ABOUT COMMUNISM IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC

In February 1948, just a few years after escaping the horrors of Nazi occupation, Czechoslovakia fell under communist rule.

Czech communists seized power in a coup d’état backed by the Soviets. The country was to endure totalitarian rule until the bloodless Velvet Revolution of 1989.

The brutal 1950s

The first full decade of communist rule was perhaps the most brutal. Directed by Joseph Stalin himself, Czech communists ‘purged’ the nation of ‘opposition’ figures and held a series of show trials that led to over 180 people being executed. The condemned had no chance of a fair trial and were forced to read confessions and false testimonies.

Even heroes of World War II were not safe as the Party feared anyone with wartime links with Western powers.

The Soviet Invasion

After the brutal fifties, the 1960s saw a period of relative ‘liberalism’. Led by the nation’s First Secretary, Alexander Dubcek, Czechoslovakia embarked on a program of ‘socialism with a human face’. Fearful of the direction the country was headed, the USSR sent over 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops into the country in August 1968 to crush what had become known as the ‘Prague Spring’.

This led to another period of harsh government and a clamp down on freedoms and privacy. This period of ‘normalisation’ (returning to how things were before the Prague Spring), was to last until the 1980s. No opposition or criticism of the regime was allowed and there were fearful repercussions for anyone who dared try to oppose the system.

The Velvet Revolution

In 1989, just a week after the Berlin Wall fell, the Velvet Revolution (so named for the lack of bloodshed that accompanied it) freed Czechoslovakia from communism. Dissident and playwright Vaclav Havel, who had been imprisoned many times by the communists, was elected president.

In 1993, Czechoslovakia broke up into two new democratic countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.