The Future Belongs to The Liberty without Liberalism: The Intellectual Development of the Czechoslovak National Resistance during the Second World War

Abstract

This paper analyzes the intellectual developments within the non-communist National Resistance in Czechoslovakia and the political programme it drafted during World War Two. Consisting of officers of the pre-war Army, left-leaning intellectuals, and members of former mainstream political parties, the National Resistance represented a highly diverse group with different notions of what the post-war Republic should become. Within two years of the outbreak of war, however, it produced an essentially socialist programme accepted by all resistance cells of the underground movement. The paper argues that what would come to be seen as standard ideas during Czechoslovakia’s post-war socialist years had in fact won widespread support from the majority of the Czechoslovak populace long before the involvement of the Soviet Union in the Second World War. The paper contextualizes the programmatic efforts of the Czechoslovak National Resistance and argues that it was a reaction to the wider crisis of European liberalism of the 1930s. The significant and far-reaching reforms which the National Resistance envisaged, and which are discussed in this paper, would have amounted to a seemingly genuine revolution at the time. These reforms pleaded for a new type of democracy, qualitatively different from the liberal democracy that had governed interwar Czechoslovakia (1918-1938). In essence, the changes aimed at limiting the number of political parties and strengthening the role of the State in the economy, all in the name of national unity. Meanwhile, in the interest of international security, a close alliance between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union was advocated. As the paper concludes, however, the pitfalls of attempting to improve democracy through restricting civil liberties can instead open the door to totalitarianism. The example of Czechoslovakia thus appears to be of particular importance to our own turbulent era where liberal democracies everywhere are once again under strain.