The Prague Spring 1968
A Departure and a Double Burial
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
The reforms of the Communist Party of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic under Alexander Dubček gave “Socialism with a human face” a push. From this grew a social movement that, with its calls for more democracy and self-determination, went beyond the original goals of this idea. The party leaders of the Communist “fraternal countries” saw in it nothing more than a “counterrevolution”, which they stopped by means of military intervention in August 1968. The reformers were forced to bury the reforms themselves. As the first peaceful attempt at reform in a Communist state, the Prague Spring was a precursor to 1989.
(Osteuropa 7/2008, pp. 31–46)