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Prisoners handling radioactive material without protective material and gear, was also done in the Gulag system - e.g. Butugychag in Magadan, Siberia [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butugychag

Czechoslovak-born here. This is not completely correct either.

Communists won the election in 1946 and formed a coalition government in which they were the strongest force, but not completely dominant. There were other "bourgeoise" ministers. Unfortunately, Communists controlled the ministry of the interior and cleansed the police of "reactionary elements", thus cementing their control over the civilian law enforcement. Not over the army yet, though.

There were regular elections scheduled for May 1948 and opinion polls were indicating that Communist share of vote is actually going to diminish. So they preempted them by staging a coup supported by People's Militias (a completely illegal armed militia of the party) on February 25, 1948. After that, the democracy was toast and it was full speed towards Stalinism, show trials etc.

Some of the army generals wanted to suppress the coup militarily, but the aging President (Beneš) did not allow that. IDK if it would have been better or worse. Civil wars tend to leave a very toxic legacy.

There is an important lesson in it. People should be able to vote bastards, but this must always be reversible. If the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were part of the Czechoslovakian constitution at that time, this development would not be legal.

However, at that time, it was not existing and, if it existed, it would be probably quite hard to put it into the legal system because of the fresh edicts against Germans. In the end, the third Czechoslovak Republic failed because of its rooted nature and kind of deserved its fate. You cannot displace 1.2M of people and try to look as a democratic state (no matter how necessary it was).

> You cannot displace 1.2M of people and try to look as a democratic state (no matter how necessary it was).

There are a number of democratic states that have happily uprooted a lot more people than that, both before, and after WW2. Most of them haven't failed.

>If the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were part of the Czechoslovakian constitution at that time, this development would not be legal.

Which wouldn't stop anything in and of itself. The current Chinese constitution allows freedom of speech, for example.

That development was not exactly legal even then, but there was no one who would stop them because the superpowers carved up Europe and this was Stalin's area. He could do what he wanted.

1.2M.. I think the current estimates are 2.4M expelled Germans, not counting the expelled Hungarians from Slovakia (many of which later returned and were granted citizenship).

As somebody born after 1993 (thus into Czech Republic, not Czechoslovakia) who (thankfully?) didn't experience that period, thanks for the writeup.

As another Czechoslovak (born 1981 under socialism), I was eagerly awaiting inglor_cz's response the moment I saw this article on HN :-)

Wow, TIL people take notice of me :-)

> IDK if it would have been better or worse. Civil wars tend to leave a very toxic legacy.

Had it done so, it's very likely that the USSR would have intervened.

So might the Western powers. That was still the moment when Americans had the only working nuclear weapons on Earth.

The width of the possible scenarios is unsettling, one of them may be Prague turning into European Hiroshima.

> So might the Western powers.

That would be unlikely - Czechoslovakia was in Soviet sphere of influence as decided in Yalta and the West was severely outgunned (at least in conventional weapons) by Soviets in Europe.

> the West was severely outgunned (at least in conventional weapons) by Soviets in Europe.

"The west" was severely outgunned by the west - the largest political party in France in 1948 was PCF, the communist/socialist alliance in Italy almost won that year. Finland remained outside the eastern bloc simply because it was no longer seen as being part of a threat. In the UK the Labour party which tossed out Churchill while he was in Potsdam was busy nationalizing the commanding heights of England's means of production (although they were not as militant as their comrades on the continent of course).

The west was busy trying to hold onto the West, never mind intervening in Prague.

Not to mention all the troubles in Italy and Greece

Unlikely, yes, but stranger things have happened during the early Cold War.

[flagged]

Please do not post ideological flamewar comments to HN, regardless of what you're battling for or against. It's not what this site is for and it kills what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[flagged]

Please do not post ideological flamewar comments to HN, regardless of what you're battling for or against. It's not what this site is for and it kills what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> communists got to the power legally by winning the elections, in 1946 in Czech part of Czechoslovakia and in 1948 in Slovakia.

This is actually so wrong as to be an outright lie. The 1948 elections took place on May 30, after the Communists took power in the coup of February 25 (this was not the only important event - they took over power gradually before that). The 1948 elections featured only one party. From that it should be completely clear these were not really elections as there was nothing to choose from and in any case the Communists didn't really care, they already had all the power they needed.

I will rephrase it since I see what causes a friction - in 1946 Communists won in Czech part of Czechoslovakia, in Slovakia it was Democratic party with over 60% (Demokraticka strana). Still, Slovakia was only 1/3 of whole republic, so communists won the elections overall, especially in Czech border regions with Germany, where arguably a still-unacknowledged atrocity happened after WWII - brutal forced removal of hundreds of thousands of Sudet Germans.

Its true that in 1948 the elections were a sham since there was only a single party to vote for - communist one, hence their total victory in both Czech and Slovak part of the republic. But the true rise to power was in 1946 that enabled all that came later, and was done via those democratic elections.

Coup d'etat sounds like there was a democratic government overthrown by some communist fringe movement outside government, which isn't true. They got to power and got majority, and used it to remove everybody else. Maybe my idea of coup d'etat is incorrect and this whole discussion is kind of pointless.

The finer point is, I think, that they did not get they power legally in the elections, because no such power can be granted in elections. Elections are a way to elect the national assembly which can then create a government, write laws etc.; but things that happened after 1946 and especially after 1948 were not supported by legal power, but by Stalin's terror and totalitarian dictature.

I think refusal to adopt this methodology to hold on to power, and refusal to toe the line, was what made Stalin so mad with Josef Tito in Yugoslavia. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tito%E2%80%93Stalin_split

Jachymov had strategic importance for survival of the Soviet Union. Soviets invested into building mine and provided initial workforce. Jachymov was not some siberian gulag for wood choping. Soviets also paid for uranium. Mine was closed as too expensive.

How Czech communist party ran the mine, and what it did to its citizens is something else.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294280450_Vyvoz_ces...

Regarding uranium extraction in Czechoslovakia, the Soviets later mined uranium in other sites by pumping sulfuric acid into the ground. This has caused a lasting ecological damage which has to be managed to this day.

The acid was meant to dissolve the ore and was then sucked back out. The only issue was that they ended up pumping a more sulfuric acid into the ground than sucking out. This created an underground lake of sulfuric acid in an with other underground water "lakes". This sulfuric lake is threatening to spill into these water sources.

I heard about this from my teachers at the university who were involved in the modelling of the underground spill. Using a limited number of wells, they were supposed to predict how the spill is spreading and what actions to take to stop it.

I found some pictures from the site here: https://zpravy.aktualne.cz/domaci/pitna-voda-tezba-uranu-kys...

On the East German side of the border, Uranium mining started essentially as gulag-style worker camps under Soviet control right after the war, and a few years later was moved into the "Wismut AG", which was a company under shared East German / Soviet ownership. From the tales of my grandparents, it was a mix of Soviet oppression and Wild West. In the Wismut, the miners were very well paid (for post-war East Germany), but they were a rowdy bunch and quite often had quarrels (also physical) with the East German police and Soviet camp guards (who of course couldn't simply "mow down" their highly qualified work force). Eventually in the mid- to late 50's, it calmed down, and working for the Wismut was more or less a normal job (albeit with a high risk of dying early of lung cancer and/or silicosis).

After the reuninification, the German government invested big into fixing the environmental damage that was done in 40 years, and that took over a decade. Props to them for this, the Erzgebirge is quite a nature paradise today.