Spring came early for Czechoslovakia in 1968. The dawn of the new year called for cautious optimism in Western media circles; It took a long time but the Czechs did it, read a January 13 headline from The Economist magazine in reference to Alexander Dubček’s replacement of Antonín Novotný as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). On 2 March, The Economist reiterated their confidence in Dubček to “untangle the ball” of political, economic and social turmoil overseen by the Novotný in the 15 years prior.
At the eleventh hour on 20 August 1968, a Soviet-led ‘Warsaw Pact’ coalition of around 200,000 troops and 5,000 tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia to negligible armed resistance. ‘Mr. Dubček’s balancing act’ (a May 1968 headline) had collapsed and made way for 20 years of normalisation and ‘re-Stalinisation’. 50 years later, the legacy of the Prague Spring for Czechs and Slovaks is little more than a painful reminder of the traumas of oppressive Soviet totalitarianism. Others see it as a much-needed national revival. In any case, Dubček’s efforts were not in vain. When Mikhail Gorbachev visited Prague in 1987, a senior member of his entourage was asked what the difference was between the policies of glasnost and perestroika and those of the Prague Spring. “Nineteen years” was the response. The congruence between Dubček’s and Gorbachev’s reforms is plain to see.
‘Socialism with a human face’ was born in the spring of 1968 at the Presidium of the KSČ. Dubček wanted to rebuild “an advanced socialist society on sound economic foundations” out of the economic ruin he inherited from Novotný. His ‘Action Programme’, published on 5 April at the KSČ, encapsulates this sentiment with its revolutionary opening gambit: “The social movement in the Czech lands and in Slovakia during the 20th century was carried along by two great currents – the national liberation movement and socialism.” Dubček was wary of straying from Brezhnev’s prescribed mandate; indeed, the Soviet leader’s implicit approval allowed Dubček to usurp Novotný in the first place. However, his commitment to decentralisation and liberation from the metaphorical (and often literal) barbed wire and watchtowers of the Stalinist era was unquestionably central to Dubček’s goal: the democratisation of socialism.
After all, the catalyst of Novotný’s political plight was as much cultural as economic malaise. The first grumblings of unrest came from the Writers Union Congress in June 1967, followed by extensive student demonstrations. Milan Kundera, a member of the Congress, later labelled the Prague Spring “a brief flowering of openness behind the Iron Curtain” in his 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Kundera’s beloved openness, reincarnated as glasnost (“openness”), was perhaps longer-lasting than he gave Dubček credit for. The reformist sought to rekindle public support for battered KSČ socialism in two strands: the economic doldrums endured by the urban working class and the suppression of the personal liberties of the Prague intelligentsia. In addressing the former, Dubček proposed through his ‘Action Plan’ a desertion of Stalinist heavy industry and a renewed focus on the production of consumer goods; the opening of Czechoslovak markets to the West; and, crucially, the introduction of free markets, albeit fettered.
In addressing the latter, Dubček guaranteed greater freedom of press, speech and travel; in so doing, his other reforms began to gain traction. Censorship was abolished on 26 June; on 27 June, journalist Ludvík Vaculík alongside members of the Literární Listy (“Literary Pages”), published the Two Thousand Words manifesto, denouncing the failures of the post-war communist regime and calling for immediate implementation of Dubček’s reforms. Cautious of imminent Soviet intervention, the manifesto fell short of a revolutionary call-to-arms but was nevertheless provocative enough to spook Dubček into reaffirming the role of the party in carrying out measured reform. He and the party Presidium were quick to publicly condemn the publication. But Dubček’s own KSČ ‘Action Plan’ from April had already spiralled out of control in a matter of months, spawning its more radical, “counter-revolutionary” cousin. The moderate reformist had unwittingly birthed a revolution.
The manifesto was the first to explicitly mention the dreaded possibility that “foreign forces may interfere with our internal development”, going on to avow to arm the government if necessary. The Soviet Union was not mentioned in name, but the target of the intellectuals’ hostilities was made clear. On 15 July, the Communist Parties of the USSR, East Germany, Hungary and Poland met in Warsaw to issue the now-infamous ‘Warsaw Letter’, condemning the ‘Two Thousand Words’ as “an open appeal for struggle against the Communist Party.” Czechoslovak leaders were faced with an impossible dilemma: pacify the nascent domestic disquiet and adopt the ‘Two Thousand Words’, or kowtow to Brezhnev’s demands, reversing liberalisation to prevent foreign intervention. ‘Mr. Dubcek’s balancing act’ had come to a tipping point.
In retrospect, the rolling of the tanks in Wenceslas Square seemed inevitable, and, in any case, a castigation not out of place for the ‘neo-Stalinist’ Brezhnev and his eponymous doctrine. And yet, the leaders of the Spring were not foolish in their attempts to topple Soviet totalitarianism; to the contrary, Dubček and his band of reformers were instrumental in ultimately bringing down the Berlin Wall. In the short term, the Prague Spring heralded little more than the abrupt curtailment of de-Stalinisation.
In the long term, however, it was the face of a series of contemporaneous symptoms of discontent behind the ‘Iron Curtain’: the March 1968 student revolt in Poland and Nicolae Ceaușescu’s condemnation of the Warsaw Pact invasion (and the deterioration of Soviet relations that followed). Internally, the citizens of the Soviet Union were made aware of Dubček’s reforms and subsequent developments through Western radio broadcasts. Brezhnev’s Politburo made it explicit that it would not tolerate any degree of democratisation, liberalisation or autonomy (from the Kremlin) behind the Iron Curtain. The subsequent military crackdown sparked not only a crisis of legitimacy for the USSR but also rallied many of its citizens in defence of de-Stalinisation. If incremental reforms to a Soviet Communist government in Prague were so intolerable, Russian people saw the writing on the wall for their own regime in Moscow.
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Wojnowski, Zbigniew (2018): ‘The Impact of the Prague Spring on the USSR’, University of Roehampton
Karabel, Jerome (2003): ‘The Revolt of the Intellectuals: The Origins of the Prague Spring and the Politics of Reform Communism’
Peirce, Gina M (2009) ‘1968 and Beyond: From the Prague Spring to “Normalization”’, University of Pittsburgh
Seelinger, I. (2018) ‘Why the Prague Spring was Doomed to Failure’, History Today, April.
Stoneman, Anna J (2015) ‘Socialism With a Human Face: The Leadership and Legacy of the Prague Spring’ The History Teacher, vol. 49, no. 1, pp. 103–25