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Czechoslovakia The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
According to Marxist-Leninist theory, the communist party
represents the working class--the revolutionary
proletariat--whose interests it champions against those of the
capitalist bourgeoisie. The period between the fall of a
bourgeois state and the attainment of communism is a subject on
which Marx was reticent, believing that the state would "wither
away" once the workers took power. Lenin, facing a real
revolution and the possibility that the communist party might be
able to seize power, put theoretical subtleties to the side. He
suggested that the fall of the bourgeois state (a label of
questionable accuracy when applied to tsarist Russia) would be
followed by a transitional state characterized by socialism and
communist party rule--the "dictatorship of the proletariat." In
practice, the transition from this phase to true communism has
proved to be a good deal lengthier than Lenin anticipated. His
suggestion that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" should last
until 1923 in the Soviet Union serves as a general commentary on
the disparity between theory and practice. Once in power, the
communist party has behaved very much like other entrenched
bureaucracies, and its revolutionary mandate has been lost in the
tendency of those in power to wish to remain so.
The Communist Party of Czechoslovak (Komunisticka strana
Ceskoslovenska--KSC), which was founded in 1921, came to power in
1948
(see Communist Czechoslovakia
, ch. 1). Because of the KSC's
mandate to be the workers' party, questions about the social
backgound of party members took on a particular salience. The KSC
was often reticent with precise details about its members, and
the question of how many in the party actually belonged to the
revolutionary proletariat became a delicate one. Official
statements appeared to overstate the percentage of workers within
the party's ranks. Nonetheless, a number of trends were clear.
The proportion of workers in the KSC was at its highest
(approximately 60 percent of the total membership) after World
War II but before the party took power in 1948. After that time,
the percentage of workers in the party fell steadily to a low of
an estimated one-quarter of the membership in 1970. In the early
1970s, the official media decried the "grave imbalance," noting
that "the present class and social structure of the party
membership is not in conformity with the party's role as the
vanguard of the working class." In highly industrialized central
Bohemia, to cite one example, only one in every thirty-five
workers was a party member, while one in every five
administrators was. In 1976, after intensive efforts to recruit
workers, the number of workers rose to one-third of the KSC
membership, i.e., approximately its 1962 level. In the 1980s,
driven by the need for "intensive" economic development, the
party relaxed its rigid rule about young workers' priority in
admissions and allowed district and regional committees to be
flexible in their recruitment policy, as long as the overall
proportion of workers did not decrease.
The average age of party members has shown a comparable
trend. In the late 1960s, fewer than 30 percent of party members
were under thirty-five years of age, nearly 20 percent were over
sixty, and roughly half were forty-six or older. The quip in
1971, a half-century after the party's founding in
Czechoslovakia, was "After fifty years, a party of fifty-year-
olds." There was a determined effort to attract younger members
to the party in the middle to late 1970s; one strategy was to
recruit children of parents who were KSC members. The party sent
letters to the youngsters' schools and their parents' employers,
encouraging the children to join. By early 1980 approximately
one-third of KSC members were thirty-five years of age or
younger. In 1983 the average age of the "leading cadre" was still
estimated at fifty.
Whatever the social composition of the party, it effectively
functions as a ruling elite--a group not known for
self-abnegation. As an elite, it allows the talented and/or
politically agile significant mobility. Workers might have made
up a minority of the party's membership, but many members
(estimates vary from one-half to two-thirds) began their careers
as workers. Although they tend to exaggerate their humble
origins, many functionaries have clearly come from the working
class.
Several policies have increased the social mobility of party
members. Foremost was doubtless the process of nationalization,
started after World War II, when scores of politically active
workers assumed managerial-level positions. Periodic purges have
played a role as well, permitting the politically compliant to
replace those less so
(see Intelligentsia
, this ch.). The
numerous education programs offered by the KSC for its members
also represented a significant avenue of mobility, as did
policies of preferential admissions to secondary schools and
universities; these policies favored the children of workers and
agricultural cooperative members especially
(see Education
, this
ch.).
It is hardly surprising that the KSC membership has guarded
its perquisites. Aside from special shops, hotels, hospitals, and
better housing for members, KSC members stood a better chance of
obtaining visas for study or travel abroad (especially to the
West). Nonmembers realized that their possibilities for
advancement in the workplace were severely limited. For anyone in
a professional position, KSC membership was a sine qua non for
promotion. Part of the decline in workers as a proportion of
total membership resulted from the rapid increase in the number
of intelligentsia joining the party soon after the communists
took power. In the 1980s most economic managers, executives in
public administration, and university professors were KSC
members.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the official media have
denounced party members' lack of devotion to the pursuit of KSC
policies and goals. Complaints have ranged from members' refusal
to display flags from their apartment windows on festive
occasions to their failure to show up for party work brigades,
attend meetings, or pay dues; a significant minority of members
have tended to underreport their incomes (the basis for assessing
dues). In 1970, after a purge of approximately one-third of the
membership, an average of less than one-half the remaining
members attended meetings. Perhaps one-third of the members were
consistently recalcitrant in participating in KSC activities. In
1983 one primary party branch in the Prague-West district was so
unmoved by admonishments that it had to be disbanded and its
members dispersed among other organizations. In part, this was a
measure of disaffection with Czechoslovakia's thoroughgoing
subservience to Soviet hegemony, a Svejkian response to
the lack of political economic autonomy. It was also a reflection
of the purge's targets. Those expelled were often the
ideologically motivated, the ones for whom developing socialism
with a human face represented a significant goal; those who were
simply opportunistic survived the purges more easily.
Data as of August 1987
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