Item: i101463
 
Authentic Coin of:

Czechoslovakia
 70th Birthday of Josef V. Stalin
1949 
Silver 50 Korun 28mm (10.00 grams) 0.500 Silver (0.1608 oz. ASW) Lille 
mint
Reference: KM# 28
REPUBLIKA ČESKOSLOVENSKÁ 50, Czech lion with slovak 
shield, surrounded by letteringn
J.V.STALIN 21·XII·, Bust of Stalin left, 
lettering around, year.


You are bidding on the exact item pictured, provided with a Certificate of 
Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of Authenticity.

Czechoslovakia in 1945:

The Third Republic came into being in 
April 1945. Its government, installed at Košice on 4 April, then moved to 
Prague in May, was a National Front coalition in which three socialist 
parties-the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), the Czechoslovak Social 
democratic Party, and the Czechoslovak National Socialist 
Party-predominated. Certain non-socialist parties were included in the 
coalition, among them the Catholic People’s Party (in Moravia) and the 
Democratic Party of Slovakia.

Following 
Nazi Germany’s surrender, some 2.9 million ethnic Germans were expelled from 
Czechoslovakia with Allied approval, their property and rights declared void 
by the Beneš decrees.

Czechoslovakia soon came to fall within the 
Soviet sphere of influence.

 The popular enthusiasm evoked by the Soviet armies of liberation (which was 
decided by compromise of Allies and Joseph Stalin at the Yalta conference in 
1944) benefited the KSČ. Czechoslovaks, bitterly disappointed by the West at 
the Munich Agreement (1938), responded favorably to both the KSČ and the 
Soviet alliance. Reunited into one state after the war, the Czechs and 
Slovaks set national elections for the spring of 1946.

The democratic 
elements, led by President Edvard Beneš, hoped the Soviet Union would allow 
Czechoslovakia the freedom to choose its own form of government and aspired 
to a Czechoslovakia that would act as a bridge between East and West. 
Communists secured strong representation in the popularly elected National 
Committees, the new organs of local administration. In the May 1946 
election, the KSČ won most of the popular vote in the Czech part of the 
bi-ethnic country (40.17%), and the more or less anti-Communist Democratic 
Party won in Slovakia (62%).

In sum, however, the KSČ only won a 
plurality of 38 percent of the vote at countrywide level. Edvard Beneš 
continued as president of the republic, whereas the Communist leader Klement 
Gottwald became prime minister. Most importantly, although the communists 
held only a minority of portfolios, they were able to gain control over most 
of the key ministries (Ministry of the Interior, etc.)

Although the 
communist-led government initially intended to participate in the Marshall 
Plan, it was forced by the Kremlin to back out. In 1947, Stalin summoned 
Gottwald to Moscow; upon his return to Prague, the KSČ demonstrated a 
significant radicalization of its tactics. On 20 February 1948, the twelve 
non-communist ministers resigned, in part to induce Beneš to call for early 
elections; however Beneš refused to accept the cabinet resignations and did 
not call elections. In the meantime, the KSČ marshalled its forces for the 
Czechoslovak coup d’état of 1948. The communist-controlled Ministry of the 
Interior deployed police regiments to sensitive areas and equipped a 
workers’ militia. On 25 February Beneš, perhaps fearing Soviet intervention, 
capitulated. He accepted the resignations of the dissident ministers and 
received a new cabinet list from Gottwald, thus completing the communist 
takeover under the cover of superficial legality.

On 10 March 1948, 
the moderate foreign minister of the government, Jan Masaryk, was found dead 
in suspicious circumstances that have still not been definitively proved to 
constitute either suicide or political assassination.

The 
Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (1948-1989)

In February 1948, the 
Communists took power in the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d’état, and Edvard Beneš 
inaugurated a new cabinet led by Klement Gottwald. Czechoslovakia was 
declared a “people’s democracy” (until 1960) – a preliminary step toward 
socialism and, ultimately, communism. Bureaucratic centralism under the 
direction of KSČ leadership was introduced. Dissident elements were purged 
from all levels of society, including the Roman Catholic Church. The 
ideological principles of Marxism-Leninism and socialist realism pervaded 
cultural and intellectual life.

The economy was committed to 
comprehensive central planning and the abolition of private ownership of 
capital. Czechoslovakia became a satellite state of the Soviet Union; it was 
a founding member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) in 
1949 and of the Warsaw Pact in 1955. The attainment of Soviet-style command 
socialism became the government’s avowed policy.

Slovak autonomy was 
constrained; the Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS) was reunited with the KSČ 
(Communist Party of Czechoslovakia), but retained its own identity. 
Following the Soviet example, Czechoslovakia began emphasizing the rapid 
development of heavy industry. Although Czechoslovakia’s industrial growth 
of 170 percent between 1948 and 1957 was impressive, it was far exceeded by 
that of Japan (300 percent) and the Federal Republic of Germany (almost 300 
percent) and more than equaled by Austria and Greece.

Beneš refused 
to sign the Communist Constitution of 1948 (the Ninth-of-May Constitution) 
and resigned from the presidency; he was succeeded by Klement Gottwald. 
Gottwald died in March 1953. He was succeeded by Antonín Zápotocký as 
president and by Antonín Novotný as head of the KSČ.

In June 1953, 
thousands of workers in Plzeň went on strike to demonstrate against a 
currency reform that was considered a move to solidify Soviet socialism in 
Czechoslovakia. The demonstrations ended without significant bloodshed, 
disappointing American Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles, who 
wished for a pretext to help the Czechoslovak people resist the Soviets. For 
more than a decade thereafter, the Czechoslovak communist political 
structure was characterized by the orthodoxy of the leadership of party 
chief Antonín Novotný, who became president in 1957 when Zápotocký died.

In the 1950s, the Stalinists accused their opponents of “conspiracy against 
the people’s democratic order” and “high treason” in order to oust them from 
positions of power. In all, the Communist Party tried 14 of its former 
leaders in November 1952 and sentenced 11 to death. Large-scale arrests of 
Communists and socialists with an “international” background, i.e., those 
with a wartime connection with the West, veterans of the Spanish Civil War, 
Jews, and Slovak “bourgeois nationalists,” were followed by show trials. The 
outcome of these trials, serving the communist propaganda, was often known 
in advance and the penalties were extremely heavy, such as in the case of 
Milada Horáková, who was sentenced to death together with Jan Buchal, Záviš 
Kalandra and Oldřich Pecl.

The 1960 Constitution declared the victory 
of socialism and proclaimed the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (CSSR).

De-Stalinization had a late start in Czechoslovakia. In the early 1960s, the 
Czechoslovak economy became severely stagnant. The industrial growth rate 
was the lowest in Eastern Europe. As a result, in 1965, the party approved 
the New Economic Model, introducing free market elements into the economy. 
The KSČ “Theses” of December 1965 presented the party response to the call 
for political reform. Democratic centralism was redefined, placing a 
stronger emphasis on democracy. The leading role of the KSČ was reaffirmed, 
but limited. Slovaks pressed for federalization. On 5 January 1968, the KSČ 
Central Committee elected Alexander Dubček, a Slovak reformer, to replace 
Novotný as first secretary of the KSČ. On 22 March 1968, Novotný resigned 
from the presidency and was succeeded by General Ludvík Svoboda.