(CZ) K organizačním otázkám učitelského hnutí v buržoazní ČSR
(EN) Organizational Questions of the Teachers' Movement in the Czechoslovak Burgeois Republic (1918-1938)

The efforts to form a united teachers’ organization strong enough to defend the interests of school and the teaching profession were recorded in the Czech lands as early as the period before the First World War. But it was only on the soil of the independent Czechoslovak state that these efforts were successful and in 1920 resulted in the establishment of the Czechoslovak Teachers’ Community, which was joined by all the existing organizations. Soon, howerer, there was a renewal of the old disputes concerning the so- -called principle of a general all-teachers’ union, which had provided the basis for the establishment of central provincial associations, and the so-called principle of interest groups, which gave rise to the establishment of separate organizations of various categories of teachers, including that of women-teachers. But these disputes arose partly from unsurmounted barriers between various categories of teachers and increasingly reflected differences in political and ideological attitudes. These differences eventually led to a split among teachers. In 1924 the Central Provincial Association of Teacher Unions in Bohemia withdrew from the Community, and in 1926, together with the organizations that followed its example, formed the Czechoslovak Teachers’ Union. That was the origin of the two union centres, which roughly also represented the two main streams of teachers. The liberal democratic Union identified itself with the ruling reformist ideology, whereas the Community displayed lefdst tendencies, leaning towards socialism, towards the class approach to the struggle for social progress. This resulted in different views being held about the basic problems of social development as well as about the tasks and the position of teachers’ organizations, about die manner of their work and the tactics in pushing through a common programme and about a number of other questions including organizational ones. The Union defended die idea of a general all-teachers’ union while the Community stood for the principle of organization according to interest groups.
Numerous negotiations about the restoration of unity were inconclusive; neither the austerity measures at the time of the great depression in the thirties, which bore heavily on the teachers, nor the pressure of the growing fascist danger in the same period helped to break the deadlock, in spite of the gap between the standpoints of the two union centres having been narrowed. The efforts to achieve organizational unity, in spite of having ended in failure, helped to shape opinions and bring about changes in the teachers’ minds, which could be used in building up a united trade union organization of all teachers after the Second World War. A significant role was played in this by the teachers’ left.