(…) The revolutionary movement of the Husites was the historical moment when the so far unknown, common laborers stepped onto the stage and tried to seize power in their own country.  As comrade Klement Gottwald`s words must be understood: “This is exactly nowadays when our nation has returned to the glory of the Husite age”.  Power today is in the hands of the common laborers, who first tried to rid themselves of their exploiters in the Husite revolution.  Their purposes have been fulfilled by the Democratic Peoples` Republic.

How did our people, who now build socialism, fulfil the aims of the most glorious chapter of our history, Husitism?  The Husite armies fought against the darkest forces of reaction: the clergy, the landlords and the patricians.  To ensure future happiness these parasites had to be eliminated.  And this task could be accomplished only by the revolutionary party of our working class, by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.  Thus the struggle of the Husites is a sacred cause for us.  The Husites, the “warriors of God” struggled for the holy dream of the classless society and common happiness against external and internal enemies.  This sacred vision of the subordinated, exploited people and the slaves was obscure but the idea behind it was bright and just.  The “country of God” as they imagined, the abolition of humiliation, exploitation and suffering, was a glorious dream.  And that dream could only come true via the wise teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin who laid solid foundations for the millennial dreams of the working people.  Socialism is not a dream any more.  It was realized in the Soviet Union, and our people have learned the lesson of this glorious example.

 
Jan Hus did not want to destroy the old social order, but rather he wanted to reform and ameliorate it.  However his martyrdom gave a revolutionary impetus to his ideas.  His death revealed the unbearable injustices, mobilized the suppressed masses and prepared the ground for a revolutionary explosion.  He embodied the demands of the oppressed people and their hate for the most powerful supporter of the existing feudal order, the Church.

The leaders of the working class undoubtedly and explicitly emphasized the relevance of the Husite revolutionary traditions for the labor movement.  They borrowed the “peoples` tabor” as a name for popular meetings from the Husites.  The newspapers of the working class always pointed out that the labor movement was the heir of the Husitian tradition in its struggle against the capitalist order.  In 1921, when the Communist party of Czechoslovakia came to the forefront of the proletariat, it took its symbolism from the Husites.  This was inevitable since the bourgeois state, the Czechoslovakian “democracy” usurped and distorted these traditions for its own purposes.  They tried to present/display the Husites as naive, innocent, harmless idealists and religious fanatics, in order to deprive Husitism of its revolutionary content.  Although in 1918 T. G. Masaryk proclaimed the slogan: “Our program is Tabor!”, the new bourgeois regime soon abandoned revolutionary traditions, and the official cult of the Husitism was used to paralyze the revolutionary stimulus of the working classes.  The slogan was intended to divert attention from the demand for socialist revolution.  That was the reason why the rulers tried to direct the workers attention to an historical event of 500 years ago, and why they alleged that Husitism was just a religious revolution.  The bourgeoisie stressed the cult of “etatism” against the revolutionary tradition.  At the official ceremony of commemoration in 1929 in Tabor Prime minister, R. Urdzal said: “the greatest merit of the Taborites was not that they revolted against their rulers, but that they obeyed to their leaders.”
 “Tabor is our program” – the Czechoslovakian communists proclaimed, when again the shadow of danger, reaction and treachery threatened the Czechoslovakian people in 1938.  The external and internal Munchenists conspired against the freedom and independence of our nation, when Kurt Konrad, the great communist journalist raised the glorious flag of the Husites.  That was the moment, when the central propaganda-organ of the German Nazi party, “Völkisher Beobachter” launched a brutal campaign of slander against the Husite revolutionary movement.  The Nazis and their internal traitorous accomplices, the representatives of the Czech bourgeoisie damned the Husites as a “gang of looters and fire-raisers” who plundered Central Europe 500 years ago.  The Nazi propagandists identified the Husites with communists.  Konrad however discarded these allegations and pointed out that while the revolutionary cause of the Husites was also a national cause against the colonizing ambitions of the German ruling classes, it was also able to mobilize the exploited German people as well, thus the struggle of the revolutionary Husite army soon gained a sort of international character.  The communist press demonstrated even in the darkest days of German occupation, that the tradition of the Husites was still alive.  The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, in the spirit of the Husites, continued its underground fight against the aggressors.  Klemet Gottwald chose an old Husite slogan as a title of one of his speeches delivered on the Moscow Radio: “Do not be skirred of the enemy, do not count their number”!  The victory of the working class in 1945, and the successful repudiation of the attempted counter-revolutionary coup d`etat in 1948, organized by the unified reactionary camp of the former rulers, have gloriously consummated this heritage.