We’re Informed You’ve Become A Notorious Drunkard: Alcohol and Democracy in Czechoslovakia, 1945-1954

• In Event: Medical Humanities I: Socialist Medicine and Morality in East Central Europe

Abstract

Sobriety was a patriotic moral duty in postwar Czechoslovakia. Political leaders and ordinary citizens alike described drunkenness as a threat to the state’s economic reconstruction, the nation’s culture, and the people’s capacity for self-governance. Responding to both public demand and official directive, local governments enacted harsh measures against problem drinkers. After the Communist seizure of power in February 1948, district and local officials made use of the state’s increased control over the economy to ban “notorious drunkards” from restaurants or taverns, sending notices exhorting problem drinkers to discipline themselves and conform to the behavioral standards of a “proper working person.” They often made these interventions at the request of individual citizens, usually women seeking to prevent a husband or son from drinking to excess. Increasingly, however, central authorities came to present alcoholism not as a moral deviation to be suppressed, but as the manifestation of social and psychological ills which required both broad public education and individual medical treatment. Influenced by doctors and other experts, they ordered local officials to take a less punitive and more paternalistic approach. Rather than directly enforcing popular standards of behavior and morality, they were to encourage problem drinkers to seek medical help. By analyzing shifts in the “fight against alcoholism” at the local level, this paper traces a broader transformation of Czechoslovak politics – from people’s democracy to welfare dictatorship.

Author

• Mira Markham, University of Michigan, Center for Emerging Democracies