February 1948

This publication offers readers an outline of the key events in Czechoslovak politics after the end of the Second World War, which culminated in the communist coup of February 1948 and the subsequent forty-year rule of a single party. The author analyses the causes of the collapse of the democratic system in Czechoslovakia and then focuses on a detailed analysis of the events of the critical February days. The text is richly supplemented with contemporary documents of both an institutional and personal nature, including informant reports, letters, and records of conversations with key political figures. The author offers detailed commentary on these materials, evaluating the role that individual actors—whether from the democratic parties or the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ)—played in the establishment of the communist regime in the Czechoslovak Republic. Some documents are being presented to the public for the very first time.