著者

森下 嘉之

出版者

北海道大学スラブ研究センター

雑誌

スラヴ研究 (ISSN:05626579)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.59, pp.93-114, 2012-06-15

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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. It is definitely necessary to contextualize the postwar Czechoslovakian housing policy in the removal of more than 2,000,000 Germans and the settlement of Czech people in the borderland (pohraniči). There, the "settlement office (Osidlovací úřad)" led by the Communist Party played a particularly essential role. The settlement office as well as the national board, which was also ruled by Communists, fulfilled the task of furnishing new Czech settlers with houses that had been expropriated from Germans and Hungarians as well as managing the housing market. The Communist Party had a good reason to expect support from those new settlers who could obtain huge properties, such as houses, thanks to the Communist policy. Despite the abundance of confiscated empty houses, this period did not see the solution to the housing problem, as the condition of these houses remained atrocious. Although the postwar housing policy held an opportunity to realize ideal plans for the future Czechoslovakia, it did not thrive due to the tough reality in the borderland. The policy and the ideal were consigned to oblivion after the establishment of the Communist regime in 1948.