Red aristocracy

In the daily situation report prepared by the interior ministry for top-level Communist Party leaders, the ministry told Jakeš, Husák, Adamec, Indra and Hegenbart on Oct. 2, 1989, that some of the workers at Škoda Plzeň were "bitter and showing no interest in domestic political affairs." The prevailing opinion, the report said on Page 12, was that "the Party and government leadership is responsible for the bad state of the economy." The workers wanted faster change, acknowledgment of the problems, and the elimination of political interests in appointing true experts to key positions. Leaders weren't being held accountable and were getting rich in the meantime, the workers complained, leading to the preservation of a "red aristocracy." In České Budějovice, the report said, normal people didn't much like the Communists, because they had run the country into the ground economically. That was Oct. 2, 1989. Regimes and names change; other things stay the same.