Class Struggle and Socialist Justice the Case of Czechoslovakia

8/2/2019 Class Struggle and Socialist Justice the Case of Czechoslovakia

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Class Struggle and Socialist Justice: The Case of Czechoslovakia

Author(s): Otto UlReviewed work(s):Source: The American Political Science Review, Vol. 61, No. 3 (Sep., 1967), pp. 727-743Published by: American Political Science AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1976091 .

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CLASS STRUGGLE AND SOCIALIST JUSTICE: THE CASE OFCZECHOSLOVAKIA*OTTO UL6State University of New York, Harpur College

This article represents an attempt to assessthe degree of legal certainty in post-February1948 Czechoslovakia and, more specifically, theintervention of political bias in the work of thecourts. This conflict will be viewed and evalu-ated through an analysis of the class struggle,a process most appropriate for testing the inter-action between political pressures and judicialintegrity. The study of basic laws, publishedcourt decisions, and legal literature support thecontention that the Communist Party has notgiven up the discriminatory concept of classjustice which subordinates law to politics, andthat the absence of legal "definiteness" is aconditio sine qua non of a totalitarian mode ofgovernment. It should be added that my firsthand experience with the Czechoslovak judicialsystem is limited to the period 1953-1959.1 Asfar as the sixties are concerned (Part VI), it hasbeen necessary to rely exclusively on the pub-lished and available sources. Without benefitof "hard evidence," the conclusions in thatsection must be regarded as merely interpreta-tive and inferential.

I. CONCEPT OF SOCIALIST JUSTICE:LAW VERSUS POLITICS

Marxists, who reject the objectivity of lawsas impossible and hypocritical, maintain thatthe state, as an organ of violence of the rulingclass, employs for the promotion of its selfishinterests both the laws and the judicial ma-chinery. The law is a political directive and, toquote N. V. Krylenko, the People's Commissarof Justice in the early years of the Soviet state,"our judge is above all a worker in the politicalfield." In the words of the same jurist, "a clubis a primitive weapon, a rifle is a more efficientone, and the most efficient is the court."2 The

* I should like to thank my colleagues WalterFilley and Paul A. Smith for their helpful crit-icism of an earlier draft of this paper.I In 1953, after graduating from the law schoolof Charles University in Prague, I was appointedAssistant District Judge in Plzen, and in 1956,District Judge in Plzen and Stribro respectively.Three years later, at the age of twenty-nine, I leftCzechoslovakia.

2 N. V. Krylenko quoted in Harold J. Berman,Justice in Russia, (New York: Random House,1963), p. 36.

nadir of the rule of law was reached withStalin's coining of the doctrine of the intensifi-cation of the class struggle. Andrei Y. Vyshin-sky, his proconsul over the realm of law andthe judiciary, projected this Magna Carta ofmass blood baths and forced labor camps intothe official theory of law, that of "socialistlegality." This theory, never satisfactorily de-fined, sanctioned the dichotomy of legal andextralegal measures regarding law not as equalbut as ancillary to political interests, andexempting the state, though not its citizens,from the binding force of the law.

It was a misfortune, to say the least, thatwhen the countries of Eastern Europe wereinitiated into the ways of "people's democ-racy," the Vyshinsky theory-and the prac-tices of this Prosecutor General of the U.S.S.R.-flourished as the one and only formula re-quired for adoption by the disciples of sovieti-zation. Acceptance of the Soviet guidance, how-ever, was less than a perfect solution owing tothe fact that Moscow was unable to offer anymodel codes for emulation. The basic laws(e.g., the Civil Code enacted in the N.E.P. era)were outdated, neglected and moribundthrough prolonged disuse. Hence, the people'sdemocracies had to be satisfied solely with theimitation of Soviet legal institutions such asProkuratura or Arbitrazh, with certain judicialpractices (notably, the "people's assessors,"and the authority of the Supreme Court toannul the final verdicts of lower benches) and,above all, the doctrine of law as a set of "class-oriented" rules, implanted in the essentially"bourgeois" codes of the respective countries.This Soviet import was probably mostdamaging, or to put it differently, its impactnecessitated the implementation of the mostdrastic changes in the case of Czechoslovakia-a white crow among the candidates for sovieti-zation by virtue of its democratic tradition andits record of considerable social harmony.The country's unsuitability for this "operationre-shape" was in inverse proportion to theenthusiasm with which the lawyers of theEstablishment welcomed the incisions ofVyshinsky's surgical knife. Academician ViktorKnapp, for example, the most prominent au-thority in the field of civil law, hailed the classcontent of law as "a brilliant discovery of legalscience." "Until then," he confessed, "we

727


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728 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWstaggered through an impasse of sterile, idealis-tic speculations."3The "class concept" also facilitated thefilling of hiatus in the Soviet model, that ofcodified works suitable for adoption. The ele-ment of tridnost ("crassness," a term difficult totranslate, close in meaning to "class essence" or"class orientation") was infused into the indig-eneous fundamental laws, notably the Crimi-nal, Civil and Family Relations Codes, pro-mulgated by the Prague Parliament between1949 and 1950. Scores of exceptions to the rule,of escape clauses and intentionally vague for-mulations emasculated the provisions of law,still reminiscent of the continental Romantradition, of its definiteness and of force bind-ing equally on all subjects.Before we proceed further with the matterof class justice, a theoretical framework ex-planatory of the interaction of politics and law,of the degree of judicial integrity and impar-tiality may be of some assistance. Thesephenomena and their development during thealmost two decades of Communist rule inCzechoslovakia may be viewed through amodel incorporating three levels of bias imped-ing the rule of law,-those of bias in law, of biasin interpretation, and of outside pressures. Thefirst level concerns the bias which is implicit(through doctrine itself) and also explicit(ranging from escape clauses to outright dis-criminatory provisions) in the law, includingboth substantive and procedural codes. Thesecond level is provided by the "legitimate"(i.e., officially required) bias of the judge asthe interpreter of the law and the decision-maker. Finally, the third level concerns the"illegitimate" (i.e., on occasion tolerated butnever publicly sanctioned) distortion of law byoutside pressures and by intervention inadjudication.To illustrate how far removed is the conceptof class justice from the "ideal law," under-stood as a set of written rules equally bindingon all members of the society, and sustained byan independent and impartial authority: InCzechoslovakia the "law protects socialism"(Criminal Code, Section 1; Bias I), the laworders a judge to punish with particular se-verity those offenders "who manifested hos-tility toward the people's democratic order"(Criminal Code, Section 20; Bias II) and thegeneral climate of "legal nihilism" has enabled

3 Viktor Knapp, Predmet a system ceskosloven-skeho socialistickeho prava obcanskeho (The Objectand System of the Czechoslovak Socialist CivilLaw), (Prague: NCSAV, 1959), p. 29.

the political elites to force a judge to pass amanifestly illegal decision (Bias III).This triad represents a concept of varyingscope of applicability and unequal acceptanceby the regime. On the one hand, the govern-ment has always readily admitted the practice,desirability and, in fact, inevitability of thefirst level bias (on the assumption that "lawwithout inherent class bias is bourgeois non-sense") and the entire crop of post-1948 legalwritings provides abundant evidence in supportof this assertion. On the other hand, the thirdlevel bias (outside pressures) has not enjoyedofficial sponsorship, though from time to timeits "spontaneous occurrences" have been ad-mitted and criticized.4 The most controversial,and the most important for the understandingof the susceptibility and compliance of Czech-oslovak legal practices to these politicaldesiderata, remains the second level impedi-ment, namely the bias required of the judicialdecision-maker. The legitimacy of its applica-bility was not challenged-with the exceptionof a short interlude in 1957-until 1963; thecauses and consequences of this change will beevaluated later in this analysis.II. CLASS ENEMIES

Before dealing with the implementation of"class justice," let us first see how the systemidentifies its victims. The designation, "classenemy," is elastic and extensive enough to bea threat to any individual. The originalMarxist criterion of class-i.e., the relation tothe means of production ("ownership and ex-ploitation")-does not suffice, so additionallabels of "state of mind" and "heritage" havehad to be introduced for consideration.The government, preferring vagueness tospecificity, has never produced a definite "blacklist" of the strata designated for liquidation.However, a study of the codes, judicial pro-cesses, and juridical writings, supplemented byfirst hand knowledge, permit us to classify theworld that does not classify itself, to constructI Cf., the campaign of criticism in 1963, below.

The extent to which the Party tolerates (or de-mands) the outright intervention of the apparat-chiki in adjudication is impossible to assess withoutthe benefit of inside experience. I had to partici-pate between 1958 and 1959 in weekly meetings atthe District Party Secretariat to discuss the"state of socialist legality in the area." The "con-sultations" invariably turned into the pressures(third level bias) upon the judges with respect totheir specific adjudication. This policy, promul-gated in 1958, was uniform for the entire country.


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CLASS STRUGGLE AND SOCIALIST JUSTICE IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 729certain categories in order to provide someguidance through the verbal morass of classwarfare. What may at first appear to be anoverly pretentious typology concocted by thewriter is, in fact, the explicit articulation of thepattern of class justice, implicitly understoodand implemented by the lawyers. It is a directoutgrowth of the way the mind of a Czechoslo-vak judge is trained, his adjudication de-manded, and uniformity of practice in thecountry secured through internal ordinances ofthe Ministry of Justice, the decisions and di-rectives of the Supreme Court, and monthlyconferences on the provincial level. Last, butnot least, it reflects the judge's awareness thatcompliance with such norms conditioned hispolitical survival. Without trying to reduce acomplex set of phenomena to an oversimplifiedformula, the following scheme of essentiallyempirical categories of "class enemies" comesclose to reflecting the operational codes usedin the judicial process.

I. Classic enemies.A. The owners of the means of economic ex-ploitation in1. non-agricultural production.2. agricultural production.B. That part of the bourgeoisie not directlyengaged in exploitation.1. Those who held positions of promi-nence in the pre-1948 state.2. Those who were simply wealthy (e.g.,"widows with fat bank accounts").C. Anyone who actively opposed the regime(engagement in anti-state activities).II. Ideological enemies, (or, in Lenin's words,"All who are not with us are against us").A. Anyone who did not identify himself withthe regime and its philosophy (e.g., mem-bers of the clergy).B. Anyone who did not identify himself withthe official interpretation of Marxism-Leninism (deviationists).III. Hereditary (derivative)enemies.A. Those members of the bourgeoisie whoseproperty was expropriated or who wereotherwise demoted. These strata, despitetheir lost economic and social status, areconsidered not to have changed theirclass affiliation.B. Families and descendants of any of theabove.

The criteria of "ownership," "state of mind"and "heritage" implied in the above categoriesare neither defined nor mutually exclusive. Forexample, a student with a socially and politi-

cally harmless family background who is sen-tenced as an American spy becomes a "classicenemy" (I-C), even though he has never beenassociated with exploitation. Or, a formerpolice commissioner (I-B-1), who might per-sonally be very fond of Communists, is notrich, never exploited anybody and will neverrevolt against anything, remains a classicenemy, as well.Ideological enemies (Group II) have thefewest prerogatives for classification purposes.They come into the picture only if they cannotbe stigmatized under I or III. A non-Partymanual worker who is a religious believer, andhis former employer who has as much devotionto the church, will not be found in the samecategory: the worker is apt to be labelled II-A,while his former employer ends up as III-A ormight even be classified as III-A plus II-A.This kind of classification is not entirelyacademic; it has some practical value in theimplementation of the class struggle. An ac-cumulation of "enemy" designations intensifiesthe harshness with which the court will dealwith a particular individual. To take a hypo-thetical example, a former foreign serviceofficer (I-B-1) who participated in an anti-state conspiracy would be punished moreseverely than his fellow conspirator who hap-pened to be an inconspicuous accountant. Theiranti-state crime might be the same, but thepunishment would be measured in accordancewith the pattern I-C plus I-B-i, as against amere I-C.'The degree of assumed enmity toward thepolitical status quo, as far as the specific cate-gories in this scheme are concerned, is notidentical. Maximum hostility is manifested bygroup I-C. In fact, a traitor might be called an"enemy of the people" in any state, althoughunder communist practice the I-C stigma hasbeen applied to less reprehensible derelictions,such as verbal offenses or economic crimes. Atthe opposite pole, it is not deviant behaviorbut sins of the past (e.g., exploitation by aformer I-A) or sins through accidental associa-tion (stained pedigree) which characterize thehereditary enemies (group III-B).It is not unreasonable to assume that themore non-active (or non-existent) enemies thestate persecutes, the more oppressive the stateis. In Czechoslovakia, unlike other people'sdemocracies, the emphasis on class warfare

I Cf., "Volime soudee a soudce z lidu lidovych akrajskych soudu" (We Elect the Judges and theLay Assessors for District and Regional Courts),Socialisticka zakonnost, No. 8 (1957), p. 478.


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730 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWagainst the III-B category has been particu-larly strong and enduring.

III. NON-JUDICIAL METHOD OFCLASS STRUGGLEAfter the seizure of power in 1948, the Partyutilized a twofold weapon in the class warfare-judicial and non-judicial ("administrative")methods. The jurisdiction with the former wasvested with regular courts (district, regionalcourts and the Supreme Court) while the latterwas left with organs completely independentof the judiciary, the so-called "People's Com-mittees" (local, district and regional commit-tees) which may be regarded as the Soviets,

Czechoslovak style.Both forms were subject to the three-levelbias (those of law, of the decision-maker, andthe outside pressures) with, however, varyingdegrees of intensity. The most significant dif-ference related to the first level, the bias withinthe "class law." The legislative acts on whichthe judicial processes were based were of gen-eral applicability, drafted to obfuscate ratherthan emphasize its discriminatory features, asopposed to laws enforced by People's Com-mittees. The administrative acts were oftendirected towards limited, specified groups ofsubjects with little or no effort to conceal theirdiscriminatory purposes.The first targets under the administrative,non-judicial method were the urban capitalists(I-A-1). Although the 1948 Constitution pro-tected the individual's business if his employeesnumbered fifty or fewer, the same Parliamentwhich created this law passed almost simul-taneously the Five-Year Plan Act which hadas one of its goals the elimination of such"protected" private property.6 The I-A-1 cate-gory of "exploitation" was stretched whereverconvenient to include those non-exploitingartisans who worked independently but failedto maintain a "positive attitude toward higherforms of enterprise."' Their liquidation wasachieved by chicanery on the part of authori-ties in control, imposition of heavy fines forinsignificant offenses, revocation of tradelicenses, denial of raw materials and machineryand, finally, by confiscatory taxation.8

6 Act No. 150 of 1948 Sbirka zakonu a narizeni(Collection of Laws and Ordinances, hereafterColl.), Sections 158, par. 1; 159, par. 1, 2. Act No.241 of 1948 Coll.

7Klement Gottwald in Rude pravo, May 26,1949.

8 Vlastimil Chalupa, Rise and Development of aTotalitarian State (Leiden: Kroese, 1959), pp.185-186; Dana A. Schmidt, Anatomy of a Satellite

The rationing system was another weaponwielded against class enemies: ration cardswere denied to the urban bourgeoisie (I-A-1,I-B-2), to wealthy farmers (I-A-2), and toindividuals in positions of prominence in thepre-1948 era (I-B-1).9 In 1953, the rationingsystem was abolished; simultaneously a mone-tary reform was introduced which wiped outvirtually all savings. This "reform" was a kissof death, particularly for those of the bour-geoisie who lived on their savings (I-B-2).By 1953, which marked the end of the firstFive-Year Plan, urban capitalists (I-A-1)ceased to exist.'0 The "capitalists of thecountry-side" (I-A-2), the "village rich" whowere later to be called kulaks, were next in linefor liquidation. They were subjected to a mostvenomous hate campaign. Characteristically,a governmental ordinance demanded: "Thecabinet calls on all groups forming the NationalFront . . . to mobilize their members in strug-gle against the sworn enemy of the toilingmasses, the village rich.""The government never offered a definitionof a kulak preferring to let the ominous dictumhang over the head of every farmer reluctant tosign an application for membership in theagricultural cooperative, otherwise known asthe kolkhoz. Liquidation of I-A-2 enemies wasaccomplished by confiscating their agricul-tural machinery, forcible exchange of fertileland for land of lower productivity, increase incompulsory quotas of agricultural products tobe delivered to the state, and discriminatorytaxation.'2 Unlike the urban bourgeoisie the(Boston; Little, Brown, 1950), p. 157; EduardVyskovsky (ed.), Deset let lidove demokratickehoCeskoslovenska (Ten Years of the People's Demo-cratic Czechoslovakia), (Prague: Orbis, 1955), p.52. Acts Nos. 78 and 79 of 1952 Coll.; J. Kabes inPrace, December 12, 1952.9 Decree of the Ministry of Domestic Trade ofJanuary 14, 1953, No. 6, Uredni list (OfficialGazette).10 Monetary Reform Act of May 30, 1953, No.43 of Coll. J. Pucik in Rude pravo, January 23,1954. Zivot strand, No. 9 (May, 1958), p. 487.11Uredni list, February 14, 1952, p. 89. Until1954 instead of "kulak" the term "village rich"(venkovsky bohac) was used.

12 Instead of "confiscation" the state called itan "obligatory purchase of agricultural machine-ry." The term "purchase" is probably not thecorrect one for the description of a peculiar con-tractual relationship in which the farmer wasordered to sell his machinery to the state and thestate never paid for what it purchased. Chalupa,op. cit., p. 191, states that five percent of purchase


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CLASS STRUGGLE AND SOCIALIST JUSTICE IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 731kulaks proved to be more stubborn, since by1958 they were still in possession of 1.6 percentof Czechoslovakia's arable land.13In 1953, the then Prime Minister, ViliamSiroky, remarked that socialization of theeconomy must be followed by socialization ofminds.14 The urban bourgeoisie and especiallythe kulaks were difficult but not impossible toidentify as enemies of the working class. Butthe elimination of ideological enemies was notto be achieved through confiscation or throughescalated delivery quotas. To discover what acitizen really had on his mind the main resortwas to inference and guess, both highly unre-liable methods. The only sure exceptions were,of course, the churches and their followers."The state has been searching for ideologicalenemies of other than religious affiliation,mostly among the intelligentsia. Universitieshave been cleared of unreliable teachers andstudents, and thousands of white collar em-ployees were shifted to manual work.'costs were paid by the state. This writer, however,never heard of one case in the period from 1948 to1959 of any compensation whatsoever. Act No. 27of 1949 Coll., Sect. 6; Ordinance of the Ministry ofAgriculture, No. 612 of 1949 Official Gazette. ValerFabry, "The Development of Agricultural Legis-lation," Bulletin de droit Tchecoslovaque, Nos. 3-4(1952), p. 446. On forcible exchange of land, cf.,Jaromir Blazke in Socialisticka zakonnost, No. 3(1956), pp. 133-146, and No. 4 (1956), pp. 197-206. Rude pravo, January 15, and February 11,1949. Governmental Ordinance No. 57 of 1952Coll. Act No. 77 of 1952 Coll; A. Slovinsky, "Novauprava polnohospodarske dane" (New Reform ofthe Agricultural Tax) Pravny obzor, No. 10 (1959),p. 599.

13 Rude pravo, June 19, 1958 and May 14, 1961.F. Karnik, "Boj proti kulactvu-neoddelitelnasoucast za vybudovani socialismu na nasi vesnici"(The Struggle against the Kulaks-the IndivisiblePart of the Struggle for Building up Socialism inOur Villages), Nova mysl, No. 10 (1955), p. 970.

14 Rude pravo, December 6, 1953.16 Acts and Decrees Nos. 46, 95 of 1948 Coll.,

217-222 of 1949 Coll. The struggle was predomi-nantly directed against the Roman CatholicChurch which was the strongest, most influentialand most courageous, compared with otherchurches which offered a mere token resistance.Cf. Jan Haida (ed.), A Study of ContemporaryCzechoslovakia (Chicago: University of Chicago,prepared for the Human Relations Area Files,Inc., 1955), p. 196.

16 Ibid., p. 94. On the first massive transfer tomanual work involving 77,500 individuals, cf.,Uredni list, July 19, 1951. Another impressive

A Party member faces the peril of being de-clared an ideological enemy (Il-B) wheneverthere is suspicion of his deviating from theofficial interpretation of Marxist ideology. Thedoctrinal heresies are known under variouslabels, ranging from dogmatism to revisionism,from "vulgar materialism" to obscurantism,from local patriotism to cosmopolitanism."7The expulsion from the rank of the initiatedcarries-to borrow the phrase of Alfred G.Meyer-"a stigma comparable to that of theunfrocked priest."18 It is a matter of experiencethat a former Party member is most likely tobe classified an ideological enemy (lI-B), withmore speed and consistency than will be thecase of individuals with no record of Partyaffiliation whose deviant thinking poses thethreat of the type II-A condemnation.'9The class struggle against hereditary enemieshas been most evident in cases involving chil-dren with parents of the wrong social origin orpolitical background (III-B). While the chil-dren of proletarians have been encouraged toenroll in universities, sometimes without regardto previous education, "bourgeois" youth (thedesignation is interpreted very freely) havebeen barred from higher education.'0 In addi-tion, those classed in both group III-B andIII-A (in particular, expropriated capitalistsand former civil servants) have been adverselyaffected through the discriminatory system ofsocial security.21Class enemies in general, regardless of fur-ther classification, have also been targets of theso-called "administrative adjudication." Un-like their Soviet counterparts, the police inCzechoslovakia have not played an altogetherindependent role in the class struggle but havepurge took place in 1958. Antonin Novotny inRude pravo, June 19, 1958.17 Cf., Eduard Taborsky, Communism inCzechoslovakia, 1948-1960 (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1961), pp. 119-143. Pravda(Bratislava), February 9, 1960.

18 Alfred G. Meyer, Communism (New York:Random House, 1963), p. 130.19Rudolf Slansky in Lidove noviny, May 27,1949, on the social composition of the Party. Con-cerning purges, cf., Pavel Korbel, Purges in theCommunist Party of Czechoslovakia (New York:FEC, 1952), p. 6; Rude pravo, July 2, 1950.

20 Rude pravo, December 5, 1951 and May 27,1952. Lidove noviny, April 27, 1951. VestnikMinisterstva skolstvi (Circular of the Ministry ofEducation), November 25, 1954, No. 126.

21 Act No. 54 of 1956 Coll., Sects., 14, 30;Governmental Ordinance No. 22 of 1953 Coll.;Act No. 40 of 1958 Coll.


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732 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWinstead been employed as the punitive arm ofthe People's Committees. The Committees,consisting of laymen rather than lawyers, de-cided who was to be evicted from his apart-ment, assigned to Army penal battalions, orsent to forced labor camps.22 The rulings werecompletely dominated by political considera-tions, in defiance of the limits set up by thelaw.23

IV. ROLE OF CRIMINAL LAWThe laws and their application by the courtshave become a very potent instrument in thepolicy of liquidating class enemies. Ordinarily,one might feel embarrassed at having to equatedemocracy and dictatorship, independence and

subservience on the part of the courts, or ob-servance and violation of the law. Marxistjurisprudence, however, manages to navigatethrough such seemingly hopeless contradic-tions. Jan Bartuska, the former Minister ofJustice, and at the time of this writing, theProsecutor General, offered the following rea-soning:Socialist legality is an important factor andmethod in protecting and strengthening the dicta-torship of the proletariat. Dictatorship of the pro-letariat and socialist legality create one dialecticunity. To ignore this fact means to fail to under-stand the class nature of socialist legality.24This authoritative statement on the fusion of

22 Acts No. 247 of 1948, No. 92 of 1949, Nos.88, 89 of 1950, No. 67 of 1952 Coll. FerdinandBilek, "Nove trestni pravo spravni" (The NewAdministrative Criminal Law), Vestnik minis-terstva vnitra (The Bulletin of the Ministry ofInterior) Nos. 2-3 (June, 1950), p. 136. UnitedNations, Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on ForcedLabour, (Geneva: ILO, 1953), pp. 217, 219.Richard K. Carlton (ed.), Forced Labor in thePeople's Democracies, (New York: Praeger, 1955),pp. 35, 123-124.

23 I recall a story mentioned in 1951 in the classroom of the law school in Prague by my teacherwho simultaneously held an important post withthe Ministry of Interior. He referred to a decisionof a District People's Committee in the Pragueprovince that sentenced the widow of formerPrime Minister Beran to four years of deprivationof liberty despite the legal maximum of two years.The Committee reasoned that in case of such animportant enemy (III-B) restrictions set by thelaw should be disregarded.

24 Jan Bartuska, "Denne upevnovat socialis-ticky stat a zakonnost" (The Daily Strengtheningof the Socialist State and Legality), Socialistickazakonnost, No. 9 (1957), p. 532.

politics and law sanctioned the application ofbias in law and its interpretation (our first andsecond level impediments), which was alsoevidenced in the provisions of substantive andprocedural codes, as well as in the directives ofthe Supreme Court and the Ministry of Jus-tice.25An analysis of the class-biased practices ofthe Czechoslovak judiciary shows little dis-tinction between the criminal courts and thecourts handling calendars of a non-punitivenature. However, since the discriminatory fea-tures of the penal law are more apparent, letus look first at this facet of socialist legality,based on the Codes of 1950.26Because "the new Criminal Codes must besharp weapons of the working class against theclass enemy,"27 it was no surprise to read thatamong the aggravating circumstances listedwas "the offense by which the offender mani-fested his hostility toward the people's demo-cratic order." By the same token, "an extenuat-ing circumstance to be given particular con-sideration is the fact that the offender, beforethe commission of the crime, led the orderlylife of a working person."28The wrongdoer's class profile was consideredthe key to the motive of his criminal action,and the same offense committed by two personsof different class background was to be judgeddifferently by the court. In most cases, how-ever, the courts implemented the doublestandard, not in the determination of the of-fense, but in the severity of the punishment.The difference between the minimum and maxi-mum penalty for a specific crime was usuallygreat enough to allow the court to pass aproperly biased verdict.29 At times, a certainkind of judgment (i.e., leniency) was not per-mitted in cases involving class enemies.30

26 Cf., "Diskuse: 0 zakonnosti v trestnim pravua rizeni" (Discussion: Legality in Criminal Lawand Proceedings), Pravnik, No. 7 (1963), com-ment by Boguszak, p. 589.28 Acts Nos. 86, 87 of 1950 Coll.27 Trestni zakon a trestni rad (Penal Code andCode of Penal Procedure), (Prague: Orbis, 1951)p. 48; cf., Ivan Gadourek, The Political ControlofCzechoslovakia (Leiden: Kroese, 1953), p. 66.28 Criminal Code (Act No. 86), Section 19,par. 1, Section 21, lit. f.29 "Volime soudee," op. cit., p. 477.80 For example, the penalty called "correctivemeasures at liberty," during which time the per-son sentenced suffers deduction from his pay infavor of the state: cf. Vladimir Kabes, SocialistLegality in Czechoslovakia, The Hague: Interna-tional Commission of Jurists, 1953), p. 17.


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CLASS STRUGGLE AND SOCIALIST JUSTICE IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 733The degree of militancy or moderation hasbeen communicated to the lower courts mainlythrough the "Collection of Decisions ofCzechoslovak Courts" (Sbirka rozhodnuti ces-koslovenskychsoudu), published by the SupremeCourt in Prague. Though officially the Su-preme Court's decisions lack the force of bind-ing precedent, Sbirka has been of considerableimportance in the practice of the judiciary3'and constitutes a fairly representative docu-ment concerning the characteristics and devel-opment of the class struggle. The years 1949and 1950 were dominated by class warfaredirected against the classic enemies (especiallygroup (I-C) and the Roman Catholic Church(II-A)). From 1951 on, the kulaks (I-A-2) andurban bourgeoisie (I-A-1) received particularattention. While the political importance ofthe liquidation of kulaks dropped by 1957,12ayear later the accent on class militancy in-creased sharply, as it focused on the expro-priated bourgeois strata (III-A).The class enemy has been defined neither inlaws nor in court decisions; the door was thusleft wide open for the broadest interpretations(Bias II). A "wrong" class origin countedheavily under all circumstances; at the same

time, however, the offender with a faultlesssocial background could be regarded as a classenemy "provided he, in the course of his viola-tion of law, joined the ranks of the class ene-mies."33In view of the Supreme Court-the mostzealous protagonist of the second level bias-,the act of the accused had to be evaluated inrelation to the entire state of political affairsin the Republic.34 This approach pertained notonly to matters of domestic policy but also tothe international situation.3" The Korean waror the Hungarian revolution for example, had

81 Karol Plank, "Viac presnosti pri uverejno-vani sudnych rozhodnuti ceskoslovenskych sudu"(More Accuracy in Publishing Decisions ofCzechoslovak Courts), Pravny obzor, No. 1 (1959),p. 51.

32 Out of ninety-three cases not even one dealtwith kulaks.-

33 Reg. C. Prague, December 22, 1949, To I397/49; Coll. Dec., Crim., No. 123 (1950) pp.178-180 concerning a couple (the husband was awhite collar employee with university education)who attempted to send abroad a letter to theirfriends.

34 Supr. C., March 2, 1950, (when the case isconsidered secret, no number of its file is given);Coll. Dec., Crim., No. 113 (1950) pp. 161-163.3 Supr. C., August 15, 1957, 1 Tz 122/57;Coll. Dec., Crim., No. 82 (1957), pp. 195-197.

to be taken into account by the deliberatingjudges at those periods. The court also evalu-ated evidence from the class viewpoint. Thecredibility of a witness was not entirely sepa-rate from his social profile.36It would be tempting to try to determine theextent to which politically prominent individ-uals have enjoyed preferential treatment atthe hands of the criminal courts. Personal ex-perience and the means of documenting it are,of course, two different matters. Furthermore,the government for its own good reasons hasbeen rather silent on this point.37 In 1949,however, an extraordinary decision was pub-lished. This was the case of a functionary ofthe Communist Party whose political positionthe Regional Court in Prague found, in viewof the offense committed, to be an aggravatingcircumstance. The court held that:These Party members should be an example ofdedicated and honest functionaries .... Thebroad public follows their activities carefully.The class enemy might exploit their mistakes andgeneralize them into an attack against the Party.38

This decision can be said to be an exceptionto the rule by which individuals close to theCommunist Party were favored and protectedwhen they appeared at the courts as culpritsor as objects of attack by an outsider. TheSupreme Court in 1956 stated that:Our laws and the entire people's democratic stateprotect in an increasing measure every citizen andespecially the functionaries who fulfill conscienti-ously their duties connected with building social-ism in our fatherland.39Penal policy in Czechoslovakia was also di-

36 Reg. C. Bratislava, January 16, 1952, 4 Tk751/51; Coll. Dec., Crim., No. 117 (1952), pp.237-239.

37 For recent criticism of these practices see,the editorial "Ucinne pomahat upevnovanizakonnosti" (The effective Help in Strengtheningthe Legality), Pravnik, No. 7 (1963), p. 522.38 Reg. C. Prague, December 16, 1949, To II225/49; Coll. Dec., Crim., No. 18 (1950), pp.25-26.39 Supr. C., March 4, 1956, (no number); Coll.Dec., Crim., No. 34 (1956), pp. 80-83. This was amurder case with strong political overtones. The

crime occurred in an unidentified village inSlovakia. The accused M. I. was not a kulak but"before the war he spent six years in Canada,where he got acquainted with the capitalist styleof life, with making undeserved profit ...." (Itshould be mentioned that this reasoning was notvery imaginative. Before the war Czechoslo-vakia had exactly the same evil capitalism as


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734 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWrected "against the vestiges of capitalist ideasin people's minds,"40 i.e., against ideologicaland hereditary enemies. Listening to foreignbroadcasts constituted the criminal offense of"incitement." The citizen who privately ex-pressed his dislike of the government com-mitted the crime of "endangering the publicinterest through action hostile to the people'sdemocracy."'41 Judges in dealing with this kindof hostility were obliged, first of all, to deter-mine the class and political background of theaccused. The Supreme Court decreed this tobe the only correct approach, even in thosecases where the defendant committed hisverbal delict while totally drunk and hencepresumed not to be legally responsible for hisact.42In cases involving the clergy, the courts didnot question their political loyalty becausenone was expected.43 The Vatican Decree con-cerning the excommunication of Communistsfurnished the Party with the welcome oppor-tunity to cross swords with the CatholicCanada so that the accused did not have to crossthe ocean in order to acquire reprehensiblehabits.) Although the crime was committed underheavy influence of alcohol, the Supreme Courtconcluded that "the hatred of the accused M. I.toward J. T. originated from the fact that thevictim was a man of splendid character and pro-gressive attitudes who gave himself entirely tothe service of the people and worked tirelesslyfor the socialization of the village." Hence, thecourt concluded that the defendant "murderedJ. T. because of his activity in the Local People'sCommittee and in the socialization of the village."Under normal circumstances the defendant wouldhave been sentenced to loss of liberty for 15-25years, ace. to Sect. 216, par. 1, P. C. In this casehowever the crime was adjudged to be a so-called "qualified murder" under especiallyaggravating circumstances, under Sect. 216,par. 1, 2, lit. c, P. C. The death penalty resulted.

40 Explanatory memorandum to the Penal Codeof 1950.

41 Supr. C., December 17, 1954, 1 Tz 260/54;Coll. Dec., Crim., No. 13 (1955). Supr. C., October17, 1952; Coll. Dec., Crim., No. 67 (1953), pp.112-4.

42 Supr. C., April 20, 1950, Tz I 73/49; Coll.Dec., Crim., No. 234 (1950), pp. 350-2. V. Vydraand 0. Vymetal "Nepricetnost pri alkoholickychotravach" (Irresponsibility Caused by AlcoholicIntoxication), Socialisticka zakonnost No. 10(1956), p. 614.

43 Minister of Information Vaclav Kopecky inRude pravo, June 12, 1952.

clergy. Reading the Decree to believers fromthe pulpit was considered by the courts to be acrime of high treason, as was obedience to thebishop's order to distribute copies of theDecree to other priests.44 The priest who deniedthe last sacrament to an excommunicatedCommunist committed high treason, and thepriest who expressed his concern about theuncertain future of the Church in Czechoslo-vakia committed, in the view of the RegionalCourt at Nitra, a serious political crime.45By 1958 the classic enemies (group I-A, I-B)were extinguished, and the classic enemies ofgroup I-C no longer consisted of self-madeamateurish conspirators, but more elusiveprofessionals. The ideological enemies (groupII) were either liquidated or had learned to becareful about disclosing their identity. Ofnecessity, the class struggle, which was be-coming more and more artificial, was divertedtoward the hereditary enemies (group III).At this stage the Communist Party enun-ciated this dogma: Criminality is on the de-cline, and the majority of the offenders werenow individuals with a bourgeois background(III-A).4 New offenses, notably speculation(Sect. 134-a) and parasitism (Sect. 188-a) wereformulated and employed by the courts, es-pecially against the urban III-A group, withrather specious reasoning as, for instance,charging parasitism against someone for workdone without state authorization. The heredi-tary enemies were also made responsible forthat most popular of Czechoslovak crimes,pilferage of socialist property.48 This policyhas to some extent survived to this day.

44State Court, January 10, 1950; Coll. Dec.,Crime No 67 (1950), pp. 97-98. State Court,January 19, 1950; Coll. Dec., Crim., No. 116 (1950),pp. 168-169. Supr. C., November 19, 1949, To201/49; Coll. Dec., Crim., No. 1 (1950), pp. 1-2.

45 Supr. C., September 30, 1949, To 144/49;Coll. Dec., Crim., No. 51 (1949), pp. 66-75. Reg.C. Nitra, March 29, 1949, To 52/49; Coll. Dec.,Crime No. 15 (1949), pp. 20-21.

46 Vaclav Skoda in Rude pravo, July 21, 1958.Jan Bartuska in Rude pravo, September 20, 1961.Zemedelske noviny, April 26, 1961.

47 Supr. C., July 11, 1958, 1 Tz 152/58; Coll.Dec., Crim., No. 88 (1958), pp. 224-225. Cf., ibid.,pp. 69-53, 81-83.

48 Ochrana socialistickeho vlastnictvi. Sbornikpravnich predpisu (Protection of Socialist Owner-ship: Collection of Legal Provisions), (Prague:Orbis, 1960), pp. 49, 53. "The Pilfered Treasury:Crimes against 'Socialist' Property," East Europe,No. 1 (1959), pp. 14-25.


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CLASS STRUGGLE AND SOCIALIST JUSTICE IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 735V. ROLE OF CIVIL LAW

A body of non-punitive law49 has also beenused as a weapon of class warfare, though itsdiscriminatory features are less obvious thanin criminal law.50Moreover, the civil judiciaryhad not had much impact upon certain groupsof class enemies. Instead the urban exploiters(I-A-1) were victimized by other means,e.g., by confiscatory decrees, administrativedecisions and criminal law courts. The verynature of civil law precluded its use in sup-pressing classic enemies of the I-C category.The non-punitive law and the judges acting inthis sphere of jurisdiction did, however contrib-ute to the collectivization of agriculture and tothe liquidation of kulaks (I-A-2). This part ofthe judiciary also played an important role indiscriminating against ideological (group II)and hereditary (group III) enemies, mainly inthe domestic relations and inheritance agenda.The Civil Code of 19501 introduced a rangeof vague, ambiguous and even contradictoryprovisions, well suited to extensive interpre-tation and biased application in class warfare.On the one hand, "Civil rights shall be pro-tected by law" (Section 2); on the other hand,however, "No one shall be permitted to misusecivil rights to the detriment of the society"(Section 3). The individual's rights were thusannulled whenever the court found them in-compatible with such clauses as "law," "rulesof socialist community life," "fulfillment of theeconomic plan," "common interest" or "im-portant common interest." The Code aboundedin such clauses which it failed to define.52The Code of Civil Procedure, which "enablesthe courts to fulfill its political-education

49 The term "non-punitive" seems to be moresuitable because the Civil Code no longer reg-ulates matters of family, labor, etc.50 Cf. Chalupa, op. cit., p. 243: "The civiljudiciary and that part of criminal judiciarywhich has no political aspect, stand in the back-ground of the interest of the communist state."

51 Act No. 141 of 1950 Coll., effective as ofJanuary 1, 1951.52 For the theoretical difficulty in this respect cf.Frantisek Stajgr and Ferdinand Boura, Prokura-tor v obcanskem soudnim rizeni (The Prosecutor inthe CivilfLaw Procedure), (Prague: Orbis, 1955),p. 65; Vitezslav Provaznik, "K pravidlum social-istickeho souziti a zasadam slusnosti ve vztahu k

obecnemu zajmu "(The Rules of Socialist Com-munity Life and Principles of Equity in Relation-ship to Common Interest), Socialisticka zakon-nost, No. 7 (1957), pp. 796-806.

function,"53 employed the same practices oflimitation. A litigant had no right to free dis-position of his claim (withdrawal, conciliatorysettlement, etc.). The court, before granting amotion, was obliged to ascertain that the "pub-lic interest would be served" (Section 76C.C.P.). The judges were encouraged to reducethe award if the common interest intervenedand if "the precise procedure according to thelaw was inconflict with the legal feeling [pravniciteni] of our people."54The successful litigant was entitled to havehis court costs, including attorneys' fees,wholly compensated by the losing opponent(Section 129 C.C.P.). However, for "reasonsworthy of special consideration" (Section 130),this right could be denied. The rationale of thisprovision is well demonstrated in a decision ofthe Supreme Court on an alleged violation ofsocialist justice by a lower court:If the Regional Court had considered correctly thesocial profile of the litigants, in which light theplaintiff was the widow of a merchant and thedefendant a worker and her husband, a normovac,while the defendants are of proletarian origin andwere honored several times as exemplary workers... it [Regional Court] would have had to arriveat the conclusion that the circumstances of thiscase were worthy of special consideration, thusfulfilling the requirements for the application ofSect. 130, C.C.P. Because the Regional Courtfailed to do so, it violated the law in its provisionsSects. 1, 130, 88.2 C.C.P. and Sects. 3, 4 of theAct No. 66 of 1952 Coll.55Class enemies through the same applicationof the second level bias were also denied exemp-tion from paying court fees and/or deposits."6The number of litigations in which an indi-vidual would challenge the contractual obli-

53Komentar k obcanskemu soudnimu radu (TheCommentary of the Code of Civil Procedure),(Prague: Orbis, 1957), p. 29. Act No.142 of 1950Coll., effective as of January 1, 1951.64 Viktor Knapp, Splneni zavazku a jinezpusoby jejich zaniku, (Fulfillment of the Obliga-tions and Other Forms of Their Termination),(Prague: NCSAV, 1955), p. 173.56 Supr. C., June 13, 1958, Cz 222/58; Coll. Dec.,Civ., No. 94 (1958), pp. 206-8; cf., Coll. Dec., Civ.,No. 90 (1951), No. 7 (1953), Nos. 44, 113(1956). Normovac denotes a white collar employeewho sets up the output norms for the workers.56 Reg. C. Plzen, April 18, 1958, 5 Co 188/58;Coll. Dec., Civ., No. 95 (1958), pp. 208-209.Komentar, op. cit., p. 561. Cf., Coll Dec., Civ., No.86 (1953).


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76 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW

gatik a of the State dropped considerably, duealso to tlic common knowledge that a citizen,and a class enemy in particular, could hardlyexpect to be~successful in a contest with theEstablishment. (Onesuch class enemy (I-B-1),seeking an exception to the rule had the follow-ing experience:In 1950, a former bandsdirector living on a 5,000Kcs pension, submitted to the court a claimagainst a bank, a national e terprise, for paymentof 950,000 Kcs. He based his claim on a contractconcluded under capitalism v !t+hthe bank inwhich he held a prominent position. According tothis contract the bank allededly oblige ed itself topay him a bonus of 10,000 Kcs monthly to hispension. This director was so impertinent that inthe people's democratic state and at the people'sdemocratic court he dared to present his claim fora colossal amount of money and speculated thatthe court would decide in favor of this groundlessand illegal [sic] claim. It is self-evident that thecourt rejected the claim . . ..7

In tort suits, Section 358 C.C. furnished thecourts with the opportunity to reduce theamount of indemnification on the basis of the''personal characteristics of the wrongdoer."This term in practice called for an evaluationof the defendant's social class status. If thedefendant were a worker, he might have beengranted the benefit of Section 358, providedthat the plaintiff was a class enemy. Whereboth parties belonged to the working class,the application of this provision was out ofquestion.5"Following the Soviet example, in Czechoslo-vakia family relations were excluded from theCivil Code and constituted as an independentlegal discipline. Its class bias was appliedmainly in parent-child relationships.The Code on Domestic Relations was de-signed "in accordance with the ideas and withthe interests of the working people's politicaland economic power."59 The political motiva-tion of this Act can be clearly observed in thecourts' practice with regard to divorce. AsProfessor Frantisek Stajgr pointed out, "Indivorce cases, it is frequently possible to detect,under the surface disorder of a marriage, the

57 "tVolime soudee," op cit., p. 469.18 Reg. C. Karlovy Vary, July 3, 1951, Co Ok

56/51; Coll. Dec., Civ., No. 144 (1951), pp. 204-205.59Alexej Cepicka, New Family Legislation inCzechoslovakia (Prague: Ministry of Information,1950), p. 7. Act No. 265 of 1949 Coll.

reflection of class conflicts in society."80 Po-litical considerations dominated the decisionwhether the marriage was to be dissolved andalso the question of guilt. For example, in theopinion of the Regional Court at Usti n.L.:The fact that the wife informed the police withgood reason about her husband, who had em-bezzled some property from a national enterprise,could by no means be held against her and couldnot constitute a grave reason for a rift in themarriage.61On the other hand, the conditions for granting adivorce were met if the wife resisted politicalre-education by her husband.82 In the light ofthese examples, it is not surprising that aclassic enemy (I-C), became the losing partyin a divorce proceeding. In the reasoning of theRegional Court at Ostrava:There is no doubt that the anti-state activity it-self, proving the defendant to be an enemy of thepeople's democracy who joined the rank of theenemies of the working class, must have causeddisdain and disgust on the part of his wife, who isloyal to the people's democracy and destroyed allher emotions for the defendant, even if such emo-tions still existed.63

In the parent-child relationship, both thesocial and political background of parents havebeen the paramount factors in custody cases.The courts "first of all, have to examine theparents' attitude toward the people's demo-cratic regime,"64 their ability to "develop inthe children the qualities of character necessaryfor every member of the socialist communityand, in particular, to nourish in them love forthe people's democratic fatherland.65 Thus, ina case where the father was "reactionary-minded, disagreeing with the principles of thepeople's democratic system," the two daugh-ters were entrusted to the "mother who re-60 Frantisek Stajgr in Pravnik (June 1959)

quoted in "Discrimination," East Europe, (De-cember, 1959), p. 6.61Reg. C. Usti n. L., 7 OK 93/52, quoted in J.Andrlik et al., Komentar k zakonu o pravu rodin-nem (Commentary of the Code of Domestic Rela-tions), (Prague: Orbis, 1954), p. 117.

62 Reg. C. Pardubice, 5 OK 32/52; ibid.63 Reg. C. Ostrava, May 8, 1951 11 OK 34/51;Coll. Dec., Civ., No. 7 (1952), pp. 11-12.64 Reg. C. Ceske Budejovice, 6 OK 140/51; cf.

Reg. C. Banska Bystrica, OK 50/51; Andrlik, op.cit., pp. 154-155.

65 Reg. C. Prague 17 OK 23/52; Reg. C. CeskeBudejovice, 6 OK 136/51; ibid, p. 152.


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CLASS STRUGGLE AND SOCIALIST JUSTICE IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 737married, although this fact was entirely irrele-vant."6"The emphasis on ideology also reducedthe importance of other factors such as thefinding that the mother was living unmarriedin the household with another man.67 In viewof these findings, one might question the sin-cerity of the Code's claim that its ultimateinterest was the welfare of the children.

VI. DESTALINIZATIONThe passing of Stalin in March, 1953, and ofhis disciple and Czechoslovak leader KlementGottwald, who obediently followed the masterten days later, produced no immediate changesin the policy of class warfare described above.Stalinist practices in the judiciary also sur-vived Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalinand the terror of his era at the Twentieth Con-

gress of the Soviet Communist Party in Febru-ary, 1956, and, even more surprisingly, man-aged to survive the allegedly monumental his-torical change of 1960, when Czechoslovakiaprogressed from a people's democracy, thetransient period of development, into genuinesocialism, that is from the state of class warfareto the state of class harmony.Destalinization, understood as at least apartial restoration of the rule of law againstuninhibited political arbitrariness, did notreach Czechoslovakia before 1963. The twomost significant factors that retarded thisdevelopment were, first, the resistance to achange on part of the country's intolerant,unimaginative and narrow-minded stalinistleadership, and, second, the impact of theHungarian revolution of 1956. The Hungarianevents supplied the Party with ample argu-ments for not experimenting with magnanim-ity. Liberalization could easily get out of hand:if you showed leniency to the class enemy, hein turn would cut your throat as he was busyin doing in Budapest (A rather unlikely as-sumption in view of the essentially Schweikianand compliant esprit of the Czechs.). TheHungarian revolution did not accelerate butdelayed the advent of destalinization and thezenith of power of political caprice over lawwas reached as a reaction to this challenge tothe totalitarian rule, almost four years afterthe death of Stalin.There was only one significant attempt tochallenge the excessive class discrimination,that raised by a group of authors of the Com-

B6 Distr. C. Policka, February 24, 1950, P138/46; Coll. Dec., Civ., No. 9 (1951), pp. 16-18.67 Distr. C. Decin, 3 P 23/52; cf., Reg. C. Zilina,5 OK 92/51; Andrlik, op. cit., pp. 152-4.

mentary to the Code of Civil Procedure, pub-lished in 1957.68 Their reasoning went as fol-lows:Once we speak about the class character of social-ist legality, we have to keep in mind, first of all,that tridnost ["class essence"] is not somethingexisting outside the law which might be condi-tioned-as it is thought sometimes-by a freedeliberation of courts. Class character emanatesfrom the sense and purpose of the law and cannotbe 'added' to it. This 'adding' tridnost leads toillegality and in many cases to open arbitrari-ness.... We consider therefore that view incor-rect which makes the class profile (or even themere class origin) a matter of specific evidence.The class profile (origin) is an objective socio-political fact which exists outside the court pro-ceedings. The court, therefore, must not make itan object of the suit and an object of special evi-dence.69In a nutshell, this was the premise: Law, beinga product of the ruling class, is always a classlaw. Objective interpretation of these classlaws is the only correct one, whereas anyextra-legem class approach goes beyond theconfines of class justice. Or, to put it in termsof the model of three levels of bias, the authors,while acknowledging the legitimacy of thefirst level (bias of law), rejected the others (biasin interpretation and the outside pressures).This challenge was strongly condemned byMinister of Justice Vaclav Skoda, who, whilesilent on the intervention of party authoritiesin adjudication by the courts (Bias III), de-fended most emphatically the second level biasas implemented by the interpreters of the law,the judges:There are views heard that class character ismerely inherent in the law and, therefore, classapplication of the law is not justified. Some legaltheoreticians and also judges ... even call theclass approach in civil law social discrimination,because the class profile, they say, is an objectivesocio-political reality which remains outside thecourt proceedings.The Minister, without confirming or denyingthe existence of discrimination by the judges,

68 Komentar, op. cit.; Among the sixteen authorsthe most prominent was Ferdinand Boura. Boura,at the age of 32, became Dean of the Law Schoolof Charles University in Prague. Incurably ill, hedied in 1957. His obituary is found in Socialistickazakonnost, No. 3 (1957), pp. 145-147.

69 Komentar. op. cit., pp. 14, 24.


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738 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWwent on to extol unlimited class struggle, stat-ing that. . . the judge, in order to discover the substantivetruth and to decide justly, must discover andclarify the class substance of every case he is deal-ing with. Otherwise, he will have violated socialistjustice.Skoda rejected the views of the authors of theCommentarywithout further ado and concludedthat if their. . . formalistic approach excludes class characterfrom the application of the law, it must lead toviolation of socialistic justice, to the detriment ofthe working class and to the benefit of the bour-geoisie. For these reasons, such views must becharacterized openly as revisionism.70Nobody since Skoda has formulated the offi-cial policy on class justice more candidly.The high tide of class militancy in the post-1956 period affected mainly the sphere of non-punitive law. In the old days of stalinism, aclass enemy was discriminated against if hisopponent in litigation belonged to the workingclass. In a suit not involving class enemies, thecourts generally functioned free of bias. By1958, however, this latitude was overridden bythe requirement to pursue a rigorous classapproach in all the trials regardless of thelitigants' background. Instead of discrimina-tion solely against class enemies of the I, II,III groups, the victims now might includepolitically loyal individuals with harmless so-cial backgrounds if their opponents in the suitwere more loyal and more proletarian. The fol-lowing two custody rulings by the SupremeCourt in 1958 illustrate this new policy.The first case involved a dispute between afather and the sister of his deceased wife overthe custody of his child. Despite the fact thatthe "father as well as his parents are loyalcitizens who would guarantee a good upbring-ing of the child," and, despite the provision ofthe Code (Section 55, par. 2) vesting parentalauthority with the surviving parent, in theopinion of the Supreme Court the lower courtviolated the principles of socialist justice be-cause it failed to pay adequate attention to thefact that the aunt demanding custody of thechild, "was a functionary of CzechoslovakYouth Organization who had been sent by herplant in 1957 to the Soviet Union to participatein the Sixth World Youth Festival."'7'The second case is of a similar nature: A

70 Vaclav Skoda in Socialisticka zakonnost, No.7 (1958), pp. 404-411.71 Supr. C., May 22, 1958, Cz 198/57; Coil.Dec., Civ., No. 85 (1958), pp. 187-189. Italicsmine.

divorced couple, both members of the workingclass, were disputing the custody of their onlychild. Because of the mother's incurable illnessand apparent lack of competence to raise thechild, the father won the case. The SupremeCourt annulled the decision, emphasizing:The child's grandfather from the mother's side isthe chairman of the Uniform Agricultural Co-operative and of the local organization of theCommunist Party of Czechoslovakia. This educa-tional environment guarantees the right way tobring up a child to become a politically loyal mem-ber of our society.72

It is ironic that, in this atmosphere of inten-sive emphasis on class warfare, the Party de-cided in 1960 to commemorate the fifteenthanniversary of the country's liberation by theRed Army by declaring that Czechoslovakiahad just passed the temporary phase of apeople's democracy and achieved socialism.73The achievement of socialism, by definition,signified the extinction of the last hostile class.Enemies were annihilated, class antagonismceased to exist, but against all logic-exceptthat of a totalitarian state-class discrimina-tion against non-existent enemies had to con-tinue. Doctrinal considerations were overriddenby the political imperative not to give up theconcept of the class enemy, that useful scape-goat justifying the indispensability of arbitrarypower. As noted earlier, in the late fifties thecategories of available enemies had shrunk tothe group of hereditary enemies (III-A, III-B),and the term "exploiting class" was replacedby "remnants of exploiting classes."74 In 1960,the "remnants" being too microscopic, theformula was no longer satisfactory, promptingthe Party to search for a further semantic im-provement. The term, "remnants of bourgeoismentality," was therefore coined and sincetheir survival was partly conditioned by the"existence of the capitalist part of theworld,"75 the enemies became candidates for

72 Supr. C., April 29, 1958, Cz 71/58; Coll. Dec.,Civ., No. 97 (1958), pp. 211-212.73 Cf., Zdenek Jicinsky and Pavel Levit,"Strana-organizatorka vystavby socialistickehostatu" (The Party, Organizer of the Constructionof a Socialist State), Pravnik, No. 9 (1961), p. 744.74 Jan Bartuska, "Upevnenim socialistickezakonnosti k zvysene ochrane naseho zrizeni avymozenosti lidu" (Through Strengthening So-cialist Justice to the Increased Protection of OurRegime and Of Achievements of the People),Socialisticka zakonnost, No. 1 (1958), p. 9.75 Frantisek Stajgr, "The Courts and the Officeof the Prosecutor Under the New Constitution,"Bulletin of Czechoslovak Law, XVIII (1960), p.105.


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CLASS STRUGGLE AND SOCIALIST JUSTICE IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 739longevity, if not immortality. The then FirstDeputy Minister of Justice, Josef Litera, pres-ently President of the Supreme Court, wrotein 1961:The members of the exploiting classes are stillliving among us. Because of their former parasiticmode of life and because progress has not taughtthem anything, they commit crimes under the in-fluence of the enemies from abroad, in particularof the agents of American imperialism.76

Similarly, nothing of substance has changedwith respect to the pattern of threefold biases(law-interpretation-pressure). The new Consti-tution and the new fundamental codes containthe first level bias, similar to or identical withits predecessors. The Acts repeat the old, am-biguous, vague provisions, the rules that tol-erate exceptions to the rule and are abundantlyconditioned by phrases such as "compliancewith the mode of socialist community life."77The second-level bias, that of the interpreterof the law, had also been retained as an inherentcharacteristic of socialist legality. Though thenumber of published discriminatory decisionsand articles extolling the virtue of class mil-itancy has decreased compared to the "people'sdemocratic era," one still encountered author-itative statements commanding judges to an-alyze very carefully the offender's class back-ground in criminal proceedings,78 and to applyclass bias in all fields of non-punitive law,ranging from matters of family relations to theexemptions from court fees.79Continuation of the outside pressures intoadjudication (Bias III) at that time was pub-licly neither confirmed nor refuted.Despite some indications of liberalization,such as the admission at the Twelfth PartyCongress in December 1962 that the majorityof verdicts in political trials were not just,80

76 Josef Litera, "Za dalsi upevnovani socialistickezakonnosti a zlidoveni soudnictvi" (TowardsFurther Strengthening of Socialist Justice andPopularization of the Judiciary), Socialistickazakonnost, No. 1 (1961), p. 4.

77 Civil Code, Section 35, par. 2; cf., Section 39and Article VI. New legislation: Constitution,Act. No. 100 or 1960 Coll; Criminal Code, Act No.140 of 1961 Coll; Civil Code, Act No. 40 of 1964Coll.78 Socialisticka zakonnost, No. 6 (1961), p. 335.

79 "Typicke zavady v obeansko pravnimrizeni" (Typical Shortcomings in the Civil LawProcedure), Socialisticka zakonnost, No. 8 (1961),pp. 478-492. On page 484 there is a reference to atypically stalinist decision No. 95, Coll. Dec., Civ.,(1958), still a binding guide.

80 Rude pravo, December 5, 1962.

this destalinization, at best nominal, lasteduntil 1963, a year of substantial challenge tothis peculiar form of "thaw," and of somechange in the political climate. An attempt tosingle out the prime cause of the change mustend in the futility of mere speculation. Theprolonged stalinist practices came under attackdue to the cumulative impact of several in-fluences. Notable among them were the diffi-culties with the over-centralized economy-accompanied by a drop in living standard, bygrowing restiveness among some of the writers,young intellectuals, and the Slovak "nation-alists," and by general frustration with destal-inization more in words than in deeds. "Themultiplying quantity of impatience was aboutto assume a new quality," dialectically speak-ing.The issue of the rehabilitation of the Slanskygroup became the testing ground between theadvocates of liberalization and the "dogma-tists," resisting the change. If the leadershipwere to admit the innocence of Rudolf Slanskyand his companions, hanged in December of1952, such a confession would have been read asan implicit indictment of exercises in arbitrari-ness and illegality in general, a move the Partywas reluctant to undertake. Least anxious totake such action was the head of the Party,Antonin Novotny, once publicly credited withhaving unmasked Slansky's heinous crimes.81Parallel to the snail-like pace of destalini-zation there proceeded the tactics of a gradualwhitewashing of the Slansky group. One byone, the charges were reduced until on August22, 1963 the Party declared the sins of the ill-fated late Secretary General to be non-exis-tent.82Almost simultaneously, the legal periodicalsstarted a soul-searching campaign demandingthe restoration of the rule of law. I have con-tended in an article published elsewhere83that,first, the leadership commissioned the juriststo start the campaign in order to shift theblame and responsibility for "stalinist distor-tions of legality" from the Party to the judicia-ry, to the judges who, after all, signed the ver-dicts sending innocent men to the gallows.Second, this engineered exercise in criticismwent at least partially out of control: in thepages of Pravnik, Pravny zivot and Socialistickazakonnost it transcended the cliches of mereattacks on the anonymous cult of personality,according to which everybody and therefore

81Karol Bacilek, the then Minister of Security,in Rude pravo, December 18, 1952.

82 Rude pravo, August 22, 1963.83 Otto Ulc, "Czechoslovakia's Restive Jurists,"

East Europe (December, 1965), pp. 19-25.


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740 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWnobody in particular was responsible for in-justices committed. Thus we read in Pravnikthis confession, characteristic of the mood ofthe day:The liquidation of the cult of personality in thediscipline of law and legality (and, naturally, notonly in these two fields) brought about an un-precedented ideological commotion and enthusi-asm, followed by a moral catharsis.84"The cult of personality reserved for itself themonopoly to think," the writers assert. It de-graded legal science to something on a levelwith primitive propaganda, and "it representeda power hard to control. Because power carrieswithin itself a potential evil, the threat isgreater when power is unlimited."85The writers have not left many stones un-turned in the now discredited judicial edifice.Their criticism and demands may be viewedwithin the theoretical framework of the typol-ogy of the class enemies and of the three levelsof bias. As for the former, the class enemy as asocial category was rejected. The practices ofclass warfare symptomatic of the period ofpeople's democracy were invalidated by theachievement of socialism, by "the transforma-tion of the dictatorship of the proletariat into a[vselidova] socialist democracy of all the peo-ple."86 Class discrimination was no longer ten-able; it imperilled social tranquility,87 it con-tradicted socialist humanism, 88 and, as thenovelist, Ivan Klima, who occasionally writesabout law and legality put it,The hypertrophic application of the principle of'class' not only cause immediate damage by dis-qualifying able men and granting preferment toincompetent ones but, first of all, instead of realvalues it promoted fictitious values, independentof man, of his work, of his thinking. Awarenessthat in society there exist fictitious values andprivileges, determining a man's destiny at birth(whether these are proprietary, racial or class

84 Editorial "K aktualnim otazkam ideologickeprace" (Urgent Problems of Ideological Activ-ities), Pravnik, No. 4 (1964), p. 301.85 Vojtech Hatala, "Kult osobnosti a niektorenoeticke a eticke problemy nasho trestnehoprava" (Cult of Personality and Some Noeticaland Ethical Problems of Our Criminal Law),

Pravrny bzor, No. 2 (1964), pp. 66, 67, 69.86 Editorial "K vysledkum XII. sjezdu KSC"(On the Results of the Twelfth Congress of theCommunist Party of Czechoslovakia), Social-isticka zakonnost, No. 1 (1963), pp. 2-3.

87 "K aktualnim," op. cit., p. 319.88 "Kainovo znameni" (Cain's Stigma), Social-

isticka zakonnost, No. 2 (1964), p. 45.

values), always denigrates the category of free-dom and stifles the energy of every man.89Strange as it may seem, the critics, save forminor objections, did not question the validityof the first-level bias as it was incorporated inthe laws. A doctrinaire presumption of the in-ner class character of the legislative acts sanc-tioned the vagueness, the escape clauses andthe host of discriminatory formulae, such asthe distinction between the citizen's "personal"(osobni) and "private" (soukrome) ownership,between "good" and "bad" property, with thelatter left unprotected by the law.90The third-level bias (outside pressures) be-came a frequent target of criticism in the cam-paign. The political functionaries were chargedwith obstructing the pursuit of socialist justiceand with substituting themselves for thejudicial authority.9' It is significant, however,that most of the blame was laid, not at the doorof "individuals with dictatorial taste," "ca-reerists," and "those who usurped 'confidence'and jurisdiction to decide in the name of theParty and of the working class"92but with thejudges who permitted (i.e., were forced to per-mit) these practices.93The acceptance of the first-level bias and therejection of the third level injected no noveltyinto the discourses about the meaning of social-ist legality. The latter bias used to be criticizedeven in the era of people's democracy, thoughwith far less vehemence. The most substantialdifference between the past attempts to restorethe rule of law and the campaign that lastedfrom 1963 to 1965, revolved around the second-level bias, namely that of the interpreter andadministrator of the law. While in 1957 theParty, through Minister Vaclav Skoda, re-buffed the attempt of the authors of the Com-mentary to dispose of the second-level bias,this time no one from the Establishment stoodup to repeat Skoda's reasoning. The Party,by acquiesence, dropped the legitimacy of thesecond-level bias and disclaimed any respon-sibility for its eventual recurrences. To sum up:officially the realm of class justice was left only89 Literarni noviny, January 25, 1964.90Civil Code, Sections 125-135.91Ivan Klima in "Anketa," Socialisticka zakon-nost, No. 5 (1964), p. 6.92 Ladislav Schubert, "K principu dodrzo-vania socialistickej zakonnosti" (About thePrinciple of Maintaining Socialist Legality),Pravny obzor,No. 6 (1963), pp. 323-325.93 Michal Lakatos, "K otazce nezavislostisoudcovskeho rozhodovani" (Problem of theIndependence of Judicial Decision-Making),

Pravny obzor, No. 2 (1964), p. 89.


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CLASS STRUGGLE AND SOCIALIST JUSTICE IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 741with the first-level bias and with no classenemies around.Some disturbing evidence, however, callsfor caution against accepting at face value thesudden restoration of the rule of law over pol-itics. First, the prevailing note of the criticismis that of lack of concreteness. Indignation withsins, manifold and specific, is not accompaniedby any identification of the sinners. Not onesingle prosecutor or judge has been called astalinist guilty of the "cult of personalitypractices." Even a bold critic like Brestanskywill not go further than to refer to "a certaininvestigator on a recent interdepartmental con-sultation in a certain district."94 Second, whilethis restraint may be an evidence of prudentcaution in some, misgivings and suspicion ofinsincerity are hard to suppress with otheradvocates of destalinization including juristssuch as Jicinsky or Boguszak. Until recentlythey were the most outspoken stalinists andtheir sudden conversions seems to be too goodto be true.95 Third, denunciation of illegalitywas not accompanied by any purge of the per-sons responsible, save for four minor officialsof the Ministry of Interior.96 The quartet mostresponsible for the damage, namely Jan Bar-tuska, Josef Litera, Vaclav Skoda and JosefUrvalek have not been held accountable fortheir excesses in interpreting class justice. Bar-tuska remains Prosecutor General and Literahas even been promoted.97 The Ministry of

94Jozef Brestansky, "Porusovanie procesno-pravnych predpisov a jeho hmotnopravne dos-ledky" (Violation of ProceduralRules and Its Sub-stantive Law Consequence), Pravny obzor, No. 2(1964), p. 79. Italics mine."IThis is based on the writer's personal ex-perience, as well as on their pre-1963 publicationsin Stat a pravo, Pravnik and Socialisticka zakon-nost respectively.

96 Rude pravo, August 22, 1963.97 Bartuska maintained that Stalin was thefounding father of Czechoslovakia in 1918. (JanBartuska, Obrana nasi vlasti a boj za zachovanimiru (The Defense of Our Fatherland and theStruggle for the Maintenance of the Peace),(Prague: Orbis, 1953), p. 18. For Bartuska'sstalinism, cf., Rude pravo, June 20, 1957 and De-

cember 14, 1960; Socialisticka zakonnost, No. 1(1958), p. 7. For promotion of Litera, cf. Social-istickesoudnictvi,No. 4 (1963), p. 97. Josef Urva-lek, who sent many innocent men to the gallows,was eulogized by the present Minister of JusticeAlois Neumann as follows: "In the name of theMinistry of Justice and certainly in the name ofall of us, I express the most sincere thanks for thework he [Urvalek] performed for building up our

Justice, the Supreme Court and the lowercourts remain in the hands of the same indi-viduals-former proletarians turned jurists andgraduates of ten-months course, the so-calledPSP (the "Workers' Law School"). These, inmy opinion, are political upstarts and benefi-ciaries of stalinism, hardly willing or capable ofchanging their outlook.98 As one of the criticsput it, "Since for so many years a certain stylein thinking was required and even forced uponthe personnel, one cannot be surprised thatthey have learned to behave that way."99Old habits die hard, especially if their elim-ination depends on the willingness of the pro-teges to abdicate their privileges through arestoration of law. A strange coexistence ofcontradictory values and processes came intobeing, occasionally reminiscent of a dialoguebetween the deaf. On the one hand, class dis-crimination is rejected as obsolete, irrationaland immoral,'00 while, on the other hand, agovernment ordinance of June 24, 1964 furtherreduces the pensions of hereditary enemies(III-A) and members of their families(III-B).'0' A similar class bias may be foundin the provisions of the ordinance on the in-demnification of confiscated real property, of

socialist judiciary and wish him much success inhis new activities in the field of scientific legal re-search." (Socialisticke soudnictvi, No. 4 (1963), p.97.). Urvalek's shift to "scientific activities" isaptly ridiculed by Ladislav Mnacko in his bookOpozdene reportaze (Belated Reports), (Prague:Ceskoslovensky spisovatel, 1964), p. 51. ForSkoda's stalinism, cf. his articles in Socialistickazakonnost, No. 8 (1956), pp. 449-468, and No. 7(1958), pp. 401-416.

98According to the personal knowledge of thiswriter, in 1959 all deputies of the Minister ofJustice were graduates of the "Workers' LawSchool." The PSP men held nineteen posts aschairmen of regional courts out of nineteen avail-able, and eighteen out of nineteen regional pros-ecutor's offices, and almost all important posi-tions at the Supreme Court, mainly in the divisionof criminal law. The same individuals retainedtheir offices as of 1965. Cf., Intelligence ResearchAid, Directory of Czechoslovak Officials, A 65-8(March, 1965), pp. 20, 40.

99Zdenek Krizek in "Diskuse," Pravnik, No. 7(1963), p. 591; cf., Brestansky, op. cit., pp. 77-78,and "K aktualnim otazkam," op. cit., p. 302.

'0 Hatala, op. cit.; Brestansky, op cit., p. 81.101"Adjustment of Benefits of Some Persons,"Ordinance No. 120 of 1964 Coll.; cf. "Kadrovanineboztiku" (Political Screening of the Deceased),Zemedelske noviny, January 23, 1965.


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742 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWthe same year.'02 Among the assurances aboutthe renaissance of law, one still reads aboutjudges who continue to violate the law.'03 Un-like the fifties, there are far fewer class-biaseddecisions published. This finding, however, con-firms a change in editorial policy but notnecessarily a change in adjudication. Equally,without inside information, no judgment canbe passed on the question of the continuationor the decline of third-level bias. For example,nothing is known about the Party havingofficially rescinded the weekly "consultations"of the judges with the apparatchiki from theDistrict Secretaries.Among the legal theorists a considerableuneasiness prevails. The rejection of Vyshin-sky's theories left a gaping hole that no Sovietor domestic authority has filled. Without suchguidance, the theorists seem to steer a middlecourse of cautious, piecemeal heresies. For ex-ample, while one writer defends the continuedcorrelation between criminality and hostilebourgeois idology,'04 two others, instead of re-garding deviant behavior as a reflection of classantagonism, emphasize the need for analyzingcontradictions inherent in socialism.'05 Repre-sentative of the wavering search for firm doc-trinal grounds is the essay by Michal Lakatos,who has attempted to draw the line dividingthe realm of judicial integrity from the Party'ssupervisory powers. Lakatos, who goes to somepain of lengthy reasoning about this veryticklish affair, rejects both extremes, that of theabsolute independence of the judges and thatof "permanent consultation" (implying an ut-ter abdication of judicial responsibility) withthe Party Officials. Instead he recommends acompromise that would leave the judges notindependent of the regime but free from inter-ference on the day-to-day administration oflaw.106

102 Ordinances Nos. 25 and 73 of 1964 Coll.103 "Diskuse," op. cit., p. 585, comment by Schu-

bert; Stepan Flajzar in Socialisticke soudnictvi,No. 2 (1963), p. 34; Ludek Mach, "Skoncovat sdogmatismem ve vychovne praci" (End to Dog-matism in the Educational Activities), Social-isticke soudnictvi, No. 11 (1963), pp. 335-7; Social-isticka zakonnost, No. 2 (1964), pp. 63-64.

104 Miroslav Mamula, "Za dalsi prohloubeniboje proti kriminalite" (For Further Deepening ofthe Struggle Against Criminality), Socialistickazakonnost, No. 6 (1965), p. 7.

105 Jiri Boguszak and Zdenek Jicinsky, "Kproblemum socialisticke zakonnosti" (Problem-atics of Socialist Legality), Pravnik, No. 3 (1965).

106 Lakatos, op. cit., cf.; Rude pravo, August 18,1965.

Despite the unmistakable signs of an honestdesire on part of many jurists to terminate thesubordination of law to politics, the presentsituation has to be read as a change in form,or degree, rather than in substance. As notedat the beginning of this article, no one canreasonably expect the Communist Party tovote itself out of power, or to abandon com-pletely and for good the discriminatory conceptof class justice and to make law superior topolitics. The process of destalinization hasmodified but not entirely changed the picture oflimited legal certainty and equality, for theselimitations continue to be expressed both in thelaws (first-level bias) and, occasionally at least,in the administration of those laws (the sur-viving occurrences of the officially rejectedsecond-level bias). Similarly, the class enemy(notably as exemplified in the III-A and III-Bcategories), this whipping boy for all seasonsand ultimate justification of arbitrariness, hasnot been definitely extirpated from the Czecho-slovak reality. The logic of totalitarianismcommanded it to go so far but no further.In conclusion, to undertake the risky ventureof some prediction, one may perhaps expect acontinued decrease of political interventioninto judicial processes and gradual abandon-ment of the first-level bias. The most impor-tant vehicle of this anticipated trend is the timefactor. First, almost two decades of decreedrevolutionary militancy converted zeal intofatigue, spontaneity into routine, and, to someextent, transformed intolerance from passioninto lip-service.'07 Second, the aging generationof the rulers, from the top ranks to the districtlevel, the engineers and beneficiaries of stalin-ism, people of narrow outlook and inadequateeducation, will have to vacate the premises forthe younger ones. This university-trained in-telligentsia is probably devoted to socialism butcertainly not to the doctrinal discipline. Theyoung are uninhibited by the Scriptures (e.g.,"Marx and Engels would probably fail to rec-ognize contemporary capitalism")'08 and verymuch disrespectful of the elders tarred with themisdeeds of the stalinist era.'09The issue is not

107 Milan Prucha, "O tolerance" (On Toler-ance), Literarni noviny, July 17, 1965, pp. 1-2.His views rejected by Miroslav Stanec and Jaro-mir Vojnar, "Tolerantni nesouhlas" (TolerantDisagreement), Rude pravo, August 25, 1965.

108 Jan Prochazka, "Pohyb sveta" (Motion ofthe World), Literarni noviny, May 1, 1965, p. 1.

109 "Neverime sobe ani slibum" (We TrustNeither Ourselves Nor Any Promises), ibid.,March 27, 1965, p. 7; Milos Hoznauer, "Nadsenikontra kriticnost" (Enthusiasm Versus Scepti-


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CLASS STRUGGLE AND SOCIALIST JUSTICE IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 743that of a conflict between the "communists"and the "democrats," not even the classicalstruggle for power in the Party Politburo, butone between the lower echelon elites, who re-main in charge of politics, the state adminis-tration, the economy and cultural life and theyoung generation anxious to replace them. Thepresent mini-Stalins in charge of everything,of whom 61.1 percent have not gone beyond

cism), ibid., January 16, 1965, pp. 1-3; DusanRovensky, "Problem made generate nebo nasvsech?" (Problem of the Young Generation Onlyor of Us All?), Nova mysl, No. 3 (1965).

grade school,1"0resist giving in to the pressureof the young aspiring intelligentsia that hasmore to offer than thoughtless loyalty. Thestruggle between the "dogmatists" and the''revisionists" revolves around the issue of thereassertion of brains and competence. Its out-come promises the comfort of cautious opti-mism, of expectation that "class justice," once akey to arbitrariness will be relegated to theemptiness of a cliche, and "justice" (spravedl-nost), still vaguely obscene, will make no oneblush.110 Karel Kotrbaty in Kulturni tvorba, Septem-

ber 9, 1965.

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Class Struggle and Socialist Justice the Case of Czechoslovakia