Prague Spring and its legacy: Slovakia's Prospect

Prague Spring, an attempt to democratise the Czech socialist dictatorship, is likely to be internationally like the most popular historical event in Czech and Slovak history. The violent crackdown on the reforming process by the forces of the Warsaw Treaty on 21 August 1968 is generally seen as a fundamental gap in the history of the communist world movement. In the words of Tony Judt, “Illusion that communism was reformable, that Stalinism had been a wrong twist, a mistake that could still be corrected, that the basic ideals of democratic pluralism could somehow be compatible with the structures of Marxist collectiveism: this illusion was crushed under tanks' chains on August 21, 1968 and never recovered again. Alexander Dubek and his Action Programme were not the beginning but the end”.

Also, the Prague Spring events changed the direction of Czechoslovakian development. In retrospect, however, even those directly involved were skeptical about the meaning of reforms. According to well-known dissident intellectual Milan imečka, Prague Spring changed only “phasade”: “The Communist Party still decided everything and its leaders were not even able to imagine the possibility of a political pluralism”. Another prominent figure of the Czech dissident, Petr Pithart, agrees: “In fact, nothing special changed during those nine short months of 1968. No new law was adopted, no new institution was created”. Both argue that the Czechoslovakian society was deeply and negatively shaped by events after the military invasion and the 20 years of the so-called “abnormalization”.

Despite the fact that Prague Spring ideals did not materialise and Czechoslovakia was forced to turn into a Soviet-style socialist dictatorship, a change related to the reform process survived: federalisation of the republic. Of course, this change was insignificant to the future of the communist project, but there was a substantial impact on the development of Czechoslovakia. Also, the federalisation story can be used to underline differences between the Czech and Slovak perception of the reform programme in 1968. In Slovakia, the federation was seen as a primary goal and the fundamental condition for democratisation. The dissatisfaction with the existing state of Slovak Czech relations and Slovakia's position in the republic was widespread and almost unanimous. On the other hand, for Czechs, this was a secondary problem. The Federation was perceived as a necessary concession for Slovaks in order to secure their support for current democratisation.

In Slovakia, the reform programme had a distinct nationalist distinction. However, the general claim that Slovaks preferred federalism more than democratisation and, as a result, deliberately sabotaged the reform process is historic. Despite living in the same country. Czechs and Slovaks entered Prague Spring with different experiences and historical hopes. Federalization perceived as one Don't worry. in Slovakia, both from radical reformers and their most conservative and nationalist opponents. The first understood it as a natural part of democratisation in the sense that the nations had the same right to equality as individuals. For the latter, it was an alternative to radical reformism, which, in their eyes, threatened the very existence of socialism. Only the 21 August military intervention secured victory for conservatives and nationalists led by the federation's “father of” Gutáv Husák, who later became head of the normalisation regime and a symbol of the 20-year era of stagnation.

All efforts by the communist regime to wipe out Prague Spring and its representatives from collective memory failed. When the Socialist dictatorship began to collapse in 1989, it became clear that the Czech and Slovak public perception remained extremely positive. Alexander Dubek, the symbol of the reform process, remained undisputed by the most popular politician at home and abroad. Even the first sociological surveys showed that the public preferred any variation of socialism with the face of man towards Western-style capitalism.

Within a few months, however, Dubqek became a marijuana figure, crushed and darkened by Václav Havel, while the program inspired by the Spring of Prague was rejected as a dead story that was of no importance to the post - Communist transition. The leaders of the Cadife Revolution did not want to reform the communist regime, they wanted to get rid of it and rebuild one according to Western models of liberal democracy with market orientation. The legislation of the new regime was based on a radical split from the communist past. This was symbolically accomplished with the election of Havel, the main figure of anti-communist instability, as president instead of Dubek. In the end, it seems that even among the general public, if we use the words of Slovak historian justlyr Lipták, the thick frame of zero syndrome after the past, and the desire for a completely new beginning began to prevail”.

The disagreement between Prague Spring ideals and the overall mood in post-communist Czechoslovakia was further stressed over time. Right Czech technocrats around Václav Klaus perceived the communist era as a dark time. In Slovakia, the coalition of populists and nationalists led by Vladimír Mečyar did not need the Prague Spring legacy. The same was true of their main opponents, the Slovak Christian Democrats. Democratic left consisted mainly of communists from the era of normalisation without any experience from Prague Spring. Their voters were nostalgic for the stability and security of the '70s and '80s. They dreamt of Husach's age, not Dubek.

As we make it into politics, Prague Spring became a popular research issue in social sciences. Many intellectuals and scholars involved in the 1968 reform process returned to the academy, from which they were expelled 20 years ago. Their actions and reflections regarding Prague Spring added to the already large number of publications dedicated to this issue by authors in the West and the Exelo. As a result, although the human face socialism project was a failure, it is one of the best required and well documented failures in Czech and Slovak history.

(Adam Hudek is a researcher at the Institute of History (The History of Sciences and Technology Department) at the Academy of Sciences in Bratislava. Its scientific interest areas include XX century Slovak intellectual history, scientific institutions and political sciences in socialist Czechoslovakia)