INTRODUCTION

In contrast to most other countries of Central and Southeast Europe, Czechoslovakia has enjoyed an advanced level of industrialization from a relatively early period. This together with its tradition of democracy has had a profound effect on its economic, social, and cultural development. The Czechoslovak independent state began to exist in 1918 when it arose out of the ruins of the Habsburg Empire, it was destroyed by National Socialist German occupation between 1939 and 1945, it was restored after 1945 in a frustrated attempt to reconstruct a democratic republic with a “specific way to socialism,” and is at present splitting up its society and economy into two separate states: the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic.

In this contribution attention will be focused on industrial development from the establishment in 1918 to the pending demise in 1990 of the Czechoslovak economy, dealing first with structural change, second with concentration and large industrial enterprise, and last with an examination of scope and scale of production in the Czechoslovak market economy from 1918 to 1948 and in the Czechoslovak planned economy from 1949 to 1988/1989.

STRUCTURAL CHANGE, 1921–1988/1989

The place of the industrial sector in the economy

According to the first census carried out in the newly founded Republic of Czechoslovakia (ĈSR) in 1921, the state had a population of 13, 612, 424 and covered an area of 140, 519 square kilometers. As the economically relatively most advanced successor state, it contained more than half of Austria-Hungary's industrial potential and just under half of the workers who had been employed in the empire's industry, while only encompassing a fifth of its total area and a quarter of its inhabitants.