The New Deal vs. the Soviet Five-Year Plan: The Soviet Union and USA as Models in Combating the Great Depression for the Political Left in Czechoslovakia

Abstract

The Great Depression is often seen as one cause of the growing legitimacy of undemocratic policies. This study analyses its impact on the perception of crisis and reconstruction among the Czechoslovak left during the long thirties – in the Czechoslovak context of 1930–1948 – at the end of which not only communists but also social democrats and national socialists were strongly inclined to accept the Stalinist version of socialism. Based on an analysis of newspapers and magazines of the country's three most powerful left political parties, the author seeks to identify basic trends in the evolving image of the USA and the USSR as desirable examples of economic planning, efforts to achieve full employment, and the establishment of a greater degree of social equality. It was the economic crisis of the 1930s that had a significant impact on the perception of economic stability. The key thesis of the text is that the hopes for a peaceful transition of American society to socialism that the Czechoslovak democratic left had placed in the American New Deal anti-crisis programme were disappointed in the mid-1930s. The end of the Roosevelt administration's key projects, the National Recovery Administration and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, brought about by pressure from financial elites, caused this disillusionment. Conversely, at the same time, the willingness to see Soviet socialism as a regime capable of delivering economic growth and stability was growing, even among social democrats and national socialists. This trend grew stronger in the initial post-war years and became one of the key circumstances of the National Front government, in which the left had a major share of power, leaning towards alliance with the USSR, copying Soviet economic solutions and then smoothly integrating Czechoslovakia into the Soviet sphere of influence.