COMMUNIST REGIME: WHY DIDN’T CZECHOSLOVAKIA RESIST? Heda Margolius Kovály’s memoir, “Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968” recounts her experience of the Holocaust and the Communist Regime in Czechoslovakia, during the 20th century. In 1945, after the holocaust and after World War II, Czechoslovakia was in a period of distress, which made people seek for communism as a solution. Communism, a totalitarian regime, was a form of government in which nobody was allowed to own any private property and the government controlled all economic activity. This government structure was not only corrupt, but it also caused more economic crisis in Czechoslovakia. Despite the rough situation that Czechoslovakia was going through, none of its …show more content…
People who spoke against the structure of the government were imprisoned or executed. There was also the imprisonment of innocent people, that were accused to be committing treason against the Government. One of the innocent, executed victims was Heda Margolius Kovály’s former husband and Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade, Rudolph Margolius. Rudolph Margolius’ imprisonment directly affected Heda and her child, Ivan because they were living in rough conditions because the government intervened with her jobs and would try to make her move out of her home. Years after the trials, in 1963, the government released a document stating “that all the people who had been convicted at the trials were innocent” and that “their confessions had been extorted illegally” for the own benefit of the Communist Party (Margolius-Kovály 167). The conviction of those that were innocent added to the dissatisfaction of the people regarding the communist regime, which is how the movement of Prague Spring initiated. Prague Spring was a movement led by former Slovak leader, Alexander Dubček, in which he advocated for less censorship and more freedom in the Czechoslovakian Communist regime (Cole and Symes 764). Although the people of Czechoslovakia were deprived of their natural rights and were subjected to impoverished conditions prior to Prague Spring, they did not resist …show more content…
During the Communist Party, if people were to resist and speak up about any grievance that they had, they would be incarcerated and possibly executed. In her memoir, Kovály stated “By 1951, the atmosphere in Prague was almost as bad as it had been during the war. No one dared to speak out loud, and hardly a week passed without news of someone’s arrest” (101). This statement further explains how constantly were people arrested, and how people were so fearful that they were afraid to express themselves about anything publicly. In order to stay out of danger, “People no longer aspired toward things but away from them. All they wanted was to avoid trouble. They tried not to be seen anywhere, not to talk to anyone, not to attract any attention” (Margolius-Kovály 126). This statement also shows how people were living their lives at this point and how the inability to freely express themselves impaired the way that they interacted with others. The amount of fear that people had during the communist regime in Czechoslovakia discouraged them from resisting, especially since they could potentially be affected -- or in other words arrested and
In the mid-1900’s, communism was a big issue worldwide. Communism is a political theory created by Karl Marx in which everyone essentially gets an equal share in society, including the fact that houses are publicly owned by the government. The controversial issue to this concept is that some jobs make money than others, so people of a higher class didn’t feel like they were getting their fair share. The case and trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg has to do with communism because the couple was accused of committing espionage against the United States. Showcased in the article “Case Against Rosenberg Falls Apart,” published by Achieve3000, Americans were afraid of communism, and the acts by the government were very impactful to society.
Many people were hanged, even though they were innocent. Many years later during the WWII era, there was a lot of speculation about communists and their impact in America. This era was known as the McCarthyism era, because, Sen. McCarthy was the leading America into an anti-communist state. In one case in particular was of a U.S. Air Force Lieutenant, Milo Radulovich, who was released from the Air Force due to the fact that his father, read a newspaper which was from Serbia, because he has a Serbian background, the Air Force believed his was pro-communism, since the newspaper favored communism. The Air Force also believed Milo was pro-communist because, his sister peacefully protested outside a hotel which didn’t allow a communist member to stay at.
Totalitarian rulers often control the thoughts and beliefs of people as well. The citizens of the community are forbidden to question or explore things that are unknown to other citizens. By doing this, the government emphasizes that they know everything and have ...
Following the beginning of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union would start what would become two of the worst genocides in world history. These totalitarian governments would “welcome” people all across Europe into a new domain. A domain in which they would learn, in the utmost tragic manner, the astonishing capabilities that mankind possesses. Nazis and Soviets gradually acquired the ability to wipe millions of people from the face of the Earth. Throughout the war they would continue to kill millions of people, from both their home country and Europe. This was an effort to rid the Earth of people seen as unfit to live in their ideal society. These atrocities often went unacknowledged and forgotten by the rest of the world, leaving little hope for those who suffered. Yet optimism was not completely dead in the hearts of the few and the strong. Reading Man is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag by Janusz Bardach and Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi help one capture this vivid sense of resistance toward the brutality of the German concentration and Soviet work camps. Both Bardach and Levi provide a commendable account of their long nightmarish experience including the impact it had on their lives and the lives of others. The willingness to survive was what drove these two men to achieve their goals and prevent their oppressors from achieving theirs. Even after surviving the camps, their mission continued on in hopes of spreading their story and preventing any future occurrence of such tragic events. “To have endurance to survive what left millions dead and millions more shattered in spirit is heroic enough. To gather the strength from that experience for a life devoted to caring for oth...
This book was written in the 1940’s as a warning to society against the danger of allowing a totalitarianism society and even though it is fictional in nature, many of the dangers warned against are still real today. Throughout the world, many live with extreme governmental interference in their daily lives, unable to freely speak their mind without fear of reprisal. Governments use modern technology to invade the privacy of their citizens. There were many aspects to the book that left this reader feeling just a little bit uneasy.
Ray, Rob, and John S, eds. “1956: The Hungarian Revolution.” Libcom. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Mar. 2014. .
In the years leading up to the Prague Spring, Antonín Novotný governed Czechoslovakia. He openly supported Stalinism, and under his power, the people of Czechoslovakia suffered from fierce government regulations, censorship and poor leadership decisions. Although he led the process of de-Stalinization (since Stalin’s death in 1953), the pace of change was extremely slow and thus the people called for more reforms. In May of 1966 the Czechoslovakians began to complain that the Soviets were exploiting them, this was the first spark that eventually lead to the flame of his overthrow. Furthermore, Czechoslovakia was an industrialized nation and the Soviet’s model of economy did not suit them, in fact it hurt Czechoslovakians, and lead to a decline in their economy. In fact, the conditions for the working class were a...
They viewed these reforms as the collapse of communism, so the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev warned Dubcek to put an end to the democratic reforms. Brezhnev also pressured the leadership to regain control of the press and to end the Prague Spring. Dubcek resisted these threats, and the Soviet Union responded with violence. On August 20, 1968, 600,000 Warsaw Pact troops invaded, and student protestors were no match. The Warsaw Pact Nations that invaded included Russia, Hungary, Bulgaria, East Germany, and Poland. The troops took control of all media stations, leaving the Czechoslovakians without much freedom of speech. The secret police persecuted the populace, causing the public to fear the idea of openly supporting the protestors. Demonstrations continued to occur, despite the fact that hundreds of demonstrators were being shot by Warsaw Pact troops. Dubcek and other leaders were taken to Moscow and detained, while Gustav Husak - a “realist” willing to comply with the Soviets - took his seat in
While this may have in part been true, overall this was a false portrayal of what life under Socialism was really like. In order to secure obedience, the Soviet Union “brainwashed” the younger generation and lied to the entire population about how life in the West was. Peter Sis, a man who grew up in Czechoslovakia during the Soviet Union, writes about this in a children’s book. He writes, “As long as he could remember, he had loved to draw. At first he drew shapes. Then he drew people. After drawing whatever he wanted to at home, he drew what he was told to at school. He drew tanks. He drew wars. He didn’t question what he was being told” (Sis). In this excerpt, Sis writes about his love for drawing as a child, and how as he grew up, the state took away his freedom of choice by telling him what to draw. Later on in his book he writes, “Slowly he started to question. He painted what he wanted to – in secret” (Sis). This shows that despite the image of conformity and obedience, people like Peter Sis went against the rules of the state in order to do what he loved and to have a sense of uniqueness. This need for uniqueness is established yet again in another piece of writing. It focuses on the underground black market that was rampant in the Soviet Union during Socialism. This black market sold Western goods and allowed customers to express their
Following the death of Josef Stalin in 1953, the harsh policies he implemented in not only the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but also its many satellite nations began to break down. There was a movement to distance all of the socialist nations from Stalin?s sadistic rule. In the Peoples? Republic of Hungary, there was much disillusionment with this Stalinist absolutism (Felkay 50). This disillusionment with the Soviet ideal of socialism lead the people of the fledgeling socialist state of Hungary to rise up in revolt, but ill-preparedness and the strength of the Soviet Red Army put down the insurrection within several days.
In Under a Cruel Star, Heda Margolious Kovaly details the attractiveness and terror of Communism brought to Czechoslovakia following WWII. Kovaly’s accounts of how communism impacted Czechoslovakia are fascinating because they are accounts of a woman who was skeptical, but also seemed hopeful for communism’s success. Kovaly was not entirely pro-communism, nor was she entirely anti-communism during the Party’s takeover. By telling her accounts of being trapped in the Lodz Ghetto and the torture she faced in Auschwitz, Kovaly displays her terror experienced with a fascist regime and her need for change. Kovaly said that the people of Czechoslovakia welcomed communism because it provided them with the chance to make up for the passivity they had let occur during the German occupation.
Hungary experienced not only Soviet occupation, but also political oppression and economic decline. Many were critical of Hungary’s problems due to Soviet control, especially political oppression. Hungary developed into a communist state under the severe, dictatorial rule of Mátyás Rákosi. During Rákosi’s control, the Security Police began a series of eliminations, starting with...
Millarand, James and Wolchik, Sharon, eds. The Social Legacy of Communism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Most narratives out of the Holocaust from the Nazis point of view are stories of soldiers or citizens who were forced to partake in the mass killings of the Jewish citizens. Theses people claim to have had no choice and potentially feared for their own lives if they did not follow orders. Neighbors, The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, by Jan T. Gross, shows a different account of people through their free will and motivations to kill their fellow Jewish Neighbors. Through Gross’s research, he discovers a complex account of a mass murder of roughly 1,600 Jews living in the town of Jedwabne Poland in 1941. What is captivating about this particular event was these Jews were murdered by friends, coworkers, and neighbors who lived in the same town of Jedwabne. Gross attempts to explain what motivated these neighbors to murder their fellow citizens of Jedwabne and how it was possible for them to move on with their lives like it had never happened.
The general perspective of the Soviet Union was that the country was a dictatorship, specifically, an oppressive, brutal, top-down autocracy that guided all aspects of life of its people. From grocery stores having set quantities of goods, only purchasable by ration card, to strict, set times of work and off-duty hours, to censored press, The Soviet Union was indeed a dictatorial state. However, the people of the Soviet Union did not simply fall into line with the established rules of society- They had diaries, they wrote down their opinions about the government or their job, they wrote detailed memoirs of their life within the USSR. The people of the Soviet Union had some freedom, and it was even codified in the Constitution of 1936. Yet, scholars and most people in general still widely accept the notion that the Soviet Union was a totalitarian dictatorship. The question then arises: Why did the Soviet people have freedom, otherwise known as sociological ‘agency,’ to denounce others or write down their views about society, if the country was perhaps one of the most totalitarian and dictatorial countries to exist in human history? By analyzing Totalitarianism as scholars perceive it, as well as the Soviet system, along with examples from the people of the USSR, one will be able to realize that totalitarianism set the rules for society within the Soviet Union and provided its people with a distribution of power, which was used by those that understood the system and could act within the framework of the system.