroutka, , op. cit., IV, 2232 Google Scholar. Lenin's remarks were presumably made in the commission, whose proceedings were not published.

20 This speech is referred to as having great significance for Czech developments by Václav Kopecký, 30 let KSČ (30 Years of the CPC), (Prague, 1951), pp. 28-29. It was not recorded in the published minutes of the plenary sessions and was presumably made in the closed commission on Czechoslovakia.

21 Text in Theses and Resolutions Adopted at the Third World Congress of the Communist International (June 22nd-July 12th, 1921), (New York, 1921), p. 73.

22 The text in op. cit., pp. 46-47. The reference to Kuls is no doubt meant to refer to Hula. It is not entirely clear whether the demand of Burian for the removal ofexplicit reference to certain persons was granted or not. Radek's readiness to make a concession is recorded in the Protokoll, p. 936. The English text of the final resolution contains the names of Smeral and others, as indicated above, but the German version eliminates all names. See Thesen und Resolutionen des III. Weltkongresses der Kommunistischen Internationale (Hamburg, 1921), pp. 42-43.

23 Theses and Resolutions (1921), p. 199.

24 See C. Hruška, “Concerning the Aid of Lenin, Stalin and the CPSU (b) in the Foundation and Bolshevization of Our Party,” Tvorba, July 26, 1951, and Rudé právo, October 30, 1951, and March 9, 1952. No full report of the proceedings of this conference was available. Later communist accounts are very thin in their treatment of this historic event. See, for instance, Reimann, , Dějiny, pp. 94–95 Google Scholar, and Kopecký, , op. cit., pp. 29–30 Google Scholar.

25 A full summary of this speech is given in Peroutka, op. cit., IV, 2234-35.

26 Peroutka, , op. cit., p. 2323 Google Scholar.

27 For instance, Reimann, , Dějiny, p. 95 Google Scholar.

28 Kopecký, , op. cit., pp. 19–20 Google Scholar.