Abstract
Immediately after the Second World War, social engineering strongly affected the new borderlands population in Czech Lands. It was legitimized by the notion of a community of ‘reliable citizens’ capable of protecting the frontier and, consequently, the security of the nation and the state.
The discourse of reliable citizens, whose logical counterpart was the cleansing and removal of all unwanted and unreliable inhabitants, was not just a part of state policy. Even more radical demands for cleansing and resettlement where articulated by the local Czech-speaking population, especially by the new settlers in the borderlands.
After the Communist takeover in February 1948, the rhetoric of recomposing society and eliminating alien elements was similar to what had been used before. From this perspective, the Communist dictatorship was not an import,which would work against the majority of the Czech population but rather an answer to a demand for purification, which had, most intensively in connection with the protection of the border, been articulated not merely by ‘Communist’ and ‘democratic’ political actors but also by a large part of the society.