Czechoslovakia under communism: how the one-party state worked

Many Czechs over fifty can tell you where they queued for oranges, and which cousin found a Western record on the black market. Younger Czechs know the period through their parents' stories, through films that turned it into comedy and through the museums that now document it. For a newcomer it is worth understanding, because the experience still shapes attitudes to the state, privacy, politics and property.

This is an outline of how the system worked. Personal testimony fills in the rest, and is easier to find than you might expect.

How they took power

In 1945 Czechoslovakia was liberated, and the Communist Party was a large and popular force. In the 1946 elections, the last relatively free ones for decades, the Communists won the largest share of the vote in the Czech lands. The party's leader, Klement Gottwald, became prime minister. On paper the country was still a multi-party democracy, governed by a coalition called the National Front.

In February 1948 a government crisis, provoked when non-Communist ministers resigned over police appointments, gave the party its opening. Armed workers' militias appeared in the streets, and President Edvard Beneš accepted the resignations on 25 February and approved a new government dominated by the Communists. The party called it Victorious February. Most Czechs now call it a coup. Within months a new constitution was in place, Beneš resigned, and Gottwald became president.

The system

The state was run by the party, with the economy planned centrally. Industry, banks and most land were nationalised, farmers were pressed into collective farms, and private businesses were closed. The press was controlled, independent organisations were dissolved and the secret police, the StB (State Security), monitored the population. Foreign policy followed Moscow's lead, and Czechoslovakia joined the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet-led economic bloc.

The border with the West was fenced and watched from towers, and travel abroad needed permission. For most people, foreign travel meant the Eastern bloc, with holidays in Bulgaria or on the Black Sea. Those who tried to cross illegally risked their lives.

Terror and show trials

The early 1950s were the harshest years. Opponents were arrested, church leaders imprisoned, and many people were sent to labour camps, including uranium mines near Jáchymov. Scripted show trials targeted prominent figures, among them the non-Communist politician Milada Horáková, executed on 27 June 1950, and the Communist leader Rudolf Slánský, who was executed with others after a trial in 1952. Some of the trials had antisemitic overtones. The terror eased after the deaths of Stalin and Gottwald in 1953, but full rehabilitation of the victims came much later.

The thaw and its end

In the 1960s the economy slowed, the intelligentsia grew restless and the party itself began reforms. The attempt to build "socialism with a human face" is the subject of the Prague Spring and 1968 explained. It ended with invasion, and the leadership that replaced the reformers pursued what it called normalisation.

Normalisation, in the 1970s and 1980s, was less violent than the 1950s but more pervasive. Many party members were expelled, and many people lost their professions. A scientist could end up a stoker and a journalist a window cleaner. Everyone else was offered a simple deal: stay out of politics and you keep a job, a flat and a modest standard of living. Gustáv Husák led the party from 1969 to 1987 and held the presidency from 1975 to 1989.

Daily life

Shortages were built into the system. Basic food was cheap, but choice was narrow, and oranges, coffee or foreign jeans appeared in shops only now and then. Shops called Tuzex sold imported goods for special vouchers. Housing was allocated by the state and dominated by prefabricated blocks, the paneláky that still define the outskirts of Czech cities. Rents were low and state-controlled, with long waiting lists.

Many people retreated into private life. The weekend cottage, the chata, became a national institution, with city families spending summers repairing and gardening in the country. Beer halls and football matches filled leisure time, and every few years the regime staged mass gymnastic displays called Spartakiads, which replaced the older Sokol rallies. Television offered fairy tales, serials and comedies, many still shown at Christmas. The compromise was real, and most people simply tried to live decently within it.

Informing was common. The StB recruited informants in workplaces, apartment blocks and churches, and after 1989 the files were opened to scrutiny, which caused painful disclosures. A law on lustration (vetting), adopted in 1991, barred former StB officers and informers, and party officials above a certain rank, from some public posts. The debate about the file archives and their reliability continues.

Dissent and Charter 77

A minority refused the compromise. In January 1977 a manifesto called Charter 77 criticised the government for failing to respect the human rights it had signed up to in the Helsinki process. Its first spokespeople included the playwright Václav Havel, the philosopher Jan Patočka, and Jiří Hájek, a former foreign minister. The signatories were harassed, fired from their jobs, interrogated or imprisoned. Patočka died after police interrogation in March 1977. Dissidents also produced underground publications, called samizdat, and held home seminars.

Religion was monitored and restricted, and churches faced state control over clergy appointments. Music was also political. Underground rock bands were harassed, and the trial of the Plastic People of the Universe in 1976 was an important spur to Charter 77.

The end

By the late 1980s, change in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev, stagnation at home and the fall of other communist regimes in 1989 combined to weaken the party. The student march of 17 November 1989 became the trigger for the Velvet Revolution, described in the Velvet Revolution explained. The party gave up its monopoly within weeks.

How it is remembered

Public memory is divided. Many remember security and low prices alongside the lack of freedom, and nostalgia is real among some older Czechs. Survivors of the political prisons, and families who lost property or careers, see it very differently. Czech law, in an act of 1993, describes the communist regime as illegitimate and criminal.

To go further, visit one of the museums of the period in Prague, or read what the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes publishes. Check opening hours with the operators.

Frequently asked questions

When did communist rule begin and end?

It began with the February 1948 seizure of power and ended with the Velvet Revolution in November 1989.

What was the StB?

The State Security, the communist secret police, which monitored the population and recruited informants.

What was normalisation?

The policy after the 1968 invasion of restoring party control, purging reformers and demanding political passivity in return for a stable private life.

What was Charter 77?

A 1977 human rights manifesto signed by dissidents including Václav Havel, which became the best-known act of civil resistance in the 1970s and 1980s.