Communists in Czech Politics

Lately, discussion on the topic suggests the political will has waned. Politicians from either side of politics have questioned the point. Former ODS Defense Minister Alexandr Vondra said the banning should have happened long ago. Recent presidential hopeful Jiří Dienstbier went further in the same article to say that there was no reason to dismantle the party.

Revolution Now (?)
KSČM was formed as a territorial branch of the former Czechoslovakian Communist Party (Komunistická strana Československa) in 1990. With split of Czechoslovakia the Czechoslovakian party ceased to exist leaving the Czech-Moravian and Slovakian parties.

So what does this mean exactly? Officially they try to distance themselves from the politics and policies of the past. They still claim to be the party for the disadvantaged and say class is still a factor. Yet, at least in the literature, they say they reject class hatred and don’t promote a call to class war. They even claim to support the regulation of market economics over its abolishment. At the same time, current party head, Vojtěch Filip described Karl Marx as the greatest philosopher of the millennium. Concerning more concrete issues such as Czech EU membership and church restitution, they have been a vocal opposition.

On the surface, it looks like more like Social Democracy, albeit of a more strident form. The pamphlet linked above even suggests support. So why didn’t the Communist Party change the name when it was “remaking itself”? In their own words, the reason was that they didn’t want to engage in any “cheap tricks”, nor did they want to “deceive voters”. Having said that, Jiří Svoboda, one of the former party chiefs, tried to drop the reference to communism. Hard-liners ousted him. Interestingly, their Slovakian counterparts changed their name from the Communist Party of Slovakia to the Party of Democratic Leftism. The rebranded party dissolved in 2002 following a poor election result.

Past in the Present
Name aside, the current communist party is seen by many as a continuation of the former party because of its members. Vojtěch Filip was a member of the former party and an informer for the StB. He even expressed his condolences at Kim Jong Il’s death. His predecessor Miroslav Grebeníček was reluctant to apologize for the past regime. His father Alois Grebeníček was a former StB member, charged with torturing prisoners. Marta Semelová is a current minister of the Czech parliament who gave a speech in honor of the first Czech communist president Klement Gottwald. Figures like this make it hard for many to believe the party has reformed.

Officially, the other parties have a policy of not cooperating with the communists in as far as not forming a coalition. As mentioned before, the communists to date haven’t been invited to form a government at a national level. However, the communists were part of the government in five of 14 regions after the 2008 elections. Following last year’s regional elections, six regions had the communists as junior partners in a coalition, while the communists were the main party in the Ústecký and Karlovovarský regions.

While the Social Democrats seem the natural ideological choice for the communists, the communists have allegedly shown support for one unlikely candidates. Václav Klaus, disciple of Thatcher, possibly came into office because Communist MPs voted for him during the first election after Havel’s last term. This likelihood is maintained by Sobotka who claims that without the votes nothing would have happened. The political scientist Jiří Pehe asserts this claim too. However, there is no firm proof. The election was secret, after all.