Failed Plan, or Wrong Place?: The Czechoslovak Two Year Plan in a European Context, 1945-1950

• In Event: Liberation between War and Communism: Revising the History of the Czechoslovak Third Republic, 1945-1948

Abstract

This paper examines the Two Year Plan in Czechoslovakia and its context within the larger immediate postwar European economy. Czechoslovakia attempted an ambitious economic planning program of industrial production and domestic development after the war, but before the Communists took power. This plan was explicitly conceived of as socialist by Czechoslovak politicians and planners. However, this plan also was directly connected to Czechoslovak ideas of its place within the broader geopolitics of Europe. The plan, I argue, presaged important aspects of the West German economic recovery, particularly regarding export policy and a focus on domestic industrial production. It also prioritized a politics of mercantilism based on establishing Czechoslovakia as an indispensable industrial goods exporter in Central Europe to both the Soviet Union, and Western Europe and United States. This paper will seek to understand why this plan failed. Was it due to the nature of the plan itself, or to Czechoslovakia's place within the European economic and political system?

Author

• Mathias Fuelling, Temple U