Ota Šik (11 September 1919 – 22 August 2004) was a
Czech economist
An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics.
The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...
and politician. He was the man behind the ''New Economic Model'' (economic liberalization plan) and he was also one of the key figures in the
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring ( cs, Pražské jaro, sk, Pražská jar) was a period of political liberalization and mass protest in
the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It began on 5 January 1968, when reformist Alexander Dubček was elected First ...
.
Early years
Šik was born in the industrial town of
Plzeň
Plzeň (; German and English: Pilsen, in German ) is a city in the Czech Republic. About west of Prague in western Bohemia, it is the fourth most populous city in the Czech Republic with about 169,000 inhabitants.
The city is known worldwid ...
,
Czechoslovakia
, rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי,
, common_name = Czechoslovakia
, life_span = 1918–19391945–1992
, p1 = Austria-Hungary
, image_p1 ...
. Before the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
Šik studied Art at
Charles University of Prague, and studied politics after the war.
Following the
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
annexation of the
Sudetenland
The Sudetenland ( , ; Czech and sk, Sudety) is the historical German name for the northern, southern, and western areas of former Czechoslovakia which were inhabited primarily by Sudeten Germans. These German speakers had predominated in the ...
, and the partition of the whole nation in March 1939, Šik joined the
Czech Resistance movement. However, he was arrested by the
Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...
in 1940 and sent to the
Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp
Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with nearly 100 further subcamps located throughout Austria and southern German ...
. At Mauthausen Šik's fellow inmates included
Antonín Novotný, the future president of Czechoslovakia (who was succeeded by the leader of the Prague Spring
Alexander Dubček), and Dubček's father, Štefan.
Political career
The connections that Šik made at Mauthausen proved useful in his post-war political career. In the early 1960s he attempted to persuade the hardline president, Novotný, into loosening his rigid adherence to
central planning, which had been crippling the economy. Šik, who by this point was an economics professor and member of the
Communist party
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of '' The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel ...
, wanted to bring market elements into central planning, to relax
price controls and to promote
private enterprise
A privately held company (or simply a private company) is a company whose shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in the respective listed markets, but rather the company's stock is ...
in the hope of kickstarting the stagnant economic climate. It was around this point that Šik was elected to the party's
central committee and was made head of the economics institute at the
Czech Academy of Sciences.
Šik's reforms were launched in 1967, before Dubček came to power, but were heavily watered down by party ''apparatchiks'' who worried about losing control of the factories. The only palpable, and certainly the most popular, result of the reforms was the appearance of private taxis on the streets of
Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...
. In December 1967, at a party meeting that was a precursor to Dubček's rise to power a month later, Šik publicly denounced Novotný's regime. He demanded a fundamental change to the
Communist
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, ...
system and a new leadership, two decades before
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet politician who served as the 8th and final leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to the country's dissolution in 1991. He served as General Secretary of the Com ...
he announced that economic reform could not be separated from fundamental political change. By this point Czechoslovakia had the lowest growth rates in the
Soviet bloc, whereas previously it had been the economic backbone of the
Habsburg empire.
Following Dubček's election as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Šik was made a deputy prime minister in April 1968 and he was the architect of the economics section of Dubček's
action programme. Šik claimed that if his policies were followed then Czechoslovakia would be on an economic par with neighbouring
Austria
Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
within four years. However these plans were never followed out after the
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring ( cs, Pražské jaro, sk, Pražská jar) was a period of political liberalization and mass protest in
the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It began on 5 January 1968, when reformist Alexander Dubček was elected First ...
was brutally ended in August of the same year by the tanks of the
Soviet army
uk, Радянська армія
, image = File:Communist star with golden border and red rims.svg
, alt =
, caption = Emblem of the Soviet Army
, start_date ...
.
After the Prague Spring
When the tanks rolled into Prague, Šik was on holiday in
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label= Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavij ...
. With the threat of arrest looming, he did not return to his homeland.
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev; uk, links= no, Леонід Ілліч Брежнєв, . (19 December 1906– 10 November 1982) was a Soviet politician who served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union between 1964 and 1 ...
and the
Soviet Communist Party's propaganda machine singled Šik out for particular attention. In August 1968,
TASS
The Russian News Agency TASS (russian: Информацио́нное аге́нтство Росси́и ТАСС, translit=Informatsionnoye agentstvo Rossii, or Information agency of Russia), abbreviated TASS (russian: ТАСС, label=none) ...
issued a press release calling him an agent of
U.S. imperialism and "one of the most odious figures of the rightwing revisionists".
Šik left Yugoslavia in October 1968 and moved to
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
. In 1969, he returned to Prague and tried to convince his colleagues but his views were rejected. So he returned to Switzerland where he became an economics professor at the
University of St. Gallen in 1970. He held the post until he retired in 1990. After the
Velvet Revolution
The Velvet Revolution ( cs, Sametová revoluce) or Gentle Revolution ( sk, Nežná revolúcia) was a non-violent transition of power in what was then Czechoslovakia, occurring from 17 November to 28 November 1989. Popular demonstrations agains ...
, Šik became an economic advisor to the Czech president, but had no impact on actual economic policies. He became a Swiss citizen and lived there until his death.
Major works
Šik was known as a
market socialist
Market socialism is a type of economic system involving the public, cooperative, or social ownership of the means of production in the framework of a market economy, or one that contains a mix of worker-owned, nationalized, and privately owned ...
but through the time he became a proponent of
social market economy instead of market socialism. His major works include:
*''The Third Way: Marxist-Leninist Theory & Modern Industrial Society'' (1972)
*''For a Humane Economic Democracy'' (1979)
*''The Communist Power System'' (1981)
*''Economic Systems'' (1989)
External links
Ota Šik Archiveat
marxists.org
Marxists Internet Archive (also known as MIA or Marxists.org) is a non-profit online encyclopedia that hosts a multilingual library (created in 1990) of the works of communist, anarchist, and socialist writers, such as Karl Marx, Friedrich En ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sik, Ota
1919 births
2004 deaths
Charles University alumni
Czech communists
Czechoslovak economists
Czechoslovak defectors
Politicians from Plzeň
Prague Spring
Mauthausen concentration camp survivors
Place of death missing
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia politicians
University of St. Gallen faculty
Czechoslovak academics
Czechoslovak expatriates in Switzerland
20th-century Czech economists