The Prague Post Online: News: Proposal seeks to ban communists

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July 4th, 2008

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Proposal seeks to ban communists

Move targets symbols of extreme left and right parties

By Markéta Hulpachová
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
October 10th, 2007 issue

For the 74,000 signatories of Zrusmekomunisty.cz, an online petition to “abolish the communist party,” the hammer, sickle and red star represent as real a threat to democracy as the swastika.

Launched in 2005, Zrusmekomunisty.cz bears the signatures of individuals at the forefront of society: ex-dissidents, academics and politicians who call for the criminalization of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM), a modern reincarnation of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (KSČ), the ruling party during the totalitarian era.

“The [KSČM] is basically a relic of Soviet imperialism,” says Senator Jaromír Štětina, one of the petition’s authors.

On Sept. 25, a proposal drafted by a five-member committee including Štětina and Senator Martin Mejstřík to amend a law prohibiting the propagation of extremist parties and their symbols passed its first reading in the Senate.

If approved by the government, the new legislation could lead to the dissolution of the KSČM, which bases its platform on Marxist ideals and remains the third-largest political party nationwide.

According to Štětina, the draft amendment caters to the requests of judges and law enforcement, who have beseeched policymakers to clarify a current law banning the propagation of extremist parties and their symbols.

“The new amendment explicitly prohibits the propagation of Nazism and communism,” Štětina says. Unlike the current legislation’s vague wording, the draft amendment specifically bans gestures and symbols such as the Nazi “Heil” greeting and the communist red star, he adds.

In a modern historical context, the movement to illegalize the KSČM evokes the revolutionary atmosphere of the 1989 revolution, says Charles University political scientist Zdeněk Zbořil.

“If the amendment passed and the president signed it into law, it would be a clear indicator that Czech society has finally resolved to cope with its totalitarian past,” Štětina says.

While other former Soviet bloc countries such as Poland and Hungary took steps to limit the power of their communist parties shortly after the regime’s collapse, the KSČM never gave up its political mandate. When a 1993 law abolished the KSČ, “the KSČM not only took over an integral part of the party headquarters and the KSČ electorate, but it’s also registered at the Interior Ministry as a regional offshoot of the KSČ,” Štětina says.

Since the KSČM never rebuked its Stalinist platform, the party violates the Constitution, which prohibits the existence of any political party that does not rule out the use of violence as a means of seizing power, he adds.

“Karl Marx’s teachings about forced dispossession and Vladimír Lenin’s terrorist theses about violent coups aren’t just an ideological or theoretical platform,” Štětina says. “They are the pillars of the agenda of Czech communists.”

Martyred Marxism

As Štětina and his supporters call for the party’s dissolution, the KSČM calls their efforts “hypocritical” and “undemocratic.”

“The architects of this amendment are basically political extremists,” says KSČM spokeswoman Monika Hoření. “Although both [Mejstřík and Štětina] fared well under the former communist regime and were able to use it for their own gain, they’re the ones introducing these types of proposals. … Their motives are an effort to cover up their own activity in the former regime.”

Denying an affiliation with violence and Stalinism, Hoření dismisses the allegations as “delusions that endlessly plague the minds of Štětina and his followers.”

The KSČM’s program is based on the “Marxist theory of open dialogue with the international communist and leftist movement. … There’s nothing reprehensible about identifying with Marxism,” she adds.

While Štětina agrees with Hoření’s point that prominent leftist political parties exist throughout the European Union, he argues that “unlike here, the communist parties in old EU countries never assumed absolute power and collaborated with occupying forces.”

According to Zbořil, European governments have disparate stances on the legality of leftist parties. While the communist party was banned in Western Germany for a brief period in the 1950s, modern-day Germany does not ban political parties, instead choosing to closely monitor them, he says.

“In most of Europe, communist parties are marginal or internally divided,” he says. “Not even the Baltic states singularly outlaw communism.”

Additionally, Zbořil points out that outlawing the communist party in the Czech Republic could have an adverse affect.

“By banning something at all costs, you risk that the party will gain popularity by becoming martyrlike,” he says. “If someone decides to associating themselves with communism, I’d rather they do it publicly than behind closed doors.”

Markéta Hulpachová can be reached at mhulpachova@praguepost.com

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