Propaganda in political strategy of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party during the first decade of the interwar Czechoslovak Republic

MILAN OLEJNÍK
Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences SAS
Institute of Social Sciences, Košice

Abstract: Vital interest of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPC) in struggle to achieve political power was to make its program attractive to a broad masses of Czechoslovak population. The Marx-Leninism, which became an ideological base of CPC, presented itself as the only relevant ideology capable of establishing a “socially just” society. Revolution as a road of the Communist regime to impose its rule was presented as unavoidable, because it was in harmony with laws of social progress formulated by Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx and Vladimir I. Lenin. The essential role in spreading ideology of the Marx–Leninism, according to leadership of CPC had propaganda. Despite strictly formulated principles of the Marx-Leninist ideology, communist propaganda during the existence of Czechoslovak Republic morphed in dependence on changing political development. Vicissitudes of form and content of communist propaganda in monitored period are traced in submitted paper. An emphasis is given to, till now, unpublished archival documents, deposited in Slovak and Czech archives. Invaluable source offering insight to concrete workings of communist propaganda is a contemporary press, primarily periodicals Pravda Chudoby and Pravda, which represented ideological views of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. A relevant source of information are social democratic Robotnícke noviny, which monitored closely development of its main rival CPC. A literature dealing with various aspects with history of Czechoslovak Communist Party was used where it was suitable to complement events by a more general description.

Keywords: Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, interwar period, propaganda, journalism.