Czechoslovak party made society dependent via vetted jobs and education

Evidence

The Czechoslovak party was also perhaps the most persistent and successful in making society dependent on the party, in areas as basic as education and employment. Membership in the orthodox Communist Youth Union was a prerequisite for higher education throughout the period, and “political criteria [were] always applied” in selection for both high school and university. Five hundred and fifty thousand jobs were directly vetted by Czechoslovak party organs in the mid-1980s, in contrast with 270,000 in Poland (with over twice the working population of Czechoslovakia) or the even smaller number in Hungary during the same time period. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 194

Categorization

• XREF: Membership as a coerced prerequisite (rather than genuine adhesion) bears on whether professed conviction tracked actual belief or was extracted through material dependence — relevant to measuring the divergence between formal affiliation and commitment. — connects to: Post-1968 Czechoslovakia froze policy rather than courting society — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 233; Czechoslovak communists won over forty percent in the 1946 free elections — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 173
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 194

Broader Connections

• Post-1968 Czechoslovakia froze policy rather than courting society #expands (0.75) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 233