Politics of the past: the use and abuse of history - Socialists ...

security. In the spring of 1938, the ČSSD organised a great
demonstration in support of a May mobilisation that was held to
mark the sixtieth anniversary of the party’s founding. Altogether
some 400,000 people took part in this event in Prague to demonstrate
their support for democracy and peace.
1938 was a difficult year for Czechoslovakia. As a result of the political
events in Munich in autumn 1938, the public’s antipathy towards
parliamentary parties was increasing. A non-parliamentary
government had been installed and nationalist political parties
joined together to create two blocs – the Party of National Unity
and the National Labour Party. It was an attempt to replace the system
that had failed in Munich with an utterly different system based
on two large parties along the lines of Great Britain and the United
States.
After the war, the ČSSD was re-established as one of four postwar
parties but the communists’ populist rhetoric was, at that time,
enjoying success and the Czechoslovakian Communist Party
quickly became the greatest political power in the country. The
democratic left, represented by the ČSSD, was too great a threat
to the communists and they had to destroy it. The ranks of the
ČSSD were infiltrated by communists and a very strong pro-communist
wing was created within the party which then helped the
communists take power in 1948. As early as the first week after
the coup in February 1948, several social democratic leaders went
into exile and in May of that year established the ČSSD’s Central
Executive Committee in London. Several months after the communist
putsch, the Social Democratic party had, against the wishes
of a clear majority of its members, been absorbed by the KSČ.
The communist regime in Czechoslovakia, especially before Stalin’s
death, inflicted immense material and moral damage upon our society,
the consequences of which are still evident today, fifty years
later. At the same time, this turbulent and tragic period was midwife
to the intellectual rebirth of many people, without which the events
of the Prague Spring would not have taken place. Many people
gradually became aware of the monstrous nature of communism
and their original enthusiasm gave way to opposition and scepticism.
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s 1956 congress,
at which Khrushchev heavily criticised Stalin, helped many to
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