On October 4, 1946, Klement Gottwald, leader of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, and at that time Prime Minister of the Czechoslovak Republic, declared that the experience of Czechoslovakia had shown “what had been foreseen theoretically by Marxist classics, namely, that there exists another path to socialism than by way of a dictatorship of the proletariat and the soviet state system. Going by this path are Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Poland, and also Czechoslovakia.” So ran the report of his speech in the collection of his articles and speeches, Ten Years, published in 1947. Only two years later, the same speech was included in a new collection of Gottwald's works, with, however, the phrase “a dictatorship of the proletariat” deleted, and the country, Yugoslavia, omitted. This editorial modification of an authoritative statement puts into sharp relief the change of view which had occurred in the interval in the interpretation placed on the people's democracy by Czechoslovak Communists.