Central European Papers, 2018 (vol. 6), issue 1

EDITORIAL

Dušan JANÁK

Central European Papers 2018, 6(1):7-9  

Socio-economic conditions of strikes in Poland in 1945–1948

Jędrzej CHUMIŃSKI

Central European Papers 2018, 6(1):13-36 | DOI: 10.25142/cep.2018.001  

In the years 1945–1949, there were at least 1,220 strikes in Poland, of which the majority – 73 % – took place in three voivodships: Lodzkie, Silesian and Krakow, and in two industries: mining and textiles – over 56 %. The article presents the socio-economic conditions of strikes, in particular the relationship between socio-demographic characteristics of the workers’ milieu and the intensity of strike actions. The responses of the political authorities and the security apparatus to the strike actions organized by the workers were also taken into account.

Social resistance: economic and political strikes in the Upper Silesian industrial district after the Second World War (1944–1970)

Ryszard KACZMAREK, Kazimierz MIROSZEWSKI

Central European Papers 2018, 6(1):37-57 | DOI: 10.25142/cep.2018.002  

The backgrounds of workers strikes in the Polish communist era varied, depending on which historical period they were taking place in. In Upper Silesia, their specificity was additionally more acute due the heavy industry concentration in the region and vast numbers of workers. In Polish historiography of the post-1945 era it has become quite common to treat the strikes almost solely as elements of social resistance against the powers that be. What has frequently been overlooked is that social resistance is a broader phenomenon, as a rule defined as any spontaneous, unorganized and unguided protest against an imposed political and/or ideological order,...

Strike movement in Czechoslovakia in the years 1945–1948

Dušan JANÁK

Central European Papers 2018, 6(1):59-86 | DOI: 10.25142/cep.2018.003  

The contribution summarizes the first findings of the research into labour strike movement in Czechoslovakia between 1945 and 1948 which has been undertaken as part of the Czech Grant Agency project “Industrial Workers in the Czech Lands between 1938 and 1948”. During the research in the All-Union Archive of the Czech-Moravian Confederation of Trade Unions in Prague, the Archive of Security Services and in other archives, data on 262 strikes were gathered – nearly twice the number of hitherto known strikes in the years 1946–1948 in Czechoslovakia. Based on the analysis of strikes in Czech industry, six stages of the labour...

Strikes and the right to strike in the years 1968–69

Jiří POKORNÝ

Central European Papers 2018, 6(1):87-95 | DOI: 10.25142/cep.2018.004  

Strikes were not the object of the legal system in socialist Czechoslovakia. In the system of ideology there was no place for them. Nevertheless strikes occurred, unofficially. During the so called Prague Spring substantial changes were taking place which limited the power of the Communist Party and supported the introduction of democratic principles. Trade unions up to that time controlled by the Communist Party began to enforce such changes. Their newly elected representatives were able to assure soon that without strikes and threads of strikes it was impossible to realize important reforms and to be protected against the pressure of entrepreneurial...

Strikes in the GDR: Causes, courses of action and dimensions

André STEINER

Central European Papers 2018, 6(1):97-114 | DOI: 10.25142/cep.2018.005  

At the outset, this paper deals with the first nationwide strike in the Eastern Bloc, which took place in the GDR in June 1953, and its causes and consequences. Following this, it presents the particular problems and the possibilities for strikes during the initial post-war period and the period under the Soviet Occupation. As part of the socio-economic transformation of the Soviet occupied zone in Germany strikes were partially used in order to take action against private entrepreneurs. However, in the early 1950s strikes were called over bad working and living conditions or because the workers felt aggrieved. Hereafter, the fundamental issue of strikes...

Working-class protests against the economic reforms of the 1960s in the GDR and Hungary

Eszter BARTHA

Central European Papers 2018, 6(1):115-138 | DOI: 10.25142/cep.2018.006  

The article seeks to interrogate the question of how workers in the GDR and Hungary responded to the economic reforms of the 1960s, when the Communist leadership in both countries sought to implement a policy, which would lead to higher levels of consumption and consumer satisfaction. I chose two factory case studies to answer this question: the case of Carl Zeiss Jena in the GDR and the Hungarian Rába in Győr. The most important common characteristic of the two case studies is that the period of economic reform spoilt the established political consensus and even within the party there was a search for alternatives. As part of this political struggle,...

“We have no strikes in Yugoslavia, there are only some occasional self-managed work interruptions.” Strikes in socialist Slovenia from the Trbovlje miners strike in 1958 to the strike wave in the late 1980s

Jurij HADALIN

Central European Papers 2018, 6(1):139-156 | DOI: 10.25142/cep.2018.007  

Worker strikes were a common phenomenon in the socialist Yugoslavia, although they officially never existed. They were called work interruptions and were not something that complex Yugoslav self-managed socialism recognised as part of political struggle, since workers officially influenced on all major decisions through so-called self-managing process. This strikes were mostly spontaneous and without the back-up of state and party controlled syndicates. Their origin usually laid in the profit distribution, which was not used for basic investments and living standard of the workers, since it was spent for other capital investment, determined by higher...

Strikes and working protests in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

Stanislav KOKOŠKA

Central European Papers 2018, 6(1):157-175 | DOI: 10.25142/cep.2018.008  

A traditional type of strike movement the aim of which was to achieve better wages was seen mainly in the initial phase of the Nazi occupation. Its main reason was inflation, and the Protectorate government reacted to it as early as on 13 June 1939, by banning strikes and lockouts. It is true that the strike wave continued even after this date, but it was petering out fast, thanks to government decrees on wage adjustments. Since the beginning of 1940, strikes were regarded as attempts to sabotage industrial production. Strike cases were initially tried by German military courts, but the jurisdiction over the prosecution of acts of sabotage later fell...