The Communist savaging of Havel’s uncle — and the subsequent harassment of the rest of the Havel family56 — foreshadowed the fate of many other Czechs. Following the military defeat of Nazism, they found themselves once again flung back into the laboratories of power. They experienced something new: a semi-constitutional seizure of state power, backed by street demonstrations, secret subversion and threats of armed force, the combined effect of which was to abolish the old constitutional and state structures to produce a one-party state that governed its subjects’ lives for over forty years. It was later to be called the coup de Prague — in honour both of its geographic locus and some similarities between this type of seizure of political power and that of its predecessors.
Talk of coups d’état echoes from the depths of early modern European political history. The term was first used to baptize a reality that had hitherto been without a name. It first gained currency in works like Gabriel Naudé’s Considérations sur les coups d’état (1632). Here the term coup d’état was used to describe an ‘extraordinary’ measure taken by the sovereign for the sake of the public good. The idea that an organized group — for ‘reasons of state’ — could legitimately plot to use the state to protect itself by wielding blows against its opponents survived well into the nineteenth century. The sixth edition of the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française (1823) tells us that a coup is ‘an extraordinary and always violent measure to which a government resorts when it deems the security of the state to be in jeopardy’. The definition is interesting because, under the impact of the terror of the French Revolution and the strengthening pressures for democratic power-sharing, the term coup d’état begins to accentuate its violent character. It comes to signify intrigue, manipulation, illegality, illegitimacy, bloodshed. In so doing, the term casts doubt on the ‘public-spirited’ motives of those who seize power. The suspicion grows that their talk of the public good is maquillage, that justifying power-grabbing with reference to raison d’état is an alibi, that power games of this sort are undemocratic. The coup de Prague undoubtedly helped to tarnish the reputation of calculated and violent seizures of state power. It did so for a reason that was understood by eleven-year-old Havel and helped dramatically to complicate his teenage years. Simply put, the coup de Prague had totalitarian effects. This is how it happened:
According to the Košice programme proclaimed by the new Czechoslovak government on 22 March 1945, the restored republic was to be a state of Czechs and Slovaks based on the principles of the rule of law and power-sharing. It was supposed to be governed by a coalition of parties called the National Front, which, unlike its counterpart in Yugoslavia, was not supposed to function as a single monolithic organization. Yet from the moment of its birth, the new republic contained a central contradiction. Its protection of formal liberties to share state power extended opportunities to foxes to hunt down chickens. The Communists, who were familiar with the theory of the ‘contradictions’ of’bourgeois democracy’ and the need to ‘smash’ it, took full advantage of the opportunity provided them. Manipulating with great skill the Front structures, they craftily worked to transform it into a one-party system. Their struggle to control the Ministry of Agriculture, which controlled the distribution of land seized from ‘collaborators’, was a vital case in point. So too was their control of the Ministry of Interior, which allowed them to command the police and to penetrate, from the top downwards, the National Security Corps (SNB). The Party also manoeuvred a prominent Communist intellectual and biographer of T. G. Masaryk, Professor Zdeněk Nejedlý, into the post of Minister of Education. And the Communists gained control over the Ministry of Information, which was responsible for Prague Radio and the Union of Czechoslovak Youth (CSM).
So the Communist Party started out as a strong force in the fledgling republic. But at the first parliamentary elections, held in May 1946, its hand was massively strengthened within the governing coalition of independent parties. Uncontaminated by the betrayal at Munich, proudly claiming solidarity with the glorious Red Army that had liberated the country from Nazi rule, the Communist Party registered big electoral successes. The results were especially striking, not only because they were obtained without widespread rigging — both local and foreign observers confirmed that the elections were freely conducted by secret ballot — but also because of the size of the Communist vote.57Support for the Communists was especially strong among Czech workers, and it also received hearty support from the peasantry, who were among the beneficiaries of land confiscated during the previous twelve months by the Communist-controlled Ministry of Agriculture from the German and (in Slovakia) Hungarian minorities and other ‘collaborators’ immediately after the defeat of the Nazis. The scale of the expropriation was considerable: in the space of just over a year, nearly 2¼ million Germans alone were expelled from the Czech lands, enabling nearly the same number of Czechs to move in. Little wonder that they voted for the Communist Party in droves. Most were formerly peasants, landless labourers, and smallholders, and many of them, thanks to Communist Ministry patronage, acquired well-functioning German farms with excellent equipment and livestock.
The expulsions were officially declared ended by October 1946. Inevitably, they resulted in confusion, hardship and violence against the German-speaking Czechoslovak citizens. Official responsibility for some measure of the whole bloody process — and the political advantages it gave to the pro-Soviet Left — is traceable to the Communist-controlled Ministry of the Interior, which together with the Ministry of Agriculture began to function as a state within a state. The Communist Party naturally attracted, like rats to rubbish, fellow-travelling opportunists and hangers-on from all classes, who saw that the Communists could help them climb ladders of opportunity. That expectation translated into votes in the May 1946 parliamentary elections. It also fed the widespread presumption that the Communists, backed by the great Soviet Union, were the up-and-coming political party.
It would have been possible for the Communist Party to seize power in the spring of 1945, had it so wished. But in politics the cultivated art of waiting is often critically important, and in accordance with that rule the Party, under the leadership of the Moscow-trained Klement Gottwald, cunningly chose to wait. This had the immediate benefit of maximizing his reputation as a ‘patriotic and moderate’ leftist, thus ensuring that at some later point in time the Communists could seize everything, and claim to be doing so legitimately. So they waited for their moment, which came in the summer of 1947, just before Václav Havel’s eleventh birthday. On 7 July, an invitation was accepted by the Czechoslovak government to attend a preliminary conference in Paris on the Marshall Plan. The next day, in Moscow, Stalin told a Czechoslovak government delegation led by Gottwald, the Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk, and Minister of Justice Prokop Drtina, a friend of Václav Havel’s father, that they must decline the invitation. Stalin’s ultimatum posed the question of whether the country ‘considered the Pact of Friendship and Mutual Aid between our countries valid, or preferred to go to Paris’. Gottwald immediately telephoned Prague. The government reluctantly accepted Stalin’s point. Soon after, on 10 July, it issued a declaration that sealed the geopolitical fate of the country for the next four decades: ‘Czechoslovak participation would be accepted as a deed aimed against friendship with the Soviet Union and the other Slav allies.’58
The rejection of the Marshall Plan signalled the beginning of a permanent political crisis within the People’s Front government. The Communists tried all manner of political trickery, beginning with a sensational attempt, by Gustáv Husák and others in November 1947 in Slovakia, to implicate prominent members of the (majority) non-Communist Slovak Democrat Party in an alleged ‘conspiracy’ linking fascist elements and Slovak émigrés, especially the former quisling Foreign Minister, Ďurčanský. The Prague Communist Premier Klement Gottwald backed the Slovak conspirators, and together they tried to take advantage of the ensuing rumpus about suspected fascist takeovers by calling an emergency meeting of the National Front, to which Gottwald invited representatives of the Communist-controlled trade unions and the Czech Farmers’ Association. Several of the governing parties objected strongly to the proposed cynical favouring of their ‘class friends’. And loud voices were raised against the unconstitutional attempt of the Communists to transform the governing National Front structures into an instrument of the Communist Party’s will by inviting non-party-political organizations, who had no business being there.
The tactic of producing political confusion and deadlock through concocted conspiracies of imagined ‘class enemies’ was a sobering lesson to sections of the Czechoslovak political class. During the same month of November, at its congress held in Brno, the Social Democrats voted by a majority to replace their chairman, Zdeněk Fierlinger, who several months earlier had struck a secret co-operation deal with the Communists, with the more independently minded Bohumil Laušman, who still believed in the need to keep the National Front intact. Friction between the Communists and others worsened. The Communists played every trick in the handbook of those plotting a coup d’état. Irresponsible demagogy: the Communists publicly proposed a ‘tax on millionaires’, supposedly to pay compensation to peasants hard-hit by the preceding summer’s severe drought, but whose key purpose in fact was to create a climate of fear among those loyal to the republic and arouse bullish resentment among the potentially disloyal. The Communists tried to shout down opponents of the proposed tax, who pointed out that the revenues to be generated would nowhere near compensate the peasants, and that the tax was a ‘political’ contrivance. Sabotage of markets: the Communist-controlled Ministry of Trade unfairly accused some leading Prague shops of hoarding textiles (when in fact it had earlier forbidden them to sell their stocks until the lists of new prices — subsequently never delivered — were issued). Amidst a storm of protest, the Minister then proceeded to accuse the owners of sabotage and to close their shops. Sowing seeds of incivility: within the cabinet, permanent aggravation surrounded the agitation for a new land reform led by the Communist Minister of Agriculture, Duriš. He was repeatedly accused of using his department unashamedly to favour Communist Party clients. He responded by calling a mass meeting of delegates of the Communist-controlled Farmers’ Union, to be held in Prague on 29 February 1948. Agitation from the streets: a tactic used to frustrate the pay increase for all state-sector workers proposed by the Social Democratic Minister of Food, Majer. The Communist trade-union leader Antonín Zápotocký, who had plans to purge and award certain civil servants, summoned a congress in Prague of delegates of factory councils, to be held in Prague on 22 February. It was as if he knew by heart Machiavelli’s stricture that whenever a party of men residing in a city call in outside support, something is wrong in its constitution.
The timing of the two mass meetings summoned revealed the Communists’ planned desire to consign others to the dustbin of history. But the decisive crisis was unplanned. It was generated by a string of rows about the precious republican principle of public control and monitoring of police powers. With new elections due in the early summer of 1948, there were many calls publicly to ensure that the police did not tamper with basic civil liberties, such as freedom of public assembly and freedom of the press and radio. Nosek, the Communist Minister of the Interior, ignored such ‘bourgeois’ advice and merrily carried on stacking the police force with his own men. He even did battle with the Ministry of Justice, whose investigations showed that the Olomouc branch of the Communist Party was responsible for dispatching letter bombs to the Minister of Justice himself, Prokop Drtina, as well as to the National Socialist vice-Premier Zenkl, and to the Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk. The Communist press replied with heavy abuse. Nosek, backed by the Communist premier Gottwald, meanwhile instructed the police to delay or refuse action. Class justice had to be done, and seen to be done.
On 21 February 1948, after repeated warnings to Nosek, some part of the cabinet — comprising twelve ministers from the Slovak Democrat and Czechoslovak People’s and National Socialist Parties — resigned in protest. Here was the moment that proved that miscalculation is ultimately the key player in the drama of a coup d’état. In moments of power struggle, miscalculation reveals weakness. Weakness slakes the thirst of those wanting power. It provides them with enough energy to make the last climb to the summits of power. So climb the summits the Communists did — vigorously, and without procrastination. Their opponents were ill-prepared and short-sighted. They committed the initial mistake of missing the chance of enforcing a constitutional solution to the crisis. By failing to ensure that the Social Democrats resigned along with them, the outgoing ministers made the fatal error of voting themselves into a minority. They also failed to win over ailing President Beneš to their side. Since liberation, Beneš had enjoyed immense popularity as a patriotic defender of the Czechs. Despite poor health — he had suffered a major stroke the previous summer, and was still physically tired and seriously ill — he tried to defuse the mounting crisis by acting even-handedly. The resigning ministers thought that they had had an understanding with him. They supposed that he would refuse to accept their resignations, and would then either enforce a more favourably balanced cabinet, or call for elections earlier than the scheduled May date. Beneš indeed warned against the ‘split of the nation into two quarrelling halves’. He insisted that the new government must be based on the political parties of the National Front, and led by their recognised leaders. But the Communists bombastically refused discussions with the old leaders. At the same time, they insisted that the working class ‘with absolute unanimity and indignation condemns the policy of these parties’. Beneš hesitated, especially because he was anxious to avoid a quarrel with the Soviet Union, which (like many across the political spectrum) he considered the principal defender of Czechoslovakia against the German phoenix. The Western powers stood by in silence.
The Communists knew well that on the eve of a putsch fine words butter no parsnips. They proceeded to arm squads of factory workers and to parade them under Communist leadership through the streets of Prague. The tactic went unchallenged, and indeed was helped along by General Svoboda, the pro-Communist Minister of Defence, who ordered his troops to remain strictly neutral. That was the signal for Communist gangs to enter the offices of the ministries and party headquarters of those ministers who had just resigned. In one extraordinary scene, the headquarters of the Social Democratic Party were occupied by Communist toughs so that the left-wing minority led by Zdeněk Fierlinger could seize control of the party machine. Throughout the country, like attractively red-coloured poisonous mushrooms, Communist-dominated ‘action committees’ sprang up to replace the all-party people’s committees. Their job was to prepare for the final push to power, aided and abetted by the Communist Minister of the Interior Nosek, who warned public officials everywhere to co-operate with the action committees. Gottwald helped out, on 22 February, when he addressed the long-planned congress of factory councils. The mood of the congress quickly grew militant. Hell-bent on destroying the old political class, it passed resolutions condemning the ministers who had resigned; insisted that they should never again be allowed to hold office; and demanded a programme of nationalization that was far more sweeping than that of 1945.
Three days later, under immense pressure from all directions, Beneš caved in. The moment of the coup d’état came on the morning of 25 February 1948, when Beneš agreed to the formation of a new government dominated by the Communists.59 The trade-union leader Zápotocký became vice-Premier, the pro-Communist Social Democrats were well represented, while for appearance’s sake the other parties each had a ‘representative’ chosen for them by the Communists. Among them was the charming and good-natured democrat Jan Masaryk, who agreed to stay on as Foreign Minister. He knew that Beneš was a broken man, and that the President’s attempt to act as a bridge between East and West had failed. Yet Masaryk accepted the post avowedly to attempt to blunt Communist ruthlessness, and especially to help citizens to escape the country into exile.60 Despite the political tragedy that had now befallen the country, he tried to keep his dignity. He also retained his razor-sharp sense of irony, manifested for instance in his private remarks about how he didn’t mind working with Communists in the Foreign Ministry, simply because they expedited business considerably, and certainly saved on telephone calls to and from Moscow.
Masaryk was the last surviving male member of the family of the ‘President-Liberator’, and he had a considerable following within and without Czechoslovakia, especially in the Anglo-Saxon countries. None of this mattered. According to the once-standard story, a fortnight after accepting his post Masaryk fell deeply into depression, especially after visiting his father’s grave and (after seeing Beneš for the last time on 9 March) realizing that the President had no plans and had already lost the fight to control the future. So Masaryk had committed suicide by jumping from a window of the Foreign Ministry building, the Černín Palais. According to others — the relevant documents, including the Masaryk archives, were carted off to Moscow, and are still incomplete — the official story doesn’t add up. Masaryk after all left behind no last testament. Those who knew him well also suspected, as did the Soviets and some local Communists, that he was preparing to flee the country. This would have been so embarrassing to the new government that Masaryk’s plans had to be thwarted and an alternative plan devised, at any cost. Thus — according to the alternative view — the new Communist authorities decided upon making it look as if the last icon of democracy was after all a coward who had finally conceded with his own suicide that the age of bourgeois democracy was over. So during a moment when he was unattended, they arranged for his arrest within his apartment in the top floor of the Foreign Ministry building. His murderers then suffocated him without leaving marks on his body, and then shoved the corpse out of a small bathroom window into the courtyard below. There he lay, sharing the fate of parliamentary democracy, a harbinger of the coming purges, the new Soviet-style constitution, and President Gottwald, standing proudly before the rising sun of Czechoslovak socialism.