Persuasion, Recruitment, and Repression in the Czechoslovak Campaign for Collectivization

Abstract This article analyzes the relationship between persuasion and repression in Czechoslovakia’s Stalinist-era campaign for collectivization, challenging the widespread assumption that Communist leaders and local party activists abandoned an unsuccessful strategy of persuasion for a successful strategy of coercion. Rather, Czechoslovak Communists maintained both a commitment to farmers’ voluntary participation and confidence in their popular support in the countryside, leading local party activists and government officials to attribute difficulties in the collectivization campaign to deliberate sabotage on the part of hidden class enemies. Vague definitions of the rural class enemy placed extraordinary power in the hands of district and village authorities, but also afforded the accused opportunities to defend themselves by appealing to Communist Party doctrine and by drawing on their personal connections. Repression exacerbated tension within local party branches and among collective farm members, while failing to disrupt traditional village social bonds and structures of authority. This article demonstrates both how the Czechoslovak Communists’ continued commitment to persuasion enabled repression and how this repression hindered official efforts to transform the countryside along ideological lines.