The Lines are Drawn

Abstract

Relations between the Soviet Union and the western democracies, bad enough in 1947, continued to deteriorate in the period which followed. Although by the end of 1947 Europe was arrayed in two sharply-defined camps, there still appeared some possibility that Soviet military domination and a western-type democracy might persist indefinitely in Czechoslovakia. This was not to be. On 20 February 1948 most of the non-communist Ministers tendered their resignations to President Bend on a matter relating to control of police. The Foreign Minister, Jan Masaryk, by far the most influential non-communist after the President himself, did not join with his colleagues in this action. There followed five days of confusion, during the course of which communists armed with rifles paraded the streets of Prague. In the end Bend invited the communist Gottwald to form a new Ministry. Among the noted anti-communists only Masaryk was included, and Marsaryk himself was found dead in mysterious circumstances a fortnight later. In May ‘elections’ were held at which voters had no choice between candidates, but were given to understand that it would be ‘tantamount to treason’ not to support the nominees. Nobody emerges with much credit from the final phase of Czechoslovak liberty.