Works councils in Czechoslovakia, 1945–47

INVESTIGATIONS of the immediate post-World War II period in Czechoslovakia frequently focus on the political struggle between the Czechoslovak Communist Party (KSC) and its opponents to the right of the political spectrum. The period was also, however, marked by an intensive campaign of the KSC to gain overall control of all political institutions of the working class; and in this effort the KSC was in competition with political tendencies of the left. This struggle ended in 1948 with the Social Democratic Party merging with the KSC. Its beginnings, however, date back to the immediate postwar weeks and months, when the KSC strove to control the network of works councils that emerged at the time. While observers and students of the period have pointed out that the KSC acquired control over the works councils,- a detailed examination of the mechanism through which this was achieved has been lacking. Such an examination is of an interest limited not only to the historian of that particular period in history. The model of the councils was frequently invoked during the reform movement of 1968 which attempted to introduce democracy within the factory walls as well. One might legitimately wonder what was it about the immediate postwar experience that the reformers of 1968 thought applicable 20 years later. But there is yet more. The story of the works councils of I945-47 is a chapter in the process through which a strong Leninist Communist Party prepared conditions for an eventual takeover, after which it jettisoned the outward trappings of democratic procedure. Studying the mechanisms employed by the KSC to gain control of the workers of postwar Czechoslovakia might invite meaningful comparisons with, for example, the mechanism used by the Communist Party to try and gain control over the workers in post-dictatorship Portugal. Interesting though it would be, this comparison is, nevertheless, beyond the scope of this article

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