Edvard Beneš Between London and Moscow

Edvard Beneš Between London and Moscow

Edvard Beneš was a prominent figure of the first and second Czechoslovak resistance movements, the long-serving First Republic Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the second Czechoslovak president.

This monograph portrays President Beneš during his London exile from 1941–1945 and provides a detailed analysis of the evolving cooperation between the democratic exiled politicians in London and the communist representatives of the Czechoslovak exile in Moscow. This collaboration, which began in the first months after the signing of the alliance treaty with the Soviet Union in December 1943, was carried out between two ideologically disparate centres whose political visions for the post-war functioning and structure of the republic differed significantly. The result of the mutual cooperation between the democratic and communist exiled politicians in London and Moscow was the so-called Košice Government Programme, conceived by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.

While the democratic representatives considered it the maximum possible during the transitional period of state consolidation ending with elections, for the communists it represented the minimum in the planned socialisation process.