Czechoslovakia was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland became part of Nazi Germany, while the country lost further territories to Hungary and Poland. Between 1939 and 1945, the state ceased to exist, as Slovakia proclaimed its independence and Carpathian Ruthenia became part of Hungary, while the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was proclaimed in the remainder of the Czech Lands. In 1939, after the outbreak of World War II, former Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš formed a government-in-exile and sought recognition from the Allies.
A pioneer movement is an organization for children operated by a communist party. Typically children enter into the organization in elementary school and continue until adolescence. The adolescents then typically join the Young Communist League. Prior to the 1990s there was a wide cooperation between pioneer and similar movements of about 30 countries, coordinated by the international organization, International Committee of Children's and Adolescents' Movements, founded in 1958, with headquarters in Budapest, Hungary.
From the Communist coup d'état in February 1948 to the Velvet Revolution in 1989, Czechoslovakia was ruled by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. The country belonged to the Eastern Bloc and was a member of the Warsaw Pact and of Comecon. During the era of Communist Party rule, thousands of Czechoslovaks faced political persecution for various offences, such as trying to emigrate across the Iron Curtain.
Czechoslovakia, of all the East European countries, entered the postwar era with a relatively balanced social structure and an equitable distribution of resources. Despite some poverty, overall it was a country of relatively well-off workers, small-scale producers, farmers, and a substantial middle class. Nearly half the population was in the middle-income bracket. It was a balanced and relatively prosperous Czechoslovakia that carried nationalization and income redistribution further than any other East European country. By the mid-1960s, the complaint was that leveling had gone too far. Earning differentials between blue-collar and white-collar workers were lower than in any other country in Eastern Europe. Further, equitable income distribution was combined in the late 1970s with relative prosperity. Along with East Germany and Hungary, Czechoslovakia enjoyed one of the highest standards of living of any of the Warsaw Pact countries through the 1980s.
Youth organizations have always played an important role in political regimes.
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was a communist and Marxist–Leninist political party in Czechoslovakia that existed between 1921 and 1992. It was a member of the Comintern. Between 1929 and 1953, it was led by Klement Gottwald. The KSČ was the sole governing party in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic though it was a leading party along with the Slovak branch and four other legally permitted non-communist parties. After its election victory in 1946, it seized power in the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état and established a one-party state allied with the Soviet Union. Nationalization of virtually all private enterprises followed, and a command economy was implemented.
The National Front, also known as the National Front of Czechs and Slovaks was a political coalition created in 1943 serving as united front of political parties for liberation of Czechoslovakia, after 1948 organized solely by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. It was the vehicle for control of all political and social activity by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ).
Although political control of Communist Czechoslovakia was largely monopolized by the authoritarian Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), the party technically shared political power with other parties of the National Front. The leader of the KSČ was de facto the most powerful person in the country during this period. Czechoslovakia's foreign policy was openly influenced by the foreign policy of the Soviet Union.
The mass media in Communist Czechoslovakia was controlled by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). Private ownership of any publication or agency of the mass media was generally forbidden, although churches and other organizations published small periodicals and newspapers. Even with this informational monopoly in the hands of organizations under KSČ control, all publications were reviewed by the government's Office for Press and Information. Censorship was lifted for three months during the 1968 Prague Spring but afterward was reimposed under the terms of the 1966 Press Law. The law states that the Czechoslovak press is to provide complete information, but it must also advance the interests of socialist society and promote the people's socialist awareness of the policy of the communist party as the leading force in society and state.
With the collapse of the Austria-Hungary at the end of World War I, the independent country of Czechoslovakia was formed as a result of the critical intervention of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, among others.
Gustáv Husák was a Czechoslovak politician who served as the long-time First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia from 1969 to 1987 and the President of Czechoslovakia from 1975 to 1989.
The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, known from 1948 to 1960 as the Czechoslovak Republic, Fourth Czechoslovak Republic, or simply Czechoslovakia, was the Czechoslovak state from 1948 until 1989, when the country was under communist rule, and was regarded as a satellite state in the Soviet sphere of interest.
International Students' Day is an international observance of the student community, held annually on 17 November. Originally commemorating the Czech universities which were stormed by Nazis in 1939 and the students who were subsequently killed and sent to concentration camps, it is now marked by a number of universities, sometimes on a day other than 17 November, as a nonpolitical celebration of the multiculturalism of their international students.
The Polish minority in the Czech Republic is a Polish national minority living mainly in the Trans-Olza region of western Cieszyn Silesia. The Polish community is the only national minority in the Czech Republic that is linked to a specific geographical area. Trans-Olza is located in the north-eastern part of the country. It comprises Karviná District and the eastern part of Frýdek-Místek District. Many Poles living in other regions of the Czech Republic have roots in Trans-Olza as well.
Czechoslovak resistance to the German occupation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia during World War II began after the occupation of the rest of Czechoslovakia and the formation of the protectorate on 15 March 1939. German policy deterred acts of resistance and annihilated organizations of resistance. In the early days of the war, the Czech population participated in boycotts of public transport and large-scale demonstrations. Later on, armed communist partisan groups participated in sabotage and skirmishes with German police forces. The most well-known act of resistance was the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. Resistance culminated in the so-called Prague uprising of May 1945; with Allied armies approaching, about 30,000 Czechs seized weapons. Four days of bloody street fighting ensued before the Soviet Red Army entered the nearly liberated city.
The International Association of Red Sports and Gymnastics Associations, commonly known as Red Sport International (RSI) or Sportintern was a Comintern-supported international sports organization established in July 1921. The RSI was established in an effort to form a rival organization to already existing "bourgeois" and social democratic international sporting groups. The RSI was part of a physical culture movement in Soviet Russia linked to the physical training of young people prior to their enlistment in the military. The RSI held 3 summer games and 1 winter games called "Spartakiad" in competition with the Olympic games of the International Olympic Committee before being dissolved in 1937.
The National Security Corps was the national police in Czechoslovakia from 1945 to 1991.
Pionýr, officially Pioneer Organization of the Socialist Youth Union, was a youth Marxist-Leninist organization in communist Czechoslovakia that was a subdivision of the Socialist Youth Union. Although the organisation proclaimed to be voluntary, every child was expected to join from the age of six.
The All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, usually known as Komsomol, was a political youth organization in the Soviet Union. It is sometimes described as the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), although it was officially independent and referred to as "the helper and the reserve of the CPSU".
Josef Skála is a Czech communist politician, journalist, and university lecturer. He served as vice-chairman of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia from 2009 to 2010 and from 2016 to 2018. Since 2018, he has been a signatory of the left-wing Restart platform. Since October 2021, he is one of the leaders of the Kudy z krize platform. He was also a prospective candidate for the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia in the 2023 Czech presidential election, but withdrew as he failed to gather enough signatures.
