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The 1946 Czecholoslovak elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovak_parliamentary_election,_1946 were conducted *after* the Soviets had withdrawn their trooops, and IMO have to be considered basically free elections despite the banning of some pre-war right-wing parties like the Agrarians and the disqualification of some voters for collaboration with the Germans. (There was certainly nothing like the violence and falsification of returns that characterized the 1947 Polish elections.) Anyway, let's say that for some reason, Benes' National Socialist Party does considerably better and the Communists considerably worse in the election than in OTL. (Even in OTL the Marxist parties--the Communists and the Social Democrats who, under Fierlinger's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zdeněk_Fierlinger leadership, were their close allies--only got a bare majority in the National Assembly.) The non-Marxist parties are still willing to have a coalition government with the Communists but insist that the Communists *not* get the key positions of Prime Minister or Minister of the Interior or Minister of Defense. (Ludvik Svoboda, who held the last-named position, was not technically a Communist but was strongly aligned with them.) If the Communists insist "give us these positions or we won't participate in the government at all"--well, then, the National Socialists, the People's (Catholic) Party, and the Slovak Democrats say they will if necesssary form a governmemt all by themselves. (And they might be joined by some Social Democrats; not everyone in the party was happy with Fierlinger's leadership.)

What does Stalin do? Does he send troops back in, regardless of any backlash this may cause in the West? I get the impression that in 1946 he is not yet ready for a total break with the Western Allies--the Communists are still in the governments of France and Italy, the Marshall Plan and Truman Doctrine have yet to be formulated, etc. But if he doesn't send troops back in, will Czechoslovakia still eventually become a Communist state? (The Czechoslovak Communists, even without the control of key ministries or the aid of Soviet troops, still do have leverage--with their control of the trade unions, they can call strikes, including a general strike. But strikes alone were not enough to destablilize France or Italy in 1947 after the Communists left the government.) Can Stalin reconcile himself to a "Finlandized" (for want of a better word) Czechoslovakia?

It is tempting to argue that a victory of the non-Communists would in the end mean no more than the victory of the Smallholders in Hungary in 1945. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_parliamentary_election,_1945 But again remember that what made it possible for Rakosi's "salami tactics" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mátyás_Rákosi to work in Hungary was the presence of the Red Army.
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