Everything seemed to come years late to communist Czechoslovakia. Here we have a 1961 five year plan to get industry beyond war rebuilding and on toward previous powerhouse status. Gee, shouldn’t that have come in 1951? Well not when it took Stalin until 3 years after his death to have his team in place. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
This stamp shows a rolling mill bridge as part of a high tech textile plant. That this function is ever more automated shows the challenge facing the countries leadership. At the top of communist organizations there is often a quarrel between those up from the local trade union movement and the more intelectual, internationally aware aspects of the movement. Think Stalin versus Trotsky. Stalin would be looking at output and employment levels, while Trotsky might more be looking at showing off sophistication by say a trophy automated textile mill.
Todays stamp is issue A400, a 20 Haleru stamp issued by Czechoslovakia on January 20th, 1961. It was a three stamp issue in various denominations issued as part of the kickoff of the third 5 year plan to do with industrial development. This was the last stamp issue in connection with a five year plan initiation. Even the powers that be did no longer have their heart in it. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used. This stamp was locally printed and not part of the farmed out for the international child collector so common at the time.
The area of Czechia had industrialized quite early and was considered the industrial heartland of the old Austria-Hungarian Empire. When it was down to just the ethnic German rumpstate of Austria in 1919, there were questions of joining Germany as the state would not be viable alone. See https://the-philatelist.com/2019/07/19/gerrman-austria-1919-the-rump-state-no-one-wanted/ . Such an industrial powerhouse was then integrated heavily with the German industrial war effort of World War II. See https://the-philatelist.com/2019/07/26/bohemia-and-moravia-1939-showing-off-batas-skyscraper-in-zlins-urban-utopia/ . The circumstances of how the Czechs fell to Germany in 1938-39 meant that the communist takeover post war was not so immediate as the prewar government in exile had more legitimacy. It took until 1948-49 for the communists to get a firm grip on things. Even here there was trouble as the same sort of phases happened. The first communists leaders were the old exiled fellows that were part of the 1920s Internationale movement. These were mainly Jewish intellectuals that were at odds with Stalin’s industry first goals. Such people in the Soviet Union were purged in the 1930s but their fellow travelers managed to get in power in eastern Europe post war. That the communist takeover was a few years late meant reindustrialization was begun off track. Stalin quickly got such leaders purged from eastern Europe, see https://the-philatelist.com/2019/04/03/romania-1955-promoting-female-empowerment-or-just-stalin-in-a-skirt/ . Things again were behind schedule in Czechoslovakia and it was not until 1955, when Antonin Novotny a communist from the trade union movement was in power. By now however Stalin was himself dead and the Soviet Union was itself rethinking it’s industry first strategy.
The relative performance of the Czech five year plans show understandably poor performance compared to what might have been posible. Between 1948 and 1957 industrial output rose 170 percent. That sounds high but it must be remembered how low output was at the end of the war. To compare with actual industrial powerhouses, Germany and Japan were up about 300 percent in the same timeframe. Suddenly you no longer thought of the area as an industrial heartland. After the communists fell, more factories closed and the ones that stayed open were back to German ownership and the expertise being sought out in Czechia was the willingness to take less than western pay rates.
The lack of industry growth did not lead to total devastation as the country fell behind indusrially. The lefty internationalist intellectuals set up a film industry that was an important part of the New Wave Film movement that was also in France and Italy in the 1960s. Since in Czechoslovakia the films were part of official approved output, they benefited from higher budgets and professional studios more so than in the west. The uprisings of 1968 saw many of this group go into western exile. Simple industrial workers might be forgiven for feeling left out.
Well my drink is empty and I may pour another to throw at Antonin Novotny. He was pensioned off during the 1968 troubles after a more than a decade chance to turn around the difficult hand he was dealt. He forgot perhaps that the idea of the five year plan was that at the end you could measure results against goals. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2019.