Prague Spring

Prague Spring is the name given to the movement to effect political and economic reforms in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Although this movement, which was led by Communist Party First Secretary Alexander Dubček, enjoyed widespread popular support from Czechs and Slovaks and sought to strengthen the nation's socialist system, it was crushed by an invasion of the Soviet Union and four other Warsaw Pact nations.

Although the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia had assumed power in 1948 with much popular support—it won the largest vote total in the previous election and hundreds of thousands marched in the streets of Prague demanding that it take power—a Stalinist model was imposed by the Soviet Union, a hard-line regime that remained into the 1960s. The political and cultural constraints, coupled with economic stagnation and continued strains between Czechs and Slovaks, exacerbated by the wide economic gap between them, created widespread [Page 1161]discontent. Momentum for political and economic reform built from the mid-1960s, and a significant portion of the party leadership had come to back reform by January 1968; as part of changes in the leadership, Dubček was named party first secretary, Czechoslovakia's most powerful post. In April 1968, momentum for reform grew when another series of personnel changes in party leadership removed several hard-liners opposed to reform and the Action Program was adopted. The Action Program called for a “Czechoslovak road to socialism” in which tight centralized control of the economy and other spheres would be loosened and a broad scope would be allowed for social initiative, including democratization of the “whole social and political system.”

The Czechoslovak Communist Party continued to be split on reform, and the Soviet Union opposed it, with this opposition repeatedly being put forth in bilateral and multinational conferences, in its press, and in summer “war games” in which the Soviet army had troops in Czechoslovakia. In June 1968, a decision was made to move up the convening of the party's 14th Congress to September (it had been scheduled for 1970), at which sweeping changes would have been made in the party leadership, creating better conditions for reform. Structural reform of the government, to make it less centralized in Prague, and rehabilitation of the victims of the purges of the 1950s did go forward, although many changes were to have awaited the conclusion of the 14th Congress.

In August, however, the Soviet Union and four allied nations invaded Czechoslovakia, halting reform and taking prisoner reformers in responsible party and government posts. The Soviet leadership had hoped to quickly install a puppet government but had to back off from those plans when widespread opposition developed within the country and the Czechoslovak press transmitted internationally the disavowal of the invasion by both the party and government. Dubček and some of his allies were put back in, but many reformers were ordered by the Soviet Union to be replaced with compliant hard-liners. Reforms were gradually whittled down until Dubček and the remaining reformers were forced out of their remaining posts and expelled from the party in September 1969. Gustáv Husák, whom Dubček had rehabilitated a few years earlier, reimposed a harsh Stalinist regime, returning the country to the stasis of the 1950s and early 1960s.

...