This is a Patreon episode that we recorded in April of 2022. We decided to post this on our main feed at the request of several of our patrons who said more people should hear it. 

Continuing in the spirit of our discussion about the synthesis of socialism from above and below, we decided to dive a bit deeper into a topic that we have referenced many times in passing. The liberal narrative about the revolution is that it was a coup carried out by the Soviet Union against the will of the Czechoslovak people, but a cursory glance at how the revolution unfolded reveals a much different tale. 

Czechoslovakia 1948- By Joseph Grim Feinberg in Jacobin Magazine 

The Czechoslovak Revolution- By Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart in Foreign Affairs Magazine  

Duchacek, Ivo. “The February Coup in Czechoslovakia.” World Politics2, no. 4 (1950): 511–32. https://doi.org/10.2307/2008933.

Myant, Martin. Socialism and Democracy in Czechoslovakia: 1945 - 1948. Soviet and East European Studies 33. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981.

Music: Hej, slnko vychodí - (Hey, the sun is out) composed by Bartolomej Urbanec and sung in Slovak. 

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