When the communists took over Czechoslovakia in February 1948 they had in their hands the eighth richest industrial nation in the world. Well, not for long. After only about five years of communist rule and central planning of all the economy, all private enterprise - industrial, commercial and agriculture - had been nationalized, managed by political demagogues and thus the country was economically at rock bottom. This was in the Summer of 1953. In the 36 years that followed it all went from bad to worse. Nobody was hungry but people stood in lines to buy everything from food to toilet tissue. Nobody was unemployed but all state owned enterprises had about twice as many employees as the could ever hope to need. Officially there was no inflation. One could only joke about it - how can you have inflation when the currency is worthless to begin with?
When history sent the communists in this country into oblivion in October 1989 the country embarked on a bold mission of privatization of all the state owned enterprises beginning with small shops and restaurants and on to bigger and bigger industrial plants and large agricultural estates. It was all done in a fairly controlled manner so as not to invoke inflation or massive unemployment and it all went reasonably well.

Results of the last elections to the Parliament of the Czech Republic can be seen here




CZECH POLITICAL PARTIES:

Czech Social Democratic Party
Christian and Democratic Union � Czechoslovak People�s Party
Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia
Civic Democratic Party
Union of Freedom (only in Czech)