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- Title
The Personal Structure of the Regional Committees of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in České Budějovice, Ostrava and Prague, 1945-1951.
- Authors
Hemza, Tomáš
- Abstract
The study had two basic goals. The first was to describe the basic determinants impacting the organizational structure of the party apparatus on a regional level. The second aim was to describe the personal structure of three regional party apparatuses based on the collective biography method. Until February 1948, regional party organizations struggled with a fundamental lack of financial resources and therefore could only afford to employ a limited number of political employees. From an organizational standpoint, the party apparatus wasn't divided into individual specialized departments. Rather, each employee was responsible for a certain political, organizational or economic segment. After February 1948, all three monitored party apparatus underwent a massive increase in the number of political employees. At the same time, the party apparatus was organized into specialized departments. The lack of funds continued to be a significant factor. Its main impacts were low salaries and resulting high rates of fluctuations. As far as personal structure is concerned, in the first three years after the war, a significant part of political personnel consisted of pre-war party members, who were also largely involved in the anti-Nazi resistance movement. These experienced party members almost exclusively held leadership positions in regional party organizations. After 1948, however, many of them left for other positions and their vacated posts were gradually staffed by younger employees, mostly post-war party members. Even despite the high personal fluctuation rate, after 1948 a new notable trend has emerged--new political employees were recruited from the ranks of young workers without political experience. After the inner party purge in 1951, these young political employees controlled regional party apparatuses not only by sheer numbers, but also by holding leadership positions. Therefore, we can conclude that by the end of 1951, the party apparatus within the two monitored regional committees of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was staffed mainly by young workers with not only negligible political experiences, but also no work experience concerning leadership positions. They also completely lacked any kind of higher education, which was instead substituted by a quick training in the basic Stalinist dogmas in any political party school.
- Subjects
CZECHOSLOVAKIAN politics &; government; POLITICAL parties; POLITICAL organizations; ORGANIZATIONAL structure; POLITICAL platforms
- Publication
Prague Economic & Social History Papers / Prager Wirtschafts - Und Sozialhistorische Mitteilungen, 2016, Vol 23, Issue 1, p54
- ISSN
1803-7518
- Publication type
Article