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Too Ideal to Be a Parliament: The Representative Assemblies in Socialist Czechoslovakia, 1948–1989
Abstract
Gjuričová offers a provocative perspective by bringing the neglected topic of parliaments in Communist dictatorships in discussion. Using the case of Czechoslovakia between 1948 and 1989, she demonstrates that the institution of elected legislatures had formally never ceased to exist; yet in practice, the electoral and legislative process remained under full control of the Communist Party. The chapter provides a summary of the Communist doctrine on parliaments and confronts it with the practical aims and functioning of the Socialist ‘representative assemblies’ in different periods, such as in the Stalinist 1950s, during the Prague Spring reforms in 1968, in the perestroika period, and during the 1989 revolution and the democratic reforms. It concludes that Socialist legislatures seemed almost ideal, in fact ‘too ideal to be real parliaments’.
... The cardinal Slovak demand and the specific trait of the federation was 'a complex system of voting on important issues, which introduced the "ban on majorisation", a minority veto that protected Slovak MPs from being outvoted by their more numerous Czech counterparts'. 35 However, Moscow forbade the planned federalisation of the KSC, because it went against two Leninist axioms regarding party organisation: unification without 'national federalism' and the principle of 'democratic centralism', whereby the decrees of the Central Committee are binding for the whole party. 36 This decision significantly weakened the relevance of the Czechoslovak federation. ...
This chapter deals with the specific features of Slovak development in the 1970s and 1980s. The normalisation regime had the same objectives in both the Czech lands and Slovakia, but the tactics on how to reach them differed. The post-1968 communist leadership utilised the differences between the Slovak and Czech situation to its advantage. Political persecution was less strict and more selective in Slovakia and ‘capitulation to normalisation’ was much more widespread and faster than in the Czech lands. The legitimacy of the Slovak ‘normalisation regime’ was not dependent solely on the material well-being of the population. Slovak national communists created a viable narrative, which promoted ‘real socialism’ as the fulfilment of the decades-long emancipatory efforts of the Slovak nation. Slovak opposition was weaker, less politicised and lacked a common platform and could not provide a political alternative to the existing regime. The results of the different approaches towards Czech and Slovak society during normalisation significantly influenced post-1989 developments in Slovakia, as well as the dissolution of Czechoslovakia.
... Ultimately, though, they tend to include the topics of the changing membership structure, internal Party life and the perception of the Party by general public in the analysis (Kocian et al. 2020). It is striking that until very recently, the literature on the institutional framework of the communist party and the communist government had been scarce (Kaška 2014;Hemza 2019) or, as in the case of communist parliaments, practically inexistent (Felcman 2015;Gjuričová 2019). ...
Čas kot sila pomemben in pogosto odločujoč dejavnik je še posebej prisoten v političnem življenju, v zelo konkretni obliki pa njegov pomen izstopa v parlamentu. V pričujoči razpravi bomo skušali razumeti dojemanje časa v moderni dobi na eni strani in politične razsežnosti ter njihove vplive na drugi strani. Osrednja teza, ki ji bomo sledili, je sledeča: V dobi moderne je čas postajal pomembna dobrina, z njim je bilo treba ravnati racionalno in zato je bilo treba delovati učinkovito. Njegovo dojemanje je sovpadalo s potrebo po njegovem uravnavanju, prilagajanju prepotrebni hitrosti. Izhajajoč iz tega postulata, se je spreminjalo dojemanje politike in političnega. Razprava metodološko temelji na analizi preteklih manipulacij s časom (v 19. in 20. stoletju), na kvantitativni analizi obsega dela zadnjih parlamentarnih desetletij in zlasti na analizi dojemanja časa med poslanci, ki so ga izražali v svojih govorih (zadnje s pomočjo možnosti, ki jih danes raziskovalcu nudita korpusna lingvistika in besedilni korpus siParl 2.0).
This chapter provides an overview of dependent constitution-making under one-party regimes in Albania, Bulgaria, China, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, North Korea, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia during the first decade after the Second World War. Employing and further developing the concept of the informal Soviet empire, it discusses the structural adjustments in law and governance in the Soviet dependencies. The chapter outlines the development of the concepts of “people's republic” and “people's democracy” and discusses the process of adoption and the authorship of the constitutions. It then compares their texts with attention to sovereignty and political subjectivity, supreme state institutions, and the mentions of the Soviet Union, socialism, and ruling parties. Finally, it surveys the role of nonconstitutional institutions in political practices and their reflection in propaganda. The process of constitution-making followed the imperial logic of hierarchical yet heterogeneous governance, with multiple vernacular and Soviet actors partaking in drafting and adopting the constitutions. The texts ascribed sovereignty and political subjectivity to the people, the toilers, classes, nationalities, and regions, often in different combinations. Most of the constitutions established a parliamentary body as the supreme institution, disregarding separation of powers, and introduced a standing body to perform the supreme functions, including legislation, between parliamentary sessions, which became a key element in the legal adjustment. Some constitutions mentioned socialism, the Soviet Union, and the ruling parties. The standardization of governance in the informal Soviet empire manifested itself in the constitutional documents only partially. Propaganda and archival documents revealed the prominence of nonconstitutional institutions, parties and leaders, as well the involvement of Soviet representatives in state-building. Domestic parties and leaders in the Soviet dependencies were also presented as subordinate to their Soviet counterparts in propaganda.
Over the course of the twentieth century, a broad array of parties as organizations of a new type took over state functions and replaced state institutions on the territories of the former Ottoman, Qing, Russian, and Habsburg Empires. In the context of roughly simultaneous imperial and postimperial transformations, organizations such as the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP) in the Ottoman Empire (one-party regime since 1913), the Anfu Club in China (parliamentary majority since 1918), and the Bolshevik Party in Russia (in control of parts of the former empire since 1918), not only took over government power but merged with government itself. Disillusioned with the outcomes of previous constitutional and parliamentary reforms, these parties justified their takeovers with slogans and programs of controlled or supervised economic and social development. Inheriting the previous imperial diversities, they furthermore took over the role of mediators between the various social and ethnic groups inhabiting the respective territories. In this respect, the parties appropriated some of the functions which dynastic and then constitutional and parliamentary regimes had ostensibly failed to perform. In a significant counter-example, in spite of prominent aspirations, no one-party regime emerged in Japan, for there the constitutional monarchy had survived the empire's transformation to a major industrialized imperialist power. One-party regimes thrived on both sides of the Cold War and in some of the non-aligned states. Whereas several state socialist one-party regimes collapsed in 1989–1991, some of the communist parties have continued to rule, and new parties managed to monopolize political power in different Eurasian contexts.
This chapter provides an overview of dependent constitution-making under one-party regimes in Albania, Bulgaria, China, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, North Korea, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia during the first decade after the Second World War. Employing and further developing the concept of the informal Soviet empire, it discusses the structural adjustments in law and governance in the Soviet dependencies. The chapter outlines the development of the concepts of “people’s republic” and “people’s democracy” and discusses the process of adoption and the authorship of the constitutions. It then compares their texts with attention to sovereignty and political subjectivity, supreme state institutions, and the mentions of the Soviet Union, socialism, and ruling parties. Finally, it surveys the role of nonconstitutional institutions in political practices and their reflection in propaganda. The process of constitution-making followed the imperial logic of hierarchical yet heterogeneous governance, with multiple vernacular and Soviet actors partaking in drafting and adopting the constitutions. The texts ascribed sovereignty and political subjectivity to the people, the toilers, classes, nationalities, and regions, often in different combinations. Most of the constitutions established a parliamentary body as the supreme institution, disregarding separation of powers, and introduced a standing body to perform the supreme functions, including legislation, between parliamentary sessions, which became a key element in the legal adjustment. Some constitutions mentioned socialism, the Soviet Union, and the ruling parties. The standardization of governance in the informal Soviet empire manifested itself in the constitutional documents only partially. Propaganda and archival documents revealed the prominence of nonconstitutional institutions, parties and leaders, as well the involvement of Soviet representatives in state-building. Domestic parties and leaders in the Soviet dependencies were also presented as subordinate to their Soviet counterparts in propaganda.
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