Günter Bischof - The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968

The majority of Czech and Slovak society hoped for much more in terms of freedom and democracy than the reform agenda of the KSČ attempted; their desires, if played out to their logical conclusion, were incompatible in principle with any Communist program, including that of the reform Communists. Saying that here was a movement that was incompatible with communism by its very nature does not necessarily imply that it was not also supported by people who chose to remain members of the KSČ. These people even had considerable clout in some of the party organizations, most notably in the city committees in Prague and Brno as well as among Communist artists and intellectuals. Yet the far greater part of the movement had no truck with the Communist Party, and it is important to remember that this movement or societal force had neither one leader nor a clearly formulated program. These handicaps were compensated for by the existence of specific groups, such as journalists, artists, and, increasingly, students, who were the group with the clearest political profile. 5On the whole, one opted for noncommittal discussions of a whole range of political programs and visions rather than for serious and conscientious political preparations. Prototypical in a way were Václav Havel’s musings in the first issue of the Writers’ Association’s revived weekly Literární listy at the beginning of April on the possibility of the implementation of a political system that had as its basis the competition between two parties, the Communists and the Democratic Party. 6Yet deliberations on democracy, pluralism, civil society, basic civic rights, and the sovereignty of state and nation were definitely part of the societal discourse as well. Deliberations proved by no means the end of it; very soon a clamoring for their gradual realization arose. An almost unrestricted freedom of speech existed, and several organizations (including youth organizations, cultural organizations, some trade unions, and the like) emancipated themselves from the tutelage of the KSČ. Openly political groupings took shape and became active, such as the Association of Former Political Prisoners K231 or the Club of Committed Non-Partisans (KAN), the attempt to relaunch social democracy, 7the establishment of an independent student organization (Association of University Assistants), and the existence of critical public opinion. 8All this amounted already to a de facto pluralistic environment: a state of affairs, in other words, that the KSČ reformists’ program did not take into account but that was nevertheless an indisputable fact. These “protodemocratic” forces did not succeed in gaining a sufficiently strong foothold in public before August. Their activities were confined to discussions of a theoretical nature in the press or in various debating shops. They preferred this to voicing their demands in the streets. Nevertheless, it was clear that the movement had potential, and it was, therefore, eyed with apprehension by Moscow. In the eyes of the Kremlin, it was clearly an antisocialist and counterrevolutionary movement. The reform Communists, too, felt displeasure at the existence of such societal forces. Under certain conditions, if it had not been thrown off course by external pressure and, subsequently, by the intervention, such a “protodemocratic” movement could have flourished and would—if we follow this line of thought through for a moment—necessarily have had to engage in conflict with the reform Communists. This is, of course, a matter of pure speculation and cannot be decided one way or another.

Reforms of the different spheres of societal life were prepared in Czechoslovakia with considerable thoroughness. This is by no means only true of 1968, but of the first half of the 1960s as well, even though this is not always fully appreciated. 9Sizable groups of cadres advocated reform at different levels of the party apparatus, in the state administration, and in the economic and scientific communities. With a bit of simplification, one might say that it was these people who had, after 1945 and when they were still young, supported the Communist seizure of power and the construction of the Communist system out of conviction, sometimes even in a spirit of fanaticism. In the 1950s, a number of different circumstances subsequently led many of these people to view critically the reality that had developed after 1948; they noticed that it had little in common with the idealistic notions they had initially harbored. Any criticism within the party was suppressed until 1956 and did not resurface until the beginning of the 1960s. In the meantime, many of these critical thinkers had reached relatively important positions. The reasons for their disenchantment were to be found in a number of different areas: the weak economy, cases of blatant disregard for the law, the suppression of artistic freedom, and so forth. In addition to these, the nagging sense that Czechoslovakia was hopelessly trailing the countries to the west of its borders, countries with which Czechoslovakia had shared the same or a similar standard of living immediately after 1945, existed. The sense that the country was falling behind concerned not only the economy, but also technology, culture, and civilization in general. When the strict isolation in which the country had found itself in the 1950s was beginning to yield, the gap became very apparent. A solution, perhaps the proverbial five-to-twelve doomsday scenario, to give the country a break appeared to lie in the preparation and implementation of fundamental reforms. These reforms were meticulously planned. On the basis of close cooperation between institutions of the party, the state and academic teams were put together to orchestrate reforms in different spheres: one team, with Ota Šik at its head, was to deal with the economy, Zdeněk Mlynář headed another that was supposed to fix the political system, and Radovan Richta and his team were to devote themselves to the environment. The teams received relatively generous support in terms of money and the possibility of traveling abroad for study purposes. This proved somewhat counterproductive: the insights these people gained abroad served mainly to strengthen their conviction that far-reaching changes were necessary.

The reform program was underpinned not only by a general awareness that Czechoslovakia had significantly fallen behind the West and that the system as such was dysfunctional, but also by an ideological basis. The ratification of the new constitution in 1960 entailed the assessment that the process of the construction of socialism had been successfully concluded in Czechoslovakia and that the time had now come—in accordance with the classics of Marxism-Leninism—to discuss the transition from the dictatorship of the proletariat to a state for the entire population and the need and/or the possibility of a reduction of state control in view of the new situation. The reform program was hammered out and ratified under the aegis of Antonín Novotný. Economic reform, which was formulated down to the last detail and which was to combine state ownership and central planning with a dose of market economy principles, was begun as early as 1965. The program aiming at a reform of the political system was much more cautious in its scope and did not allow for the emergence of a certain limited political pluralism for at least another decade.

The general acceptance of the inevitability of reforms was one thing; quite another was their consistent implementation, which was viewed by the KSČ leadership and by important segments of the party and state apparatus with apprehension and distaste. Evidence for this can be found in such examples as the attempted economic reform and the reform of the domestic secret service. As regards the reform of the economy it was, paradoxically enough, its initial successes—an increase in the profits of several businesses and the ensuing wage rises—that evoked in Novotný a nightmare that Communist functionaries knew only too well: the fear that demand and supply might be thrown out of sync in that the supply of goods available in the market might prove inadequate in relation to the workers’ increasing spending power. Novotný therefore began to backpedal, to slow the pace of the reform, delay its implementation, and generally make sure it was no more than a half-hearted attempt. In the case of the transformation of the domestic secret service from an organ that was supposed to form the vanguard in the exacerbating class struggle into one that was to protect the state against external enemies—which was the totality of Minister of the Interior Lubomír Štrougal’s blueprint for reform—the decisive opposition came from below. The majority of the service’s staff never accepted this transformation, sabotaged it as best they could, and did everything to reverse it.