Other Civil Organizations
The Front controlled all political activity, and its role was expanded to control of all organized activity of any kind, excluding only religion. Thus the Front was extended to include mass organizations that were not political parties. All large organizations of any kind were included, except churches. Among the organizations brought into the Front were:
- Revolutionary Trade Union Movement (to which all unions belonged)
- Socialist Union of Youth (1.5 million members)
- Union for Czechoslovak-Soviet Friendship
- Czechoslovak Union of Women (1 million members)
- Czechoslovak Red Cross
- Union for Czechoslovak-Soviet Friendship
- Union of Agricultural Cooperatives
- Union of Anti-Fascist Fighters
- Svazarm (Union for Cooperation with the Army)
- Peace Committee
- Physical Culture Association
- Union of Philatelists
All these groups were given the standard Communist organization, and Party members held all controlling posts. These groups permeated workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods. As with the Front, many of these organizations added Czech and Slovak regional components in 1969 and after.
Read more about this topic: National Front (Czechoslovakia)
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“The essence of the modern state is that the universal be bound up with the complete freedom of its particular members and with private well-being, that thus the interests of family and civil society must concentrate themselves on the state.... It is only when both these moments subsist in their strength that the state can be regarded as articulated and genuinely organized.”
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