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As the tanks came

The reform ideas of Prague Spring lived on after 1968, influencing communist parties across Europe. To what extent was Prague Spring – and its failure – a European experience?

On the morning of August 21, 1968, began the largest military deployment since the Second World War. Troops of the Soviet Union and four other Warsaw Pact countries marched into socialist Czechoslovakia.

Photo: AP

This event engrained itself deep in the European consciousness on both sides of the Iron Curtain. It changed not only life in occupied Czechoslovakia, but also state socialism as a system, and put an end to the last chance for renewal. The communist parties of the West were also affected by the events in Prague. "Eurocommunism" was born, a reform trend which, inspired by precursors in Prague, attempted to reconcile socialism and democracy.

Why the tanks?

Today it is above all the images of tanks rolling into Prague that remain in our cultural memory. Much more significant, however, is the fact that for a short while during Prague Spring the Cold War division of Europe into East and West seemed surmountable. The societies drew closer. Prague Spring was not just about "the East", just as the events in Paris and West Berlin in the same year were not just about "the West". The most important thing was not the tanks, but the reason why they came. What was this attempt at reform, and why the tremendous effort on the part of the Communists to end it?

The thaw after Stalin's death

The term "Prague Spring" refers to the attempt to fundamentally reform the type of socialism that emerged in Russia in 1917. This original socialism was forged by and reflected Russian society. It was undeveloped economically, and favoured authoritarian power structures. In 1947 and 1948 it was grafted onto entirely different social and cultural settings. This was especially true of countries like Czechoslovakia, which were economically well developed and pursued their own, independent form of social democracy after World War II. Joseph Stalin's death introduced a broad wave of crises and reforms, even in the dependent states of Eastern Europe. An extensive thaw began in Prague in 1963, with the rehabilitation of many who had been unjustly condemned, the "Kafka Conference", an economic reform programme combining state planning and the market economy, cultural liberalisation and travel to the West.

The 2000 words manifesto

In 1968 the most determined reformers rose to the top of the Communist Party. In January the young Slovak Alexander Dubček replaced party leader Novotný. Later came Josef Smrkovský, František Kriegel and Zdeněk Mlynář, among others. In April the government adopted an action programme juxtaposing breathtaking theses and hackneyed propaganda. According to the programme, the press should be able to represent "views other than official state policy", and the secret police should "no longer be used to resolve domestic political matters or contradictions within socialist society." Press censorship was stopped, the economic reforms were spurred on, a federation of Czechs and Slovaks was created. Impulses for change came from within the party membership, as well as increasingly from society at large. The entire population was in search of a better socialism. The "2000 words" manifesto was the most important document in this search: party leadership and the population as a whole were united under the motto "socialism with a human face".

Still alive today

As previously in Yugoslavian socialist self-management, in Western Europe Prague Spring was considered less an Eastern European particularity than an attempt at synthesising democracy, economic planning and the welfare state. At the time such a "third way" represented the pan-European hope of many leftist groups. The tanks put an abrupt end to the mood of euphoria. The iron weight of "normalisation" in Czechoslovakia extinguished all memory of the creative energy of Prague Spring. But that need not be the case. As is well known, other events which took place in 1968 are still being reinterpreted today.

Dieter Segert

Dieter Segert, professor of political science at the University of Vienna, was born in 1952 in Salzwedel in the German Democratic Republic. His most recent ...
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