Ceskoslovensko Osmdesátych let/Czechoslovakia in the eighties/La Tchécoslovaquie de années quartre-vingts/Tschechoslowakei der Achtziger Jahre/Checoslovaquia de los anos ochenta [antikvár]

CZECHOSLOVAKIA IN THE EIGHTIESAlois IndraMEMBER OF THE PRESIDIUM OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY 0 F CZ EC H 0 S LO V A KIA AND CHAIRMANOF THE FEDERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE CZECHOSLOVAK SOCIALIST REPUBLICCzechoslovakia that little, unknown country in Central Europe, for which Britain would not go to war, to paraphrase the words uttered in Septemher 1938 by then British Prime Minister Chamberlain. His notorious policy of appeasement culminated in the Munich diktál, and Munich became a synonym for treachery, betrayal and coercion. With disregard of international law and contempt for the view of the majority of its population, without giving its parliament the chance to express its opinion, Czechoslovakia was sacrificed. Its sovereignty was brutally violated and its territory merci-lessly truncated, only to have its Czech-speaking parts occupied by the Nazis half a year later and Slovakia turnéd into a puppet "state" with clergy-dominated fascist regime, an obedient vassal of Berlin. All of this done "to save peace", but peace was not saved. Since then new chapters of the history of the peoples of Czechoslovakia began to be written chapters full of immense suffering as well as of resolute struggle for national liberation and independence, of heavy casualties, of temporary setbacks but alsó of great victories and a successful road to a new life.The people of Czechoslovakia never forgave those responsible for Munich, never acquiesced with the fascist occupation, and our country was never a safe and secure rear for the Nazi "Third Reich". Not even the most brutal terror unleashed by the Nazi cutthroats would bring the nations of Czechoslovakia to their knees, break their national conscious-ness or crush their anti-fascist resistance. The hundreds of thousands imprisoned men and women, nor the long lists of victims of the Nazi executioners, would deter the patriots from organizing ever new resistance groups, distributing anti-fascist pamphlets and leaflets, and conducting sabotage in industry and transport. The Slovak National Uprising, which erupted at the end of August 1944, ranks by its scope and duration among the most important acts of armed popular resistance against fascism in the Second World War. It raised under its banners the demand for a reconstituted Czechoslo-vak Republic as a socially and ethnically just state, and it is therefore rightly defined as the beginning of our national and democratic revolution. The armed struggle against the fascist occupiers continued in the form of partisan warfare and climaxed in May 1945 in the uprising of the Czech people.The dismemberment and occupation of Czechoslovakia were a prologue to the Second World War whose last shots on the European continent were alsó fired on our territory. Our nations mourned 360,000 of their sons and daughters killed on all the frontlines of the war, murdered by Nazi executioners or perished in concentration camps. Hundreds of thousands of men, women as well as children returned from the battlefronts and Nazi prisons and concentration camps with their health ímpaired. Liberated Czechoslovakia inherited an economy plundered by the Nazis and somé of its key industrial plants lay in ruins after American air-raids carried out literally on the eve of the war's end The memory of nations is indestructible and our people drew the logical consequences from their experience. They had learned that the main burden of the struggle for national liberation had been borne by the working class and that the