Slovakia 1945-1948 Slovakia 1968-1989






Slovakia within Czechoslovakia, 1948-1968



This chapter will only deal with events, developments affecting Slovakia; for a description of the history of Czechoslovakia click here.

The Integration of Slovakia in the Czechoslovak People's Republic . The resignation of non-communist ministers in February 1948 left a Communist rump cabinet, which was filled up with new Communist members by prime minister Klement Gottwald. The resignation of President Edvard Benes on June 2nd marks the beginning of absolute Communist control; the Czechoslovak National Assembly on May 9th had approved a Communist constitution. According to it, Slovakia enjoyed limited political autonomy.

Slovakia Within the Czechoslovak People's Democracy . The Communist parties of Czechoslovakia and of Slovakia were merged on September 29th 1948. Show trials dealt with non-Communist politicians deemed enemies of the state, from May 15th 1948 on with leaders of the Slovak Democratic Party (the winners of the 1946 elections), from March 21st 1950 on with representatives of religious orders, from July 16th 1950 on with members of the anti-Communist White Legion, from January 1951 on with Catholic as well as Orthodox bishops, from November 1952 on with Communist leaders accused of an anti-state conspiracy.
The Slovak National Council continued to exist, with limited authorities.
Despite the official party line of Communism treating the Czech and Slovak nations as equals, measures were taken establishing central control; in April 1948 the Czech and Slovak Radio Broadcasting Services were merged.
The Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox churches, from 1948 onward, found the new Communist administration showing a hostile attitude toward them. This may explain a slightly higher percentage of blank ballots handed in in Slovakia, compared to Czechia, in the elections of May 30th 1948 (where the voters only could approve, or fail to approve, the list established by the Communist Party).
In February 1951 the Central Committee criticized a number of Communist Party members of "Slovak bourgeois nationalism"; Gustav Husak and others were expelled from the party. Former members of the HSLS were transferred from desk jobs into factory halls; this measure affected several thousand persons. In some cases, families labelled as bourgeois were forced to move from urban centres to the countryside.
Labour camps were dissolved in 1954; Destalinization affected Czechoslovakia from 1956 onward; the show trials ended, the intensitivity of state suppression of the churches declined.
In 1960 the name of the state as changed from Czechoslovak Republic (CSR) to Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (CSSR); a new constitution was adopted, further reducing Slovak autonomy.
By the 1960es the Czechoslovak Communist leadership found herself less under pressure than when Stalin was still alive. By comparison with other countries in the socialist camp, Czechoslovakia did comparatively well, but it could not mtch the standard of living of her capitalist neighbors, the FRG and Austria. Until late into the 1960es, the guideline of the Central Committee seemed to be - no experiments. It was challenged by Czechoslovak economists, writers and students.

The Slovak Economy . In October 1948, the First Five Year Plan (for 1949-1953) was adopted; it emphasized the development of the country's metal and machinery industry and the industrialization of Slovakia, as well as the gradual collectivization of the farmland. In 1949, Czechoslovakia joined COMECON. On May 30th 1953 a currency reform was implemented. Further Five Year Plans (1956-1960, 1961-1965) followed, continuing the emphasis on heavy industries. Czechoslovakia became one of the more advanced industrial nations within COMECON. In 1958 COMECON decided to construct the Druzhba network of pipelines which would supply Soviet oil and gas to her satellites in Eastern Central Europe.
In the 1960es, the emphasis shifted from political matters taken precedence over economic matters to economic matters taking precedence over political matters, as long as the constitution and the supremacy of the Communist Party was not challenged. In 1966 the New Economic Model was launched, which limited state planning, permitted enterprises to take their own economic decisions, aimed at enterprises becoming independent of state subsidies. In 1967, Slovak reform Communist Alexander Dubcek rose to prominence, demanding a democratization of society; appointed Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in January 1968, his program of 'Socialism with a Human Face' was to bring about the (brief) Spring of Prague. Czechoslovak economists propagated a socialist market economy; travel restrictions were lifted. The country briefly experienced a euphoria.

Slovak Culture . In 1948 the Slovak Radio was merged with its Czech pendant to form the Czechoslovak Radio; in 1949 the federations of Czech and of Slovak writers were merged. Later in 1949 the Slovak Philharmonic was established. In 1954 the Matica Slovenska was dissolved. In 1953/1956 television transmissions began, from transmitters in Bratislava/Kosice.






EXTERNAL
LINKS 		From Democracy to Communism, From Gottwald to Dubcek, Chapter 11 of the History of Slovakia by Prof. Jozef Komornik, Univ. Bratislava
History, from Eastern Slovakia Genealogy
Jana Balaova, Slovaks and the Road to National Self-Determination, in : Tibor Pichler, Jana Gaparkova (ed.), Language, Values and the Slovak Nation, posted by CRVP
Article Slovakia, Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Czechoslovakia 1948-1968, Klement Gottwald, Alexander Dubcek, Slovak National Council, Prague Spring, Socialism with a Human Face, Communist Party of Slovakia, Economic History of Communist Czechoslovakia, from Wikipedia
Ygael Gluckstein, The Economic Plans of the Satellites, in : Ygael Gluckstein, Stalin's Satellites in Europe. Part One : The Economy of the Russian Satelites
DOCUMENTS
REFERENCE Julius Bartl et al., Slovak History, Chronology & Lexicon, Wauconda, Illinois : Bolchazy-Carducci 2002
Peter A. Toma, The Communist Dictatorship, pp.177-214 in : Peter A. Toma, Dusan Kovac, Slovakia from Samo to Dzurinda, Stanford : Hoover Institution Press 2001 [G]


This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted on April 17th 2006

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