Programové úvahy české domácí rezistence o československé státnosti

Professor PhDr. Jan Kuklík, sen., called his paper “Programme Reflections of Czech Democratic Resistance about Czechoslovak Statehood”. According to the author, foreign resistance had priority to the entire scope of home resistance ever since 1942. Although the reality of life after liberation took different paths, it is useful to deal with the ideas with which home resistance connected further building of the Czechoslovak state. These ideas were formulated as early as in the period of Second Republic (the teachers of Masaryk University in Brno), when the legal position of the state after Munich was principally refused. The programme of overcomming the Second Republic originated from the pen of doc. Josef Fischer, Charles University, and his collaborators from the Workers Academy. This programme of “transition to the Third Republic” was in 1939 adopted as their programme by an organization called Petition committee “Věrni zůstaneme” (We will always be faithful), as well as by ÚVOD (Ústřední výbor odboje domácího – Central Committee of Domestic Resistance) and all democratic resistance. After invasion, realisation of the programme of resistance was connected with reliance on the approaching war. Other preparatory work advanced most in a so-called group of lawyers, lead by Prof. Zdeněk Peška of Faculty of Law, Charles University. The key variant of its programme was a bill called “Restoration of Czechoslovak Republic Act”. Another variant was worked out by a group of JUDr. Ivan Dérer, which also considered the Czech-Slovak relationship. The most complete programme document of democratic resistance, however, is represented in programme called “For Freedom. To a New Czechoslovak Republic”. The idea of restoration of Czechoslovakia in its historic boundaries is formulated in the document. The solution of the German Question was connected to the nature and size of the German defeat, but it was explicitly said that there would be no space in the new Republic for those Germans, who anyhow supported Henlein’s party or Nazis. The programme discusses a just solution of the relations between Czechs and Slovaks, it discusses the necessity to take into account the differences between the Czech and Slovak branches, the necessity to advance Slovakia in general. However, it did not reach explicit recognition of two nations. The author of the article does not avoid an unbiased description of Communist Party line, which was affected by the fact, that in the first years of its duration the war was estimated as an imperialist war by Communist International.