Plzeň is a city in western Bohemia with large concentration of heavy industry, the largest factory being the famous Škoda Works.

In the previous years and decades, the city saw many strike actions by workers demanding improvement of their living standards.

As long as the Party's reforms after 1948 favoured the workers in heavy industry, there was no reason to expect troubles.

But in 1953 the factory management of Škoda Works deliberately paid off the wages for May one week earlier - thus reducing their values by 80% after the currency reform was announced.

News of the reform spread quickly among night shift workers in a plant of the Škoda Works in Plzeň, who then went on strike.

Around noon the people attacked the city hall, and started to build barricades in the streets, and destroyed symbols of the communist party.

[citation needed] The leaders of the Communist party decided to present the event as having been provoked by agents of imperialism and this remained the official explanation until 1989.

The party was ordered to purge members suspected of "social-democratism" or of low levels of loyalty.

This and other uprisings in Central Europe forced the leaders of the Soviet Union to exercise greater control over these countries.