Abstract
After the establishment of Communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe in the second half of the 1940s, the ruling parties were forced to adopt Soviet-type institutional models. In Czechoslovakia, party-state relations, the principles of Leninist 'democratic centralism' and the relative powers of competing organs and individuals remained bones of contention for many years.
While in the course of the 1950s the system had a distinct tendency to centralisation, the liberalisation of the 1960s pluralised the structure considerably. This process culminated in the reforms of the Prague Spring, which engendered a certain decomposition of the Party monolith.
My chapter starts with the restoration of the leading role of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) after the Warsaw Pact military invasion in August 1968. The main aim is to explore the preconditions of stability and change in the 1970s and 1980s.
Firstly, I describe the personnel as well as the institutional changes that took place inside the KSČ after 1968-69, emphasising domestic as well as international (i.e. Soviet) influences.
Secondly, the powers, functioning and agenda of leading political bodies (notably the Presidium, the Secretariat and the departments of the Central Committee) will be analysed in detail. Thirdly, I discuss cadre policy and the role of the nomenklatura system.
Finally, the disintegration of the Party leadership after 1985 will be examined and I conclude that Gorbachev's reform programme revealed hidden factionalism throughout the KSČ which in turn signified the end of the Husák era.