Starting in the new year, Czech law criminalizes the promotion and endorsement of communist ideology. First, what exactly does that entail? How is that defined? And then we can get to how that is prosecuted.
Kamil Nedvědický|Photo: Olga Vasinkevič, Radio Prague International
“The new amendment to our Criminal Code concerns communist ideology, which is placed on the same level as Nazi ideology. I think this conclusion is very good. The whole world was full of victims of communism and the Nazi regime. The communist ideology is based on repression, terror, and the liquidation of certain groups of people.”
So the prohibition of communist ideology, does it primarily refer to [communist] symbols like Lenin statues, the hammer and sickle, and that kind of thing? Or does it also include the economic and ideological foundations?
“I think it concerns the system of communist ideology as a whole. Within this system, we can distinguish two main aspects. The first is economic, because Marxism-Leninism is based on economic theories created by Marx, Engels, and others. This system promoted a state-controlled economy over private property and led to the liquidation of entire classes, such as business owners or people who were not members of the working class.
“The second part of the communist ideology concerns symbols and the broader issue of human rights and freedoms. Under communism, discussions of human rights and freedoms were limited to the framework of the Communist Party and communist society. So we can distinguish these two parts of communist ideology, and both had a [negative] impact on humanity, on people’s lives, freedoms, and human rights.”
Do you think there are any concerns about gray areas, for example, where socialism and communism might get lumped together? Is there a distinction when it comes to something like “socialism with a human face”? Could belief in something like that be penalized?
“Researchers and academics are free to discuss socialism and communism. That is not prohibited. What is prohibited under our Criminal Code is the theory or practice of communist regimes, that is, repression against people and terror against specific groups, such as business owners, farmers, and others.”
Photo: Zuzana Jarolímková, iROZHLAS.cz
Socialism and communism are rightly frowned upon for historical reasons, especially in the Czech context, from the 1948 communist coup through to the 1989 Velvet Revolution. The Czech Republic has, again, quite rightly an antagonism toward communist ideology. Do you think that’s why there seems to be little pushback against this law?
“I think that the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and other Central European countries have a unique experience with two totalitarian regimes of the 20th century: National Socialism and communism. This is a major difference compared to countries like France or Italy in Western Europe, which did not experience Communism as a governing system.
“In Western Europe, communism existed mostly at the level of academics or party members, not as a ruling power responsible for state authority. Because of this, the Czech Republic plays a very important role in European and global discussions about totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. We have direct experience with both, and we can meaningfully discuss their similarities and differences.
“However, the most important thing to discuss is their impact. The impact and consequences of these regimes were essentially the same. While there are theoretical differences between National Socialism and communism, the victims were the same—people who fought for democracy, human rights, and freedoms. They were executed, imprisoned, or repressed. That impact must be the starting point of any discussion about totalitarian regimes.”
Figures such as Noam Chomsky and Peter Singer have argued for making Holocaust denial legal. Their position is based on free-speech principles: they believe that allowing such views makes it easier to confront them with evidence, rather than driving them underground and potentially fostering denialism through ignorance.
Do you think there is an argument for maintaining a more pluralistic space? Do you see more polemics when it comes to communism? From an academic perspective, is there any argument you would point to that suggests potential benefits, or do you view this change as a net positive overall?
“We have extensive evidence of the crimes of the Nazi regime. The Holocaust was one of the most horrific events in human history. But we also have substantial evidence of crimes against Jews under Stalinism in the Soviet Union, which was also deeply antisemitic.
“While antisemitism in Nazism was based on race, in communism it was connected to property and class struggle. But both totalitarian regimes of the 20th century were antisemitic, and the result of applying these ideologies was the same: the liquidation of millions and millions of people.”