Club angažovaných nestraníků

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Klub angažovaných nestraníků (Club of committed non-party members), KAN for short , was, along with K 231, one of the most important organizations that came into being in Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring in 1968 and was outside the sphere of influence of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia . They played an essential role both in the democratization process of 1968 and in the later justifications of the Soviet leadership for the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia on August 21, 1968.

After this political movement was banned in September 1968, activities were resumed in the spring of 1990.

KAN during the Prague Spring

In the spring of 1968 the only platform for political activity was the Communist Party and the parties discredited as bloc parties, which practically submitted to the leading role of the Communist Party in the National Front . Efforts to reinvigorate the Social Democratic Party , which had entered into a forced union with the Communists in 1948 , were still in their infancy. This led numerous citizens who wanted to get involved but did not accept the existing system of political parties, to found a movement for non-party members - the KAN. Besides the K 231 club, it was the only independent Prague Spring political structure.

It was founded on April 5, 1968 in Prague. Around 200 people attended the founding, but the club soon found between 40,000 and 50,000 interested parties. Simultaneous membership in another political party was excluded in the statutes; the statutes were submitted to the Ministry of the Interior for approval on April 7th, and on May 16, 1968 the then reform-minded Interior Minister Josef Pavel approved preliminary work. Leading personalities in the movement include Ludvík Rybáček , Jan Štěpánek , Rudolf Battěk , Jiřina Mlýnková , and Alexandr Kliment and Ivan Sviták were also involved in the club at times .

Within the movement there were two contradicting ideas about the future organizational structure: a loose connection between committed citizens, as at the beginning of the movement, and the somewhat tighter orientation as a political party. In both cases, however, the goal remained to weaken the partisan oligarchy of the Communist Party. Similar to the K 231 club, this led to increasing attacks from the Communist Party, together with a Deuck from the Soviet leadership. After the intervention on August 21, 1968, KAN was banned.

Activity after 1990

After the collapse of the communist regime in 1989, the movement was re-established between March and May 1990 with the help of Karel Soyček , Bohdan Dvořák , Emil Dejmek and Pavel Holba . The statutes exclude membership in another party, also former membership in the Communist Party or activity as a functionary in its youth organization, and activity in the people's militias or the secret police.

However, the high level of awareness from 1968 could not help the new KAN to further success. In the parliamentary elections in 1990 and 1992, the best result was 2.7 percent of the vote, in the later elections in 2002, 2006 and 2010, the successes were very marginal, even if there were some common lists of candidates such as with the Pravý blok (right block) or the Konzervativní strana (Conservative Party) came.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Politický duben v kostce, online on the portal www.praha.eu / ... ( Memento from January 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Results of the portal of the Statistical Office of the Czech Republic, online at: www.volby.cz/pls/cnr1992

swell