No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Can Communism and Democracy Coexist? Beneš's Answer1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2017
Extract
Can Communism and democracy coexist? Only future historians can answer this question with any pretense of success. Contemporaries will often confuse the prerequisites for a sane, rational future with the ugly facts of the present. Yet a present answer to this question is important as a guide to further political action.
Several alternatives have been suggested by those who have been concerned with the possibility of the coexistence of democracy and Communism. Many theorists have been motivated by the hope of seeing either one or the other system destroyed in order to assure to a chaotic world peace based upon at least a minimum of uniformity. There have been some who, on the contrary, have discovered positive values in a bipolarized world, hoping, no doubt, that the world as a whole would benefit from ideological competition. There have been others, and their number is constantly declining, who feared the inherent dangers of bipolarization and who had hoped that coexistence would take the form of reconciliation.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1952
Footnotes
1
This article is based on chapters i and v of Curt Beck, “Edvard Beneš's Political Theory: Application of Democracy to International Relations” (Cambridge, Mass., 1950. Ph.D. thesis available at the Widener Library of Harvard University).
References
2 See particularly his Democracy Today and Tomorrow (New York, 1939). Quoted hereafter as Beneš, Democracy. A considerably enlarged edition in Czech appeared in Prague in 1046: Demokracie Dnes a Zitra.
3 Beneč, Democracy, pp. 137–42.
4 Ibid., p. ix.
5 Beneš, Naše Politicisé Vzdělání a Potřeba Vysoké Školy Sociálné Politické (Brandys n.L., 1910), p. 4.
6 Beneš, Democracy, p. 15; Beneš, , Světová Krise; Kontinuita Práva a Nové Právo Revolučnl (Prague, 1946), p. 18.Google Scholar Quoted hereafter as Beneš, Světová Krise.
7 Beneš's ideas on nationalism, the application of humanist principles not only to persons, but also to the nation, recur in many of his writings. To cite a few: Democracy, p. 70; “Masarykovo pojetí ideje národností a problém jednoty československé” in Přednášky Učené Společnosti Šafaříkovy v Bratislavě (Bratislava, 1935), I, 5; Světová Válka a Naše Revoluce (Prague, 1927), II, 543–45.
8 Beneš, , Demokracie Tines a Zitra (Prague, 1946), p. 252, also p. 153.Google Scholar
9 Ibid., pp. 253–62.
10 Beneš, , Paměti od Mníchova k nové válce a k novému vítězstvi (Prague, 1948), p. 10.Google Scholar Quoted hereafter as Paměti.
11 Beneš, , Stručný nástin vyvoje moderního socialismu (4 vols., Brandýs n.L., 1910–1911).Google Scholar
12 His “correct” attitude toward the Soviet Union, combined with a suggestion to the powers that attention should be paid to the real problems of Russia, namely, its economic and social backwardness, marked Beneš's approach toward the Soviet threat. In Czechoslovak domestic matters his position was one of fighting undemocratic movements, including that of the Communist Party. Cf. Beneš, , Problémy Nové Evropy a Zahraniční Politika Československá; Projevy a Úvahy z R. 1919–1924 (Prague, 1924), pp. 45–61 Google Scholar; Beneš, , Democracy, pp. 64 ff.Google Scholar
13 The changes in the attitude of the Soviet Union as a result of the impact of world affairs not merely before World War II, but also during and after World War II, is commented upon in Beneš, Paměti, pp. 419 ff.
14 Beneš, , Světová Válka a Naše Revoluce, I, 4.Google Scholar
15 Beneš, , Pameti, p. 295.Google Scholar
16 His memoirs abound with criticisms of the Munich politicians of France: Paměti, pp. 56 ff. and p. 140. He also criticized his internal foes at the time of Munich: ibid., p. 411.
17 His position on the Russo-German Nonaggression Pact of 1939 is described in Paměti, pp. 191–223.
18 Cf. Beneš's account of his 1943 visits to Washington and Moscow in Paměti, particularly pp. 278 ff.
19 It is interesting to note that the need for profound changes in the democracies was already mentioned in his 1939 edition of Democracy, pp. 214–17.
20 The most significant expressions on this topic are contained in Beneš, Světová Krise.
21 Beneš, , “Message of President Dr. Edvard Beneš to the National Assembly of the Czechoslovak Republic,” in The Opening of the Prague Parliament (Prague, 1946), pp. 36 ff.Google Scholar
22 Beneš, Světová Krise, pp. 17-18.
23 Beneš, Paměti, p. 408.
24 Ibid., pp. 312–37, 435; Beneš, “Message of President Dr. Edvard Beneš to the National Assembly of the Czechoslovak Republic,” op. cit., pp. 29–33.
25 Beneš, Světová Krise, p. 18.
26 Ibid., p. 36; Paměti, pp. 428–30.
27 Beneš, Paměti, pp. 363 ff., pp. 379–405, particularly footnote on p. 391: “In London we were asked several times whether we had no misgivings that we had gone a little far and placed our independence into the hands of the Soviet Union. I retorted that it was a matter of securing ourselves against the future repetition of another Munich and that we strongly hoped that vie could trust the Soviet Union. —We, at least, sincerely entertained this hope and faith.” Italics those of Beneš.
28 Ibid., p. 409.
29 Ibid., pp. 423–30.
30 A good account of those developments is found in Ripka, Hubert, Czechoslovakia Enslaved (London, 1950).Google Scholar