Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia

The Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (, KSČM) is a communist party in the Czech Republic. As of 2022, KSČM has a membership of 20,450, and is a member party of The Left in the European Parliament – GUE/NGL in the European Parliament, and an observer member of the European Left Party. Sources variously describe the party as either left-wing or far-left on the political spectrum. It is one of the few former ruling parties in post-Communist Central Eastern Europe to have not dropped the Communist title from its name, although it has changed its party program to adhere to laws adopted after 1989. For most of the first two decades after the Velvet Revolution, the party was politically isolated and accused of extremism, but it has moved closer to the Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD). After the 2012 Czech regional elections, KSČM began governing in coalition with the ČSSD in 10 regions. It has never been part of a governing coalition in the executive branch but provided parliamentary support to Andrej Babiš' Second Cabinet until April 2021. The party's youth organization was banned from 2006 to 2010, and there have been calls from other parties to outlaw the main party. Until 2013, it was the only political party in the Czech Republic printing its own newspaper, called Haló noviny. The party's two cherry logo comes from the song Le Temps des cerises, a revolutionary song associated with the Paris Commune. History The party was formed in 1989 by a congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), which decided to create a party for the territories of Bohemia and Moravia (including Czech Silesia), the areas that were to become the Czech Republic. The new party's organization was significantly more democratic and decentralized than the previous party, and gave local district branches of the party significant autonomy. In 1990, KSČ was reorganized as a federation of KSČM and the Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS). Later, KSS changed its name to the Party of the Democratic Left, and the federation dissolved in 1992. During the party's first congress, held in Olomouc in October 1990, party leader Jiří Svoboda attempted to reform the party into a democratic socialist one, proposing a democratic socialist program and changing the name to the transitional Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia: Party of Democratic Socialism.