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.3 The more radical journals of the period commemorated these eventswith enthusiasm, celebrating October 28th as Nationalization Day its offi-cial designation throughout the period of Communist rule as much as for itsconnection to the state s 1918 declaration of independence.Lauding the recent achievements that had taken place on the anniversaryof the republic s independence was by far the most common strategy com-munists employed in their efforts to appropriate the holiday.KlementGottwald highlighted the significance of the recent events associated withthe day in a front-page article in Rudé právo:The holidays of October 28th have become important landmarks in our newstate s development.The proclamation of the nationalization decrees on Octo-ber 28, 1945, and the signing of the two-year plan by the President of the Re-public on October 28, 1946, clearly mark advances in the construction work thatwe have begun in our new, free national life.4Similarly, the philosopher Ladislav Rieger, in an article entitled October28th The Holiday of National Construction in the cultural weekly of thecommunist-dominated trade unions, Lidová kultura, decried the lack of Chapter 7: The Shift in Sensibilities and Generations 141 conscious meaning the holiday had borne in the interwar First Republicand proclaimed that the two-year plan had opened a new era in the life ofour state. 5The stress on the two-year plan is noteworthy, for it reveals a important dif-ference: Communist Party intellectuals and their supporters celebrated theholiday as a signpost toward future glories, while their opponents commem-orated it as a recognition of the past.As Josef Smrkovský, at that time chair-man of the National Land Fund but later a leader of 1968 s Prague Spring re-formers, pointed out, the two-year plan brought a new feeling to October28th.It was no longer a commemoration, in the sense of occupying itself pri-marily with the past, but rather turned Czechs attention to the future. The eraof merely speaking about goals and ideas is ending, Smrkovský wrote, andit was now time to realize hitherto only rhetorical ideals within the frameworkof the economic plan.6 His perception was certainly correct, for the writingsof noncommunist commentators showed a marked tendency toward com-memoration and remembrance, while those in communist-dominated peri-odicals concentrated on the postwar changes and the active responsibilitiesthese brought for the future.7 This difference in styles was mirrored in the in-terpretations of several other political and economic issues.The effect was tocreate the impression that the radical left represented a young and vibrantforce, in contrast to the traditional and occasionally formulaic statements of itsdemocratic socialist and Roman Catholic opponents.The communist endeavor to appropriate October 28th was complementedby moves aimed at undermining the traditional meaning of the holiday.Communists often attempted to establish a connection between the RussianRevolution and the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic.Indeed, theNational Front government as a whole had made this link already in 1945,and the slogan it used, Without November 7th in Russia, There Would HaveBeen No October 28th, 1918, Here, was printed on posters and distributedwidely by the Communist Party to support the argument.8 Rudé právo seditor-in-chief, Gustav Barea, was one of the primary propagators of thisline, arguing that an independent Czechoslovakia could only originate as aconcession on the part of the Western Powers to the powerful revolutionarywave accompanying the Russian Revolution. 9A further strategy mirrored communist intellectuals criticisms of the FirstRepublic by attacking the socialist credentials of October 28th.Communistintellectuals saw the day as a symbol of the quashing of the nation s true rev-olutionary desires by a small circle of reactionary politicians and economi-cally powerful individuals.In this respect Rudé právo viewed the generalstrike of October 14, 1918, and the subsequent declaration of a socialist re-public by the Socialist Council (which ended in failure the day it was pro-claimed) as the true heritage of the birth of the republic.However, many left-socialist critics conceded that in 1918 the national question had achieved 142 Part II: The Interpretation and Reinterpretation of Czech Historypredominance over social objectives.As the Social Democratic daily Právolidu noted, the insufficiencies of October 28, 1918, came about because therevolutionary wave did not have sufficient strength, in addition to breakingthe shackles of political and national bondage, also to overthrow the yoke ofclass oppression. 10 However, Ladislav `toll argued that it was not merelythat the people were dazzled by freedom that acted as a brake on the rev-olution.Returning to the influence of the Russian Revolution, he argued thatpowerful reactionary elements in Czechoslovakia keenly felt the earth-quake, the shifting of the social ground that another, living revolution causedone year before October 28, 1918. In order to ensure that the Czechoslovakrevolution would not reach full flower, `toll confidently concluded, reac-tionaries took steps to isolate this great day from a wider historical connec-tion to the developments of twentieth-century European society, namelyfrom the Great Russian Revolution, whose influence on our national libera-tion is obvious. 11To be sure, a number of moderate commentators argued for the mainte-nance of October 28th s leading position among Czech national holidays.The noted writer Eduard Bass, editor of Svobodné noviny until his death inOctober 1946, wrote a long paean to the freedom Czechoslovakia gained af-ter the 300 years of bondage in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.12 One yearlater Peroutka, his successor as the newspaper s editor, argued that no otherday can be allowed to be in competition with October 28th in the life of thenation. 13 In this view he was supported by the Roman Catholic commenta-tor Vladislav Sís, who reformulated the communist slogan by noting thatwithout October 28th there would not have been the later, today more cel-ebrated, May 5th, and warned against those who today are attempting topush the meaning of October 28th into the shadow of May 5th. 14 That forceswere working to subordinate October 28th to May 5th was similarly recog-nized by the mayor of Prague and chairman of the National Socialist Party,Petr Zenkl.He lashed out at those who denigrated October 28th because oftheir enmity toward the First Republic:It is admittedly true that after last year s May revolution it has become fashion-able in certain circles to describe the first October 28th as something veryimperfect as an opportunity whose fruits we did not turn to our advantageand to look upon the First Republic as some kind of mistake, almost as a newDark Ages.We are told how we did everything, or almost everything, poorly,and how it is now necessary to draw a thick line through all this and begineverything anew from the foundations
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