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Paper short abstract

The aim of this contribution is to highlight the ecological consequences of socialist economic management in post-war Czechoslovakia, the way in which the press and literature of the time discussed nature and the environment, and the role played by science and technology in all of this.

Paper long abstract

At the end of the 1940s, Europe and the world were divided by the Iron Curtain, and Czechoslovakia fell under the Soviet sphere of influence. This brought with it, among other things, a series of inorganic interventions in the structure of the domestic economy, state administration, and the daily lives of the population, all in line with Soviet interests—including the massive introduction of heavy industrial production, the forced collectivization of agriculture, the destruction of the traditional structure of rural and urban settlements, and the promotion of materialistic and consumerist behavior. Nature, which had been severely tested, was cast in the role of an enemy that had to be fought and defeated as soon as possible. The media and contemporary literature spoke of "conquering nature," "subjugating nature," "transforming nature," "controlling nature," "taming nature," and so on. The so-called great constructions of socialism (dams, bridges, large prefabricated housing estates, etc.) were highlighted as evidence of partial victories over nature. The primary tools in this endeavor were supposed to be science and technology, which were forced to grapple not only with solving problems of insufficient industrial and agricultural production in illogical political and economic conditions, technological backwardness compared to the West, and lower living standards of the population, but also gradually with the manifestations of the deep neglect and disregard for the environment, which had been impossible to ignore since at least the 1960s.