Publication Details

Abstract

One of the important results of the second World War was the establishment of a people’s democratic regime in Czechoslovakia. The birth of the people’s democratic C. S. R. was determined by these circumstances; the defeat of fascist Germany, the self-committing of the ruling classes and their political parties, who betrayed during the occupation-time, the political union of the working and peasant classes in which the working class had the leadership and the Communist party a leading task, and the moral, diplomatic and economic support of the U.S.S.R. The people became the only source of all power in the slate. The Slovak National Uprise (1949) was the beginning of the national and democratic revolution. The distribution of interior and international forces gave the possibility of a peaceful development of the national and democratic revolution in a socialist one. The Communist party, supported by workers, working peasants, tradesmen, and the intelligentsia realized this possibility. The most important driving force in realizing it was the political union of the working class and the working peasants. The union of workers and1 peasants experienced several phases in its development. In the C.S.R. before Munich a political union came into being and after the liberation in 1945 also an economical one began to develop with its trade and production forms. Without the Communist party this union would never have come about. During the national and democratic revolution the Communist party had to fight against false views on the question of this alliance. The main task in the national and democratic revolution concerning the agrarian question was to accomplish the agrarian reform — to parcel the land, which was performed according to the principle ’’The land belongs to those who work on it“. The agrarian reform was performed in three stages in the years 1945—1948. In the first stage the land of the Germans and Hugarians who dind’t take active part in the fight against fascism was confiscated as well as that of traitors and enemies of the nation. 595.221 ha of land were confiscated. In the second stage the agrarian reform of 1919 has been revised. 302.547 ha of land was confiscated. In this stage the Communist party also fought for these bills to be enacted: Aid for peasants in their activity to accomplish the agrarian production plan; to book into the land register the allocated parts of land; to prevent the division of agrarian land; to popularize huning and to perform the commassation of agrarian land. In the third stage all the land of the big landowners excceeding 50 ha was confiscated. About 300.000 ha was confiscated. In this phase also the so-called ’’Hradecký programme“ has been realized by means of which besides the mentioned confiscation of the estates over 50 ha the Communist party caused laws on an ’’unitary agricultural tax“, ’’loans for peasants“, ’’farmer’s insurance“ and ’’Peasant organizations“ to be passed. The confiscated land was divided among peasant workers, small and middle farmers and a part was tranferred into the property of the state. The agrarian reform was an inevitable step for the peaceful development of the revolution, for without it the strengthening of the union of the working class and the working peasants would have been impossible, that union, which was a decisive factor in the development of the national and democratic revolution into a socialist one.