A Czechoslovak propaganda poster celeberating the 50th anniversary of Rudé Právo's founding

Rudé Právo (Czech for The Red Right or The Red Law) was the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Its (independent) sucessor is Právo daily.

It was founded in 1920 when the party was splitting from the social democrats and their older daily Právo lidu (People's Right). During 1920s and 1930s it was often censored and even temporarily stopped. In autumn 1938 the party was abolished and during the German occupation and World War II that came soon afterwards the newspaper became an underground mimeographed pamphlet. After the communist take-over in 1948 it became the leading newspaper in the country, the Czechoslovak equivalent of the Soviet Union's Pravda, highly propagandistic and always obedient to the government. Its purely Slovak equivalent in Slovakia was Pravda.

Rudé Právo had a circulation of over one million daily, making it the most widely read newspaper in Czechoslovakia. However, the manner in which the communist government ensured that it remained so were hardly legitimate marketing tactics. Sometimes, no other newspapers could be sold before 10am, or kiosk owners might paid to not sell other papers at all, or the presses that printed rival newpapers could just be ordered not to print them. Also, the subscription was more or less compulsory in the army, many factories, offices etc. Despite its high circulation, the newspaper was barely actually read by anybody, because of its generally boring and propagandistic content.

Following the Velvet Revolution, Rudé Právo was transformed: Basically, several of its editors founded a new company unaffiliated with the party but taking advantage of the existing reader base. The title was shortened to Právo (The Law) only, sometimes derisively nicknamed "orange" after the colour of the masthead. It follows moderate left-wing line and has a circulation of 180,000 (summer 2004), making it second of serious Czech dailies.

The daily published by a company owned by the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia for a few dozen thousand aged hard-liners is called Haló noviny (Hallo Newspaper) and not taken seriously for its non-existent journalistic standards. The party also directly publishes the weekly Naše pravda (Our Truth).

External link

• Internet portal of the newspaper