In the Name of the Fight against "Dictators", "Conspirators", and "Traitors" : The purge among members of the the Regional Committees of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in Ostrava and České Budějovice in 1951
Abstract
The topic of the study are the intra-party purges which took place in the regional organizations of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in Ostrava and České Budějovice in 1951. The author presents both as an integral part of Stalinist campaigns and political trials that were taking place in countries of the Communist bloc at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s.
He shows how the argumentation rhetoric was escalating, starting with criticism of "dictator-like behavior" of party officials and ending with their indictment as "conspirators" and "traitors" within the party. The author describes the purges and changes of persons holding top party positions in both regions, examining whether the purges were a result of pressures from the centre or of local conflicts, and whether a generation factor was reflected in them.
He has found out that their dynamism was determined both by activities of the State Security and Commisssion of Party Control, which were trying to identify enemies in the ranks of the Communist party, and by activities of regional functionaries who did not hesitate to participate in the purges, promoting their own power interests behind the façade of ideological criticism. However, the proportion of these two factors was different in each region; unlike in České Budějovice, the first stage of the purges in Ostrava was under direct control of members of central bodies of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.
The study also concludes that the two intra-party purges showed signs of a generation conflict. The previous regional party committees consisted mainly of pre-war party members many of whom had been involved in anti-Nazi resistance.
However, the older crew lost the battle for power, and during 1951 was replaced in the leadership of the regional party organizations in northern Moravia and southern Bohemia by the youngest generation of apparatchiks who had joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia only after 1945.