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> as a teenager, he watched as the Soviet-backed communist party secured its coup d’état in 1948; Good read describing as things really were, but this part is

> as a teenager, he watched as the Soviet-backed communist party secured its coup d’état in 1948; Good read describing as things really were, but this part is not fully correct - communists got to the power legally by winning the elections, in 1946 in Czech part of Czechoslovakia and in 1948 in Slovakia. People were naive, uninformed and generally saw soviets mainly as liberators from nazi occupation (which was true). Few knew what stalinism brings, without exceptions and those few either were quiet or didn't matter enough. As soon as they got full power, democracy was effectively disbanded, political opponents either executed or jailed, and things like 'famous' uranium mines in Jachymov started operating like execution camps for undesired (something like soviet siberian gulags with added benefit of handling radioactive material without any protection). Ironically all this uranium was given to Soviet union for free AFAIK, and it was worth billions even back then (I guess some sort of ransom for very active 'protection' from evil capitalism).

inglor_cz 6y ago
Czechoslovak-born here. This is not completely correct either. Communists won the election in 1946 and formed a coalition government in which they were the strongest force, but not completely dominant. There were other "bourgeoise" ministers. Unfortunately, Communists controlled the ministry of the interior and cleansed the police of "reactionary elements", thus cementing their control over the civilian law enforcement. Not over the army yet, though. There were regular elections scheduled for May 1948 and opinion polls were indicating that Communist share of vote is actually going to diminish. So they preempted them by staging a coup supported by People's Militias (a completely illegal armed militia of the party) on February 25, 1948. After that, the democracy was toast and it was full speed towards Stalinism, show trials etc. Some of the army generals wanted to suppress the coup militarily, but the aging President (Beneš) did not allow that. IDK if it would have been better or worse. Civil wars tend to leave a very toxic legacy.
- vkou 6y ago
  > IDK if it would have been better or worse. Civil wars tend to leave a very toxic legacy. Had it done so, it's very likely that the USSR would have intervened.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    So might the Western powers. That was still the moment when Americans had the only working nuclear weapons on Earth. The width of the possible scenarios is unsettling, one of them may be Prague turning into European Hiroshima.
    - yread 6y ago
      > So might the Western powers. That would be unlikely - Czechoslovakia was in Soviet sphere of influence as decided in Yalta and the West was severely outgunned (at least in conventional weapons) by Soviets in Europe.
      - inglor_cz 6y ago
        Unlikely, yes, but stranger things have happened during the early Cold War.
      - Context_free 6y ago
        > the West was severely outgunned (at least in conventional weapons) by Soviets in Europe. "The west" was severely outgunned by the west - the largest political party in France in 1948 was PCF, the communist/socialist alliance in Italy almost won that year. Finland remained outside the eastern bloc simply because it was no longer seen as being part of a threat. In the UK the Labour party which tossed out Churchill while he was in Potsdam was busy nationalizing the commanding heights of England's means of production (although they were not as militant as their comrades on the continent of course). The west was busy trying to hold onto the West, never mind intervening in Prague.
        yread 6y ago
        Not to mention all the troubles in Italy and Greece
- mjaniczek 6y ago
  As somebody born after 1993 (thus into Czech Republic, not Czechoslovakia) who (thankfully?) didn't experience that period, thanks for the writeup.
  - Radim 6y ago
    As another Czechoslovak (born 1981 under socialism), I was eagerly awaiting inglor_cz's response the moment I saw this article on HN :-)
    - inglor_cz 6y ago
      Wow, TIL people take notice of me :-)
- Context_free 6y ago
  > So they preempted them by staging a coup supported by People's Militias (a completely illegal armed militia of the party) on February 25, 1948 On February 21st, 1948, the non-communist ministers handed in resignations, without any pressure from the communist party. You left that part out. On February 25th the resignations were accepted. This was not a "coup" - they lost the elections in 1946 and decided to abandon the government in a failed power play. Also, as you note, the president of Czechoslovakia in the 1930s, Benes, a non-communist, presided over this. The militias committed no violence, took over no buildings or the like and were not involved in the cabinet. The majority of Czechs did not find factory workers being armed to defend themselves to be as threatening as you apparently do. If you really want to see elections being fixed, look at the fixing of the elections in Italy in the same year against the communist/socialist coalition.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    Whoa, a real world tankie on HN. Czechoslovak Communist Party was since 1929 an obedient servant of Stalin with zero own will. The chairman Gottwald was a sycophant who later hanged his own friends (Slansky, Reicin) on request from Moscow. Yes, the coup was nonviolent, much like occupation of Sudetenland 10 years prior, because our elite decided to throw in the towel. There was no one left to defend our democracy against a powerful foe. "factory workers being armed to defend themselves" What an incredible load of B.S. People's Militias were Communist equivalent of Iraqi sectarian militias after the ouster of Saddam. They acted as an armed fist of the party for the possible case that democratic politicians decide not to go quietly. May 1948 elections were a travesty, as were all other elections until 1985 (the last ones under Communist power).
    - dang 6y ago
      Please do not post ideological flamewar comments to HN, regardless of what you're battling for or against. It's not what this site is for and it kills what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - dang 6y ago
- xkriva11 6y ago
  There is an important lesson in it. People should be able to vote bastards, but this must always be reversible. If the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were part of the Czechoslovakian constitution at that time, this development would not be legal. However, at that time, it was not existing and, if it existed, it would be probably quite hard to put it into the legal system because of the fresh edicts against Germans. In the end, the third Czechoslovak Republic failed because of its rooted nature and kind of deserved its fate. You cannot displace 1.2M of people and try to look as a democratic state (no matter how necessary it was).
  - tpm 6y ago
    That development was not exactly legal even then, but there was no one who would stop them because the superpowers carved up Europe and this was Stalin's area. He could do what he wanted. 1.2M.. I think the current estimates are 2.4M expelled Germans, not counting the expelled Hungarians from Slovakia (many of which later returned and were granted citizenship).
  - vkou 6y ago
    > You cannot displace 1.2M of people and try to look as a democratic state (no matter how necessary it was). There are a number of democratic states that have happily uprooted a lot more people than that, both before, and after WW2. Most of them haven't failed.
  - HideousKojima 6y ago
    >If the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were part of the Czechoslovakian constitution at that time, this development would not be legal. Which wouldn't stop anything in and of itself. The current Chinese constitution allows freedom of speech, for example.
tpm 6y ago
> communists got to the power legally by winning the elections, in 1946 in Czech part of Czechoslovakia and in 1948 in Slovakia. This is actually so wrong as to be an outright lie. The 1948 elections took place on May 30, after the Communists took power in the coup of February 25 (this was not the only important event - they took over power gradually before that). The 1948 elections featured only one party. From that it should be completely clear these were not really elections as there was nothing to choose from and in any case the Communists didn't really care, they already had all the power they needed.
- saiya-jin 6y ago
  I will rephrase it since I see what causes a friction - in 1946 Communists won in Czech part of Czechoslovakia, in Slovakia it was Democratic party with over 60% (Demokraticka strana). Still, Slovakia was only 1/3 of whole republic, so communists won the elections overall, especially in Czech border regions with Germany, where arguably a still-unacknowledged atrocity happened after WWII - brutal forced removal of hundreds of thousands of Sudet Germans. Its true that in 1948 the elections were a sham since there was only a single party to vote for - communist one, hence their total victory in both Czech and Slovak part of the republic. But the true rise to power was in 1946 that enabled all that came later, and was done via those democratic elections. Coup d'etat sounds like there was a democratic government overthrown by some communist fringe movement outside government, which isn't true. They got to power and got majority, and used it to remove everybody else. Maybe my idea of coup d'etat is incorrect and this whole discussion is kind of pointless.
  - tpm 6y ago
    The finer point is, I think, that they did not get they power legally in the elections, because no such power can be granted in elections. Elections are a way to elect the national assembly which can then create a government, write laws etc.; but things that happened after 1946 and especially after 1948 were not supported by legal power, but by Stalin's terror and totalitarian dictature.
    - 6y ago
throw4738 6y ago
Jachymov had strategic importance for survival of the Soviet Union. Soviets invested into building mine and provided initial workforce. Jachymov was not some siberian gulag for wood choping. Soviets also paid for uranium. Mine was closed as too expensive. How Czech communist party ran the mine, and what it did to its citizens is something else. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294280450_Vyvoz_ceskoslovenskeho_uranu_do_Sovetskeho_svazu_v_letech_1946-1959/link/56dfd76c08ae9b93f79aa54f/download https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294280450_Vyvoz_ces...
- vHMtsdf 6y ago
  Regarding uranium extraction in Czechoslovakia, the Soviets later mined uranium in other sites by pumping sulfuric acid into the ground. This has caused a lasting ecological damage which has to be managed to this day. The acid was meant to dissolve the ore and was then sucked back out. The only issue was that they ended up pumping a more sulfuric acid into the ground than sucking out. This created an underground lake of sulfuric acid in an with other underground water "lakes". This sulfuric lake is threatening to spill into these water sources. I heard about this from my teachers at the university who were involved in the modelling of the underground spill. Using a limited number of wells, they were supposed to predict how the spill is spreading and what actions to take to stop it. I found some pictures from the site here: https://zpravy.aktualne.cz/domaci/pitna-voda-tezba-uranu-kyselina-ekologicka-zatez/r~i:gallery:15715/r~i:photo:319256/ https://zpravy.aktualne.cz/domaci/pitna-voda-tezba-uranu-kys...
- flohofwoe 6y ago
  On the East German side of the border, Uranium mining started essentially as gulag-style worker camps under Soviet control right after the war, and a few years later was moved into the "Wismut AG", which was a company under shared East German / Soviet ownership. From the tales of my grandparents, it was a mix of Soviet oppression and Wild West. In the Wismut, the miners were very well paid (for post-war East Germany), but they were a rowdy bunch and quite often had quarrels (also physical) with the East German police and Soviet camp guards (who of course couldn't simply "mow down" their highly qualified work force). Eventually in the mid- to late 50's, it calmed down, and working for the Wismut was more or less a normal job (albeit with a high risk of dying early of lung cancer and/or silicosis). After the reuninification, the German government invested big into fixing the environmental damage that was done in 40 years, and that took over a decade. Props to them for this, the Erzgebirge is quite a nature paradise today.
sn41 6y ago
Prisoners handling radioactive material without protective material and gear, was also done in the Gulag system - e.g. Butugychag in Magadan, Siberia [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butugychag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butugychag

inglor_cz 6y ago

Czechoslovak-born here. This is not completely correct either. Communists won the election in 1946 and formed a coalition government in which they were the strongest force, but not completely dominant. There were other "bourgeoise" ministers. Unfortunately, Communists controlled the ministry of the interior and cleansed the police of "reactionary elements", thus cementing their control over the civilian law enforcement. Not over the army yet, though. There were regular elections scheduled for May 1948 and opinion polls were indicating that Communist share of vote is actually going to diminish. So they preempted them by staging a coup supported by People's Militias (a completely illegal armed militia of the party) on February 25, 1948. After that, the democracy was toast and it was full speed towards Stalinism, show trials etc. Some of the army generals wanted to suppress the coup militarily, but the aging President (Beneš) did not allow that. IDK if it would have been better or worse. Civil wars tend to leave a very toxic legacy.

vkou 6y ago
> IDK if it would have been better or worse. Civil wars tend to leave a very toxic legacy. Had it done so, it's very likely that the USSR would have intervened.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  So might the Western powers. That was still the moment when Americans had the only working nuclear weapons on Earth. The width of the possible scenarios is unsettling, one of them may be Prague turning into European Hiroshima.
  - yread 6y ago
    > So might the Western powers. That would be unlikely - Czechoslovakia was in Soviet sphere of influence as decided in Yalta and the West was severely outgunned (at least in conventional weapons) by Soviets in Europe.
    - inglor_cz 6y ago
      Unlikely, yes, but stranger things have happened during the early Cold War.
    - Context_free 6y ago
      > the West was severely outgunned (at least in conventional weapons) by Soviets in Europe. "The west" was severely outgunned by the west - the largest political party in France in 1948 was PCF, the communist/socialist alliance in Italy almost won that year. Finland remained outside the eastern bloc simply because it was no longer seen as being part of a threat. In the UK the Labour party which tossed out Churchill while he was in Potsdam was busy nationalizing the commanding heights of England's means of production (although they were not as militant as their comrades on the continent of course). The west was busy trying to hold onto the West, never mind intervening in Prague.
      - yread 6y ago
        Not to mention all the troubles in Italy and Greece
mjaniczek 6y ago
As somebody born after 1993 (thus into Czech Republic, not Czechoslovakia) who (thankfully?) didn't experience that period, thanks for the writeup.
- Radim 6y ago
  As another Czechoslovak (born 1981 under socialism), I was eagerly awaiting inglor_cz's response the moment I saw this article on HN :-)
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    Wow, TIL people take notice of me :-)
Context_free 6y ago
> So they preempted them by staging a coup supported by People's Militias (a completely illegal armed militia of the party) on February 25, 1948 On February 21st, 1948, the non-communist ministers handed in resignations, without any pressure from the communist party. You left that part out. On February 25th the resignations were accepted. This was not a "coup" - they lost the elections in 1946 and decided to abandon the government in a failed power play. Also, as you note, the president of Czechoslovakia in the 1930s, Benes, a non-communist, presided over this. The militias committed no violence, took over no buildings or the like and were not involved in the cabinet. The majority of Czechs did not find factory workers being armed to defend themselves to be as threatening as you apparently do. If you really want to see elections being fixed, look at the fixing of the elections in Italy in the same year against the communist/socialist coalition.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  Whoa, a real world tankie on HN. Czechoslovak Communist Party was since 1929 an obedient servant of Stalin with zero own will. The chairman Gottwald was a sycophant who later hanged his own friends (Slansky, Reicin) on request from Moscow. Yes, the coup was nonviolent, much like occupation of Sudetenland 10 years prior, because our elite decided to throw in the towel. There was no one left to defend our democracy against a powerful foe. "factory workers being armed to defend themselves" What an incredible load of B.S. People's Militias were Communist equivalent of Iraqi sectarian militias after the ouster of Saddam. They acted as an armed fist of the party for the possible case that democratic politicians decide not to go quietly. May 1948 elections were a travesty, as were all other elections until 1985 (the last ones under Communist power).
  - dang 6y ago
    Please do not post ideological flamewar comments to HN, regardless of what you're battling for or against. It's not what this site is for and it kills what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dang 6y ago
xkriva11 6y ago
There is an important lesson in it. People should be able to vote bastards, but this must always be reversible. If the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were part of the Czechoslovakian constitution at that time, this development would not be legal. However, at that time, it was not existing and, if it existed, it would be probably quite hard to put it into the legal system because of the fresh edicts against Germans. In the end, the third Czechoslovak Republic failed because of its rooted nature and kind of deserved its fate. You cannot displace 1.2M of people and try to look as a democratic state (no matter how necessary it was).
- tpm 6y ago
  That development was not exactly legal even then, but there was no one who would stop them because the superpowers carved up Europe and this was Stalin's area. He could do what he wanted. 1.2M.. I think the current estimates are 2.4M expelled Germans, not counting the expelled Hungarians from Slovakia (many of which later returned and were granted citizenship).
- vkou 6y ago
  > You cannot displace 1.2M of people and try to look as a democratic state (no matter how necessary it was). There are a number of democratic states that have happily uprooted a lot more people than that, both before, and after WW2. Most of them haven't failed.
- HideousKojima 6y ago
  >If the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were part of the Czechoslovakian constitution at that time, this development would not be legal. Which wouldn't stop anything in and of itself. The current Chinese constitution allows freedom of speech, for example.

tpm 6y ago

> communists got to the power legally by winning the elections, in 1946 in Czech part of Czechoslovakia and in 1948 in Slovakia. This is actually so wrong as to be an outright lie. The 1948 elections took place on May 30, after the Communists took power in the coup of February 25 (this was not the only important event - they took over power gradually before that). The 1948 elections featured only one party. From that it should be completely clear these were not really elections as there was nothing to choose from and in any case the Communists didn't really care, they already had all the power they needed.

saiya-jin 6y ago
I will rephrase it since I see what causes a friction - in 1946 Communists won in Czech part of Czechoslovakia, in Slovakia it was Democratic party with over 60% (Demokraticka strana). Still, Slovakia was only 1/3 of whole republic, so communists won the elections overall, especially in Czech border regions with Germany, where arguably a still-unacknowledged atrocity happened after WWII - brutal forced removal of hundreds of thousands of Sudet Germans. Its true that in 1948 the elections were a sham since there was only a single party to vote for - communist one, hence their total victory in both Czech and Slovak part of the republic. But the true rise to power was in 1946 that enabled all that came later, and was done via those democratic elections. Coup d'etat sounds like there was a democratic government overthrown by some communist fringe movement outside government, which isn't true. They got to power and got majority, and used it to remove everybody else. Maybe my idea of coup d'etat is incorrect and this whole discussion is kind of pointless.
- tpm 6y ago
  The finer point is, I think, that they did not get they power legally in the elections, because no such power can be granted in elections. Elections are a way to elect the national assembly which can then create a government, write laws etc.; but things that happened after 1946 and especially after 1948 were not supported by legal power, but by Stalin's terror and totalitarian dictature.
  - 6y ago

throw4738 6y ago

Jachymov had strategic importance for survival of the Soviet Union. Soviets invested into building mine and provided initial workforce. Jachymov was not some siberian gulag for wood choping. Soviets also paid for uranium. Mine was closed as too expensive. How Czech communist party ran the mine, and what it did to its citizens is something else. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294280450_Vyvoz_ceskoslovenskeho_uranu_do_Sovetskeho_svazu_v_letech_1946-1959/link/56dfd76c08ae9b93f79aa54f/download https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294280450_Vyvoz_ces...

vHMtsdf 6y ago
Regarding uranium extraction in Czechoslovakia, the Soviets later mined uranium in other sites by pumping sulfuric acid into the ground. This has caused a lasting ecological damage which has to be managed to this day. The acid was meant to dissolve the ore and was then sucked back out. The only issue was that they ended up pumping a more sulfuric acid into the ground than sucking out. This created an underground lake of sulfuric acid in an with other underground water "lakes". This sulfuric lake is threatening to spill into these water sources. I heard about this from my teachers at the university who were involved in the modelling of the underground spill. Using a limited number of wells, they were supposed to predict how the spill is spreading and what actions to take to stop it. I found some pictures from the site here: https://zpravy.aktualne.cz/domaci/pitna-voda-tezba-uranu-kyselina-ekologicka-zatez/r~i:gallery:15715/r~i:photo:319256/ https://zpravy.aktualne.cz/domaci/pitna-voda-tezba-uranu-kys...
flohofwoe 6y ago
On the East German side of the border, Uranium mining started essentially as gulag-style worker camps under Soviet control right after the war, and a few years later was moved into the "Wismut AG", which was a company under shared East German / Soviet ownership. From the tales of my grandparents, it was a mix of Soviet oppression and Wild West. In the Wismut, the miners were very well paid (for post-war East Germany), but they were a rowdy bunch and quite often had quarrels (also physical) with the East German police and Soviet camp guards (who of course couldn't simply "mow down" their highly qualified work force). Eventually in the mid- to late 50's, it calmed down, and working for the Wismut was more or less a normal job (albeit with a high risk of dying early of lung cancer and/or silicosis). After the reuninification, the German government invested big into fixing the environmental damage that was done in 40 years, and that took over a decade. Props to them for this, the Erzgebirge is quite a nature paradise today.

sn41 6y ago

Prisoners handling radioactive material without protective material and gear, was also done in the Gulag system - e.g. Butugychag in Magadan, Siberia [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butugychag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butugychag