Press and Information Politics of the Central Committee organs of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia Between 1968-1989
Abstract
The chapter looks at press politics through the lens of key individual, institutional, collective, and actors - primarily the Presidium, Secretariat, and Politburo of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, which sought to manage the media directly from its central office. It maps out the nature of the decision-making processes and management tools they were working with in detail.
In 1968 the dynamics of press politics was closely linked with a qualitative change in the leading role of the party: to wit, consolidating the media was the first priority in preparations to facilitate the painful "reestablishment of order" after the Warsaw Pact troops' invasion. The key tool in this process was cadre policy.
Here, press politics is not only conceived as a means for the ruling party to indoctrinate society and suppress opposition voices, but also as a metapolitics - part of the activity of creating norms, and a mechanism through which the ruling party could bring its resolutions, which were often only of a declarative character, to life. The second part of the chapter discusses how the system of sharing information changed after 1985 under the influence of perestroika.