Communists as the Heirs of Capitalism? The Dynamic Politicization of Zlín/Gottwaldov Post 1945

This study deals with the factory town of Zlín in the former Czechoslovakia after 1945, when communists replace Baťa management in the governing bodies of both the company and the municipality. Based on an analysis of regional and central provenance archival materials and contemporary press, and through discursive-historical analyses and considering the perspective of the actors involved, the present study identifies: 1) four informal regional groups of communist elites and 2) two dominant narrative strategies (re)produced by these factions. This paper traces the dynamics of the relationships between these groups and arrives at the conclusion that the main proponents of the post-Baťa narrative were postwar communists from the Baťa factory, while supporters of the anti-Baťa narrative were Hodonín apparatchiks. The first above-named faction dominated city life until 1949. Herein, a more complicated picture of postwar Central and Eastern Europe is presented, where Stalin’s master plan of unidirectional Sovietization was not implemented all at once, and where the possibilities for a range of versions of socialism under Soviet supervision were being realized.