Changes of Interpretation on the Establishment of Czechoslovakia in Czech Marxist-Leninist Thought

Abstract

The text deals with Czech Marxist-Leninist thinking in relation to the establishment of Czechoslovakia in 1918. While in the interwar Czechoslovak culture the formation of Czechoslovakia was heroized, depicted in literary works (poems, dramas, etc.), after 1948 it was rather concealed. Marxist-Leninist historians Oldřich Říha, Jaroslav Charvát and others (on the contrary) explained that the emergence of Czechoslovakia was a consequence of the Russian October Revolution of 1917, and thus the emergence itself was in its own way irrelevant. According to them, the establishment of a new state was stealing the bourgeoisie’s victory for the working class (replacing socialist ideas with nationalism). According to this interpretation Czechoslovakia in the year 1945 (liberation by the Soviet Army) and the year 1948 (Czechoslovak coup d´état) was finally following the “right“ historical path opened by the Russian Revolution of 1917.