Was there a socialist Rechtsstaat in late communist East Central Europe? The Czechoslovak case in a regional context

Abstract

In contrast to most existing literature, the author claims that there were palpable ‘rudiments’ of authoritarian socialist Rechtsstaat in some communist countries of East Central Europe in the late 1980s. The first part of the article examines the existing terminology with regard to the functioning of law in communist dictatorships and authoritarian regimes in general. By using the example of communist countries such as Poland and in particular Czechoslovakia, the author strives to show not only how rule by law was an increasingly important ruling instrument in state socialism but also how that gradually changed the nature of the dictatorial regimes. He argues that the late communist leaderships in these countries haphazardly set out towards an authoritarian socialist Rechtsstaat in an effort to safe their grip on power by strengthening the socialist normative state. They never arrived at the envisioned optimal stage in this respect, yet they opened a fateful path inside the dictatorships towards the legalist and negotiated revolutions of 1989.