During the reign of Lenin’s successor, Stalin, the leader had already become infallible. His views were indisputable. Anyone who dared act against them was branded as a deviationist. Even those who only appeared to deviate from the official dogma were not only expelled from the party but were also accused of antistate activity. Thus, political life, the exchange of opinions, disappeared from the only existing political party. The party was transformed into a mere privileged echelon whose task was to ensure that the orders of the dictator were carried out.
The First World War aroused a revolutionary mood not only in the Russian empire but also in most European countries. When revolutionary fervor cooled, Communist parties remained in these countries, and the Russian Bolsheviks saw them as allies. To ensure that these allies were truly reliable and would defend the interests of “the first country ruled by workers and farmers” (as the Bolsheviks craftily and deceitfully characterized their dictatorship), it was necessary to impose the same principles the Bolsheviks had employed in governing their own party. They founded the Communist International, which then arrogated to itself the right to intervene in the politics of the individual Communist parties anywhere in the world. The Soviet government — that is, the Soviet dictator — was supposed to stand atop the entire movement.
The history of the Czech Social Democrats was different from that of their Russian counterparts. From its beginnings, theirs was a legal party and had no reason to accept Bolshevik methods. Czech Communists who split off from the Social Democrats in 1921 were not denied a part in the political life of the new republic, and their leader, Bohumír Šmeral, believed that he could push socialism through parliament. Jacques Rupnik in his History of the Ruling Communist Party of Czechoslovakia cites the aphoristic assertion by the Austrian Social Democrat Otto Bauer: “I know two good Social Democratic Parties: the best is of course the Austrian Party and immediately after it is the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.”
The Communist International could not accept the moderation of a subordinate party. Following their conspiratorial tradition, Soviet Bolsheviks prepared a putsch of Czechoslovak Communists. It had one goaclass="underline" to exchange the current leadership for one that would accept Bolshevik principles. In 1929 the coup was realized, and Klement Gottwald, a man with neither education nor scruples, became head of the party. He revered Stalin and shared his hatred of democracy. Most Czech Communists departed the party in protest, but this did not bother the new leaders. They possessed the mind-set of a sect: Only they knew what was correct, and their goal was either to convince the others of their truth or to destroy them. There were far fewer Russian Bolsheviks when the party took power. Power — absolute, uncontrollable power — is what the Czech Communists had to acquire if they wanted to realize their plans, plans of which most citizens had no understanding. Twenty years later, Gottwald and his henchmen did indeed acquire this power.
They saw the victory of the allies as the victory of their Communist truth. With Leninesque deviousness, they exploited the fact that the Red Army had occupied most of the republic. They presented themselves as defenders of the interests of Czechoslovak citizens; they fashioned themselves as the true spokespersons not only for the workers but also the farmers, intelligentsia, tradesmen, and small-business owners. They promised to defend their interests, call to account traitors and the greatest exploiters, and quickly introduce prosperity throughout the land. They pushed through (with the assistance of three naively acquiescent or mistakenly calculating democratic parties) the nationalization of large enterprises, mines, and banks, and prohibited most prewar political parties, which they saw as threats dangerous to healthier social relations. In reality, they sought absolute power and attempted to infiltrate every institution of the still democratic state. They occupied the most important ministries and prepared their armed militia. It would be needed when the moment came to strike the final blow to democracy.
After the war, the Communist Party became a heterogeneous group in which the old adherents of the Communist vision were joined by both those who yielded to Communist demagoguery and those who rightly suspected where the rule of society was headed and, along with it, the advantages that come with loyalty. After the February coup, thousands more joined the party: former Social Democrats who were forced to unite with the victorious Communists, and also opportunists or just frightened citizens who were presented with an application form and made to understand that if they did not sign, things would go badly for them. Finally, there were the young, who knew little about the rest of the world and democracy. As early as the 1950s, the party was merely pretending to be just another political party. Although it appeared that members of the higher political organs were elected, in reality they were merely approved, since the candidates came from precisely these organs. The general secretary ruled the party without restraint. He then chose a small body of members to make up the presidium. The only task of these so-called elected officials was to carry out the orders of the head of the party (and as happens in a dictatorship, of the state). In his turn, the head of the party was obliged to conform to the orders of the Soviet dictator in all fundamental decisions.
The power the Czech Communists acquired was only seemingly absolute. It was primarily derived from and subordinate to a foreign power. This was ensured by Soviet advisers, the secret police, and party organs that had been painstakingly screened. Only discipline, subordination, and expressions of enthusiasm or hatred, depending on what the party needed at the time, was required of the party members. It was unthinkable that a member raise objections to party policies. If you refused to sign a petition, or even dared express disagreement with forced collectivization or political processes, you would appear as an enemy and be dealt with accordingly. On the other hand, if you painstakingly advocated everything considered proper policy, you could expect the appropriate rewards. The party leadership decided everything: which era was worthy of following, which should fall to the wayside; which thoughts were necessary to disseminate and which to forbid. Who was a hero, who a coward, who was an inventor, who a scientist, who a cheat, and who an ally, and, most important, who was an enemy, a subversive, a saboteur, a revisionist, a cosmopolitan, a Zionist, a Trotskyist. Nothing announced by the party could be doubted unless the party doubted it. The party decorated its general secretary with the highest honors and a year later had him hanged. The party had a monstrous monument built to Stalin, and then the party had it destroyed. Whoever refused to curse that which a year before he had to approve became an enemy. It was a period of perverted values. The uneducated were promoted to ministers, party secretaries to attorneys; tailors and lathe operators became army commanders, while the experienced pilots who participated in the Battle of Britain, army generals, and members of the democratic resistance were sent to concentration camps or even the gallows.
In the name of the party, the leadership seized not only most of the wealth acquired over generations but also — and this was worse — all spiritual values. It claimed it had replaced mistaken religious views with scientifically recognized truth, and that a dog-eat-dog society would be replaced with a society in which comradely relations were the norm. In fact, the opposite happened. The party destroyed all traditional relationships. It introduced the cadre questionnaire and interviews in which those who wanted to continue in their work were supposed to disown their relatives. It misappropriated history; it erased great personages and replaced them with people whose only merit was membership in the party. It misappropriated peace, since it labeled its confederation of dictatorships a camp of peace, which only with the greatest efforts was keeping the imperialists from starting a new world war. It misappropriated the idea of democracy because it called its dictatorship the highest form of democracy.