Communist, and mighty proud of it.

last updated 8 January 2015

Czech Republic

Ondrej Neff

Czech Communists still dream of “revenge,” said Ondrej Neff in Prague’s Lidove Noviny. The Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, as the party is now known in the Czech Republic, refuses to change with the times. In other countries, even other former Warsaw Pact countries, the far-left parties don’t actually use the word “communist” in their names. And they certainly distance themselves from the crimes of the Stalin era. Our Communists, though, are old school. They don’t want to join the Party of the European Left—the umbrella group that includes leftists from all over Europe—because that party rejects such quaint practices as one-party rule and mandatory youth groups. This stubbornness would seem counterproductive. After all, the Social Democrats have all but promised the Communists a share in a coalition government if they go mainstream. But in reality, the Communists don’t want “a share” of power. “They want all of it.” They want “to strangle capitalism.” And “we know that by ‘capitalism,’ they mean democracy.”