Intellectuals and Party

Practically from its foundation, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia attracted left-wing intellectuals who saw it as a manifestation of the revolutionary mood that had swept Europe after the First World War. New, new, new is the star of communism […] and there is no modernity outside it, writes Vladislav Vančura in 1921 on behalf of the Devětsil art association, while EF Burian announces that the revolution has entered the action phase, and Stanislav Kostka Neumann addresses workers with the verse: … revolution is not a rhetorical trip, learn to shoot!
However, many artists gradually began to break ranks from the Communist Party. After the accession of Klement Gottwald and his “Karlín boys” to the head of the Communist Party, seven writers (J. Hora, M. Majerová, H. Malířová, SK Neumann, I. Olbracht, J. Seifert, V. Vančura) wrote a manifesto in which they rejected the incompetent greatness of the comrades from the leadership of a party that has only words in common with Lenin’s teachings, but to which the true Leninist spirit is completely foreign. The signatories of the manifesto were expelled from the Communist Party, and at the same time a young generation of communist writers spoke out against them, describing their actions as a serious mistake and a danger to modern cultural production. However, most of the authors of this statement did not fare well, and that is thanks in no small part to the Communist Party. After trial journalist Vladimír Clementis was executed with Rudolf Slánský, poet Ladislav Novomeský was sentenced to ten years in prison as a “bourgeois nationalist”, aesthetician Karel Teige died in October 1951 of a heart attack brought on by an annoying communist press campaign and poet Konstantin Biebl committed suicide three weeks later fearing that a similar campaign would be launched against him as well. The untimely death of František Halas probably spared him a similar fate.