Extinction instead of revival. A failed attempt to legitimise communist power by activating the National Front in late socialist Czechoslovakia

This thesis analyses the position of the Czech National Front in late-normalisation Czechoslovakia. The National Front brought together authorised political parties and various mass organisations. It was a critical legitimizing instrument of the authoritarian government of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia during the communist period. T he thesis outlines the attempt of the Czechoslovak communists to meet the demands of democratisation during the period of perestroika in the late 1980s by the more active National Front and its associated organisations. Archival documents of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the National Front, together with contemporary media, show how important propaganda role the more active Czech National Front was to play. The reality was that the Communists did not allow other parties and organisations associated with the National Front to have a fundamentally greater share of political power until November 1989. Paradoxically, it was only at the end of 1989 that the Czech National Front really sought an independent position in the political system. But by then the National Front had only a few months of political life left.