Building hydrosocialism in Czechoslovakia

Abstract

Throughout the period of state socialism, water was viewed as an instrument of immense transformative power and water experts were seen as guardians of such transformation, a transformation for which we coin the term 'hydrosocialism'. A reconfiguration of water, a scarce and vital natural resource, was to a great extent identified with social change and envisioned transition to socialist and eventually communist society. While in the West, hydraulic experts (hydrocrats) and the vision of a 'civilising mission' of water management (hydraulic mission) gradually faded away with the arrival of reflexive modernity from the 1960s, in socialist Czechoslovakia the situation was different. Despite the fact they faced analogous challenges (environmental issues, economisation), the technocratic character of state socialism enabled socialist hydraulic engineers to secure their position and belief in transformative powers of water.