Vnitřní odsun 1947–1953

Title in English: Internal population transfer 1947–1953. Final phase of the "purification of borderlands" in political and social context of postwar Czechoslovakia

About 100 000 people were forced to relocate within Czechoslovakia during 1946–1953. The preparations and also the realization of these measures give us a lot of information about the politics, thoughts and moods of the Czech society of the time. The relocations of inhabitants, even those not realized in the end, resulted from a range of motives with varied significance which shows us mainly the pragmatic characteristics of the Communist policy. The Communist Party’s attention was from the beginning gradually transferred from the persecution of so called nationally unreliable inhabitants to the persecution of enemies defined by their class and real or potential adversaries of the Communist regime. However, the national criteria continued to play their significant role in the social reality. Compared to the displacement of millions of Germans across the borders,the so called "purge" of the borderlands and the inland relocations connected to it show us that the spectre of opinions was actually more varied. Not only did it manifest different attitudes of political parties but it also showed different structures of thoughts of Communists, traditional nationalists or bureaucrats. The work also pays attention to embedding the topic of the post-war inner relocations and the national assimilation to the context of central Europe, mainly focusing on the situation in Poland.