Czechoslovakism and the party theory of the “nationality question” 1

Abstract

This article examines Marxist-Leninist conceptions of the so-called nationality question from the late 1940s to the 1970s, with a twofold research agenda: to chronicle the evolving understanding of this question within Czech-Slovak relations, specifically as it related to the possibility of a higher Czechoslovak unity within the communist project, and to compare this to the structurally similar, but ideologically distinct condition of Czechoslovakism in the interwar period. The author hones in on three time periods: Stalinism, post-Stalinism and normalization. Czechoslovak Stalinism, much like interwar Czechoslovakism, believed in progress by controlled modernization and socio-economic equalization between Czech and Slovak societies, despite the fact that this so-called socialist patriotism had potent class dimensions, advanced by the logic of Stalinist revolutionary social upheaval. The author examines the 1960s' “golden age” of party theory on the nationality question and does so through a concrete example. He focuses on experts from Novotný’s regime, who largely relied on Khrushchevian-Leninist theory, which promised the gradual creation of a united, socialist Czechoslovak nation. The Prague Spring did not discourage these party theorists from continuing on as prominent scholars of the nationality question during the period of normalization. To explain this continuity, the study points to the phenomenon of “long-lasting Leninism” in certain segments of party expertise.