The nerve fibres of dictatorship

Based on extensive research in regional archives, the monograph traces the establishment, consolidation and transformation of the dictatorship of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia on the example of four regional and eight district party organizations in the Czech lands. The time frame is defined by the end of the Second World War in May 1945, when the "national revolution" brought a large number of communists and their sympathizers to power in the regional environment, and the second national conference of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in June 1956, which completed the first phase of destalinization in Czechoslovakia. The interpretation focuses primarily on the development of regional and district party elites, the relations between the various levels of the party hierarchy, intra-party communication and the transformation of narratives through which the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia sought to legitimise its claims to power.