Czechoslovakia’s Sonderweg? Housing Policies in the Third Republic Era, 1945– 1948 Cover Image

チェコスロヴァキア第三共和国(1945–1948 年)期 における社会政策の変容 ―― 住宅政策の分析を中心に ――
Czechoslovakia’s Sonderweg? Housing Policies in the Third Republic Era, 1945– 1948

Author(s): Yoshiyuki Morishita
Subject(s): History
Published by: Slavic Research Center

Summary/Abstract: Right after WWII, Eastern European countries stood at a crossroads, witnessing, to name but a couple, communization of the state and transfer of millions of ethnic minorities, most notably Germans. Postwar Czechoslovakia was no exception. Czechoslovakia had had three republican periods: the first republic from its independence in 1918 to the collapse in 1938, the second from 1938 to the Nazi occupation in 1939, and the third from 1945 to the beginning of Communist Party rule in 1948. The third republic in particular embraced many alternatives for future social policies, neither capitalistic nor communistic. Focusing on the housing policy from 1945 to 1948, this article aims to elucidate postwar Czechoslovakia’s search for the optimum social policies, addressing the difference between the prewar and the postwar period. I also examine the policy of the transfer of the German population and the settlement of Czechs in the Czech border area, as it was against this backdrop that the new housing policy took form. While the last president of the first republic, Eduard Beneš, returned as president of the new Czechoslovakia, the Communist Party was dominant in the government. On the one hand, the new republic resembled its prewar predecessors in terms of parliamentary democracy. On the other hand, undertaking the nationalization of large enterprises, land reform, and a planned economy, the postwar government attempted to differentiate itself from the prewar regime that had resulted in the Nazi’s invasion and the collapse of the state. The Communists as the largest group in the government could propose their own postwar reforms disposed not toward Soviet-type socialism, but toward “the Czechoslovakian way” or “the bridge between the East and the West.” The highest on the agenda for postwar reconstruction was the housing policy. The postwar government launched a “two-year plan,” the first planned economy for the reconstruction of Czechoslovakia. Notably, the government planned to build and supply 125,000 houses from 1947 to 1948. The government and architects worked in tandem to upgrade the poor prewar housing conditions by revising prewar housing laws. On the one hand, socialist parties and architects criticized the prewar liberalist housing market, exhorting the introduction of state control of the market. Some architects were enthusiastic about grand apartment buildings containing small houses as the socialist type of housing of the future. On the other hand, based on the housing law of 1921, the government decided to provide subsidies for family houses with 80 m2 of floor space, instead of 34 m2 as had been stipulated in 1937, with a view toward improving the housing environment. Moreover, the new government adhering to the Czechoslovakian way, neither liberalist nor socialist, even allowed private properties, while some architects influenced by Soviet architecture insisted on the entire socialization of houses and land.

  • Issue Year: 2012
  • Issue No: 59
  • Page Range: 93-114
  • Page Count: 22
  • Language: Japanese