SOU OBÉ ĚJINY - Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV - Akademie věd ČR

522 Soudobé dějiny XVI / 2–3
the weighing of guilt, the problematization of the categories of culprit and victim,
or reflections on one’s own responsibility.
The Pasts That Divide: The Czechoslovak
Social Democratic Party, 1989–92
Tomáš Zahradníček
In the mid-1990s the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party (Československá strana
sociálnědemokratická), next to the Civic Democratic Party, became the strongest
political force in the country. This article is concerned with the question of why it was
unable after the Changes of November and December 1989 to influence the Czech
public and become involved in the political debates about the Communist past. The
author considers who actually were the first actors in Social Democratic politics, and
stresses the role played by the most important initial differences between them in
their attitudes towards tradition and certain personal lives before November 1989.
According to these differences, the author divides the Social Democrats into three
main groups: the ‘restitution group’, the ‘continuity group’, and the ‘new group’.
The numerically largest group, the ‘restitution group’ (led by Slavomír Klaban,
born in 1922), attempted to restore the Social Democratic Party after the fortyyear
break in its activity. In doing so, this group based itself on the bitter memory
of the pro-Communist faction’s having taken control of the party in 1948, and on
the repressive measures that followed. The ‘continuity group’, comprising exile
Social Democrats (led by Karel Hrubý, born 1923, and Jiří Loewy, 1930–2004) and
‘independent Socialists’ who had signed Charter 77 (led by Rudolf Battěk, born
1924, and Jaroslav Mezník, 1928–2008) had the experience of many years of active
resistance to the Communist régime. Apart from them, new activists, who previously
had practically nothing in common with the party, joined the Social Democrats after
the fall of the ‘ancien régime’. Amongst them were former Communists, some of
whom were active in the Obroda reform club. These fundamental starting points
ran up against the actual position of the Social Democrats after the Changes of late
1989. This position was determined by several external factors: the Civic Forum did
not wish to see political parties develop, the public quickly and for the long-term
abandoned the slogans of Socialism (even if reformed), and the Communist Party
was able to survive in the new circumstances and sought to represent not just its
traditional members, but all left-wing voters. This situation required political action
from the Social Democrats in the space between the Civic Forum and the Communist
Party of Bohemia and Moravia, for which the nascent party was ill prepared. The first
elected leadership under the former exile Social Democrat functionary Jiří Horák
(1924–2003) had a weak position and many other figures of authority, from diverse
political milieux, struggled for preeminence, seeking to use the Social Democratic
name to assert their own views. But in fact any topic that was related to the past
divided them. That changed after the election of Miloš Zeman (born 1944) as head of