Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the early 1950s, so sycophantic (and scared) was the surviving leadership, that Khrushchev's
1956 thaw was virtually ignored by the KSČ. An attempted rebellion in the Writers' Union
Congress was rebuffed and an enquiry into the show trials made several minor security offi-
cials scapegoats for the “malpractices”. The genuine mass base of the KSČ remained blindly
loyal to the Party for the most part; Prague basked under the largest statue of Stalin in the
world, and in 1957 the dull, unreconstructed neo-Stalinist
Antonín Novotný
- subsequently
alleged to have been a spy for the Gestapo during the war - became First Secretary and Pres-
ident.
Reformism and invasion
The first rumblings of protest against Czechoslovakia's hardline leadership appeared in the
official press in 1963. At first, the criticisms were confined to the country's worsening eco-
nomicstagnation, butsoondevelopedintomoregeneralized protestsagainst theKSČleader-
ship. Novotný responded by ordering the belated release and rehabilitation of victims of the
1950s purges, permitting a slight cultural thaw and easing travel restrictions to the West. In
effect,hewassimplybuyingtime.Thehalf-heartedeconomicreformsannouncedinthe1965
NewEconomicModel
failed to halt the recession, and the minor political reforms instigated
by the KSČ only increased the pressure for greater changes within the Party.
In 1967, Novotný attempted a pre-emptive strike against his opponents. Several leading
writers were imprisoned, Slovak Party leaders were branded as “bourgeois nationalists” and
the economists were called on to produce results or else forego their reform programme. In-
stead of eliminating the opposition, though, Novotný unwittingly united them. Despite No-
votný'spleatotheSoviets,Brezhnevrefusedtobackaleaderwhomhesawas“Khrushchev's
man in Prague”, and on January 5, 1968, the young Slovak
AlexanderDubček
replaced No-
votný as First Secretary. On March 22, the war hero Ludvík Svoboda dislodged Novotný
from the presidency.
1968: the Prague Spring
By inclination, Dubček was a moderate, cautious reformer - the perfect compromise candid-
ate - but he was continually swept along by the sheer force of the reform movement. The
virtual
abolitionofcensorship
wasprobablythesinglemostsignificant stepDubčektook.It
transformedwhathadbeenuntilthenaninternalPartydebateintoapopularmassmovement.
Civil society, for years muffled by the paranoia and strictures of Stalinism, suddenly sprang
into life in the dynamic optimism of the first few months of 1968, the so-called
Prague
Spring
. In April, the KSČ published their Action Programme, proposing what became pop-
ularly known as “socialism with a human face” - federalization, freedom of assembly and
expression, and democratization of parliament.
Throughout the spring and summer, the reform movement gathered momentum. The Social
Democrat Party (forcibly merged with the KSČ after 1948) re-formed, anti-Soviet polemics
