Frozen Assets: Czechoslovakia’s 1979 Blizzard and the Energetic Social Contract of Late Socialism

January 1979 was historically cold, especially in central Europe. In Czechoslovakia, New Years’ Eve 1978 saw the most dramatic day-over-day temperature change on record, causing coal to freeze in the ground, which dried up the country’s energy supply and caused economic life to grind to a halt. Schools, non-essential workplaces, restaurants, pubs, and cinemas were closed for a whole month to conserve fuel. In the years since, this period has come to be known as uhelné prázdniny, or “the coal vacation.” How did this month of bitter cold, dark streets, and interrupted TV programming come to be remembered as a vacation, not a tragedy? While imperfect, the state’s extreme conservation measures proved successful in staving off the worst outcomes, and the death rate was not higher than average. Despite the enormous strain the freeze put on infrastructure, this paper argues that the socialist state was able to create the conditions of possibility for most citizens to remember the 1979 freeze as a time of leisure, not deprivation, through electricity rationing, universal housing, and the establishment of temporary childcare centers. In 1969, state planners implemented what they called a “cheap energy policy,” lowering electricity rates for domestic consumers and freezing prices on gasoline and coal, thus codifying a high-energy social contract, in which the state derived political legitimacy by providing its citizens with an ever-increasing standard of living predicated on ready access to cheap energy. The freeze could have ruptured Czechoslovakia’s high-energy social contract, but to the surprise of Party leaders, it did not. Rather, citizens embraced the lifestyle demanded by conservation measures and enjoyed a month spent ice skating, skiing, and bundling up with loved ones. This suggests that citizens had a different concept of the social contract than leaders, one in which leisure trumped consumption.