THE PRAGUE SPRING, 1968 term paper

In spring 1968, Czechoslovakia, hitherto one of the most loyal Soviet satellites in eastern Europe and a member of the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO), began experimenting with reforms designed to bring into being “socialism with a human face.” Although the Prague Spring was crushed by the August invasion of troops from the WTO, it left a legacy that was revived in the revolutions in eastern and central Europe in 1989.

By the mid-1960s, Czechoslovakia was ripe for reform. Reformers in the Czechoslovak Communist Party called for political change and for new economic policies in place of the disastrous emphasis on heavy industry. The 1967 Writers’ Congress also featured demands for political reforms.

Antonin Novotny was replaced in January 1968 as first secretary of the Czech Communist Party by Alexander Dubcek. Dubcek represented the moderate reform element in the party and, as a Slovak, he also spoke for Slovak interests (Slovaks had long complained that the party had neglected Slovakia). Reforms began cautiously with an end to censorship. The announcement of an “Action Program” came in April. It called for concentration on consumer goods production and for the expansion of political freedom. Plans for more extensive reforms, which were to be presented at the Fourteenth Party Congress, called for a more pluralistic but still one-party system.

The pace of events quickened. Quasi-political clubs appeared and the Social Democratic Party was revived. A radical declaration, “2,000 Words,” appeared in June. By then, support for reform came not only from students and intellectuals but also from the working class.

Conservative elements in the Czechoslovak Communist Party began to wonder if the party could maintain its political monopoly. The WTO also grew nervous. In particular, the Soviet Union, Poland, and the German Democratic Republic wanted an end to the Czech experiment. Czech leaders met with their counterparts from the WTO in July and in August. Dubcek believed both times he had successfully convinced the WTO that the Czechoslovak Communist Party had the situation under control.

On the night of 20–21 August, WTO troops and tanks crossed into Czechoslovakia in Operation Danube. Within a week, the invasion force numbered about 500,000 men and more than 6,000 tanks. The Czechs followed a policy of nonviolent protest, which slowed but did not stop the invasion. Dubcek and other leaders were arrested and taken to Moscow. They were allowed to return only because other Czech leaders would not cooperate until they came back. Over the next few years the “normalization” of Czechoslovakia took place under Gustav Husak, who replaced Dubcek in April 1969. Some half million members of the Czech Communist Party were thrown out of the party and, in most cases, lost their jobs. People who had been officials or doctors now worked as janitors, construction workers, and window washers. For the Czech people, invasion and “normalization” of the country meant a repressive government and two decades of economic decline. Outside Czechoslovakia, some viewed the Prague Spring as a lost opportunity for communism to show it could reform itself. Others criticized the assertion of Leonid Brezhnev, head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, that the USSR had an obligation to intervene in Czechoslovakia to preserve socialism. Criticism of the “Brezhnev Doctrine,” however, did not prevent the United States and the USSR from continuing the development of détente over the next few years.
Suggestions for Term Papers
1. Investigate Alexander Dubcek’s life and his role in 1968. Write an essay on how Dubcek viewed the reform movement and what he hoped to accomplish for Czechoslovakia in the Prague Spring.
2. Read “2,000 Words.” Assume that you are a high-ranking official in the Czechoslovak Communist Party and that you must decide whether the declaration performs a useful function in the reform movement or whether it is politically unwise. Provide a justification for your decision.
3. Why would Poland and the German Democratic Republic be nervous about the Prague Spring? Base your answer on an examination of the history of one or the other country in the 1960s.
4. Follow the course of events in Czechoslovakia in 1968 in at least two newspapers or periodicals such as the New York Times or Newsweek. Compare the kind of coverage provided by each of your sources in terms of the amount of space devoted to articles, the placement of articles, and editorial comment, whether explicit or implicit.
5. Czech films from the mid-1960s were highly praised and often very popular. View one or more and write a review discussing the film(s) on their own merits and as documents of the times. 6. Russian soliders believed they had entered Czechoslovakia in August, 1968, to help preserve socialism in the country. Czechs, of course, saw it differently. After reading about these different perspectives, write a one-act play in which a young Russian tank commander climbs out of his tank to ask directions and is confronted by an angry Czech woman about his age.

Research Suggestions

In addition to the boldfaced items, look under the entries for “The Hungarian Revolution, 1956” (#53), “The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962” (#64), and “Solidarity in Poland, 1980–1990” (#82). Search under Warsaw Treaty Organization, Jan Palach, Ota Sik, Slovakia, and Ludvik Svoboda.

SUGGESTED SOURCES

Primary Sources

Dubcek, Alexander, with Jiri Hochman. Hope Dies Last: The Autobiography of Alexander Dubcek. New York: Kodansha International, 1993. The year 1968 as seen by the political leader at the center of the Prague Spring.

Pelikan, Jiri, ed. The Secret Vysocany Congress: Proceedings and Documents of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, 22 August 1968. London: Allen Lane, 1971. Documents from the Fourteenth Party Congress held in secret as the invasion of WTO forces was taking place.

Remington, Robin Alison, ed. Winter in Prague: Documents on Czechoslovak Communism in Crisis. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1969. Documents from 1968.

Secondary Sources

Golan, Galia. The Czechoslovak Reform Movement: Communism in Crisis, 1962–1968. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971. One of the best studies available of events leading up to the Prague Spring.

———. Reform Rule in Czechoslovakia: The Dubcek Era, 1968–1969. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973. An essential book on the Prague Spring.

Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. New York: Harper and Row, 1984. A brilliant novel that, among many other things, explores aspects of 1968.

Kusin, Vladimir. The Intellectual Origins of the Prague Spring: The Development of Reformist Ideas in Czechoslovakia, 1956–1967. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971. An excellent source for tracing the roots of the reform movement.

Rothschild, Joseph. Return to Diversity: A Political History of East Central Europe since World War II. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. The best book with which to begin.

Shawcross, William. Dubcek: Dubcek and Czechoslovakia, 1918–1990. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991. A recent study of Dubcek and Czech politics by a biographer of Dubcek.

Skilling, H. Gordon. Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976. An older but nonetheless valuable study.

Valenta, Jiri. Soviet Intervention in Czechoslovakia, 1968: Anatomy of a Decision. Rev. ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. A useful effort to explain the Soviet decision to invade.

Williams, Kieran. The Prague Spring and Its Aftermath: Czechoslovak Politics, 1968–1970. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. An analysis of the reform movement and its suppression by the Soviet Union using archival sources available since the events of 1989.

World Wide Web

“Cold War International History Project.” http://cwihp.si.edu/default.htm. This major Web site for the study of the Cold War contains both documents and articles on the Prague Spring.

“Red Spring, 1960s.” http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/14. Based on CNN’s Cold War documentary series, this Web site has many interesting and useful features.