Czechoslovakia 1968 — The Prague Spring

In the first eight months of 1968, communist Czechoslovakia attempted something its Soviet masters regarded as unthinkable: it tried to reform itself from within. Under the reform communist Alexander Dubček, censorship was relaxed, consumer goods promised, the Communist Party restructured and the federal status of Slovakia acknowledged. Dubček called it "socialism with a human face". On the night of 20–21 August 1968, half a million Warsaw Pact troops rolled into Czechoslovakia to crush the experiment. Within weeks Dubček was in Moscow signing away most of his reforms; within eight months he had been removed; and within three months of the invasion, Leonid Brezhnev had articulated the doctrine that would bear his name — the claim that Moscow reserved the right to intervene in any socialist state whose "socialist gains" were threatened.

This lesson covers the Prague Spring and its destruction. It is a key Edexcel 1HI0 Paper 2 topic, rich in Question 1 (consequences) and Question 3 (importance) material. It also forms a useful pair with the Hungarian Uprising of 1956: similar pattern, different reform programme, almost identical ending. You should be able to explain why the reforms frightened Moscow, how the invasion was carried out, and what the Brezhnev Doctrine meant for Eastern Europe.

Background: Novotný's Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia had been one of the most industrialised states in pre-war Europe. After the communist coup of February 1948 it was absorbed into the Soviet bloc, and from 1957 it was ruled by the hardline Stalinist Antonín Novotný as First Secretary of the Communist Party and, from 1957, President of the Republic. Novotný offered neither the de-Stalinisation of Khrushchev's USSR nor the modest economic liberalisation already under way in Hungary or Poland.

Three problems accumulated during the 1960s:

• Economic stagnation. The centrally planned economy, heavily biased towards heavy industry, missed its targets throughout the 1960s. Living standards were noticeably lower than those in neighbouring Austria or West Germany. Consumer goods were scarce. In 1963 the economist Ota Šik openly argued for market mechanisms within the planned system.
• Slovak resentment. Slovaks complained that Prague-based rule ignored their region. Reform demands came increasingly from the Slovak wing of the Communist Party.
• Intellectual discontent. Writers, journalists and students pressed for relaxation of censorship. In June 1967 the Fourth Writers' Congress in Prague openly criticised the regime; Ludvík Vaculík delivered a speech condemning censorship, and several writers were expelled from the party.

By late 1967 Novotný's leadership was under open challenge inside the Communist Party itself. On 5 January 1968 the Central Committee removed him as First Secretary and replaced him with a Slovak reformer, Alexander Dubček. Novotný clung on as president for a few months before being pushed out as well in March 1968.

The Action Programme, April 1968

Dubček was not a liberal democrat. He was a committed communist, educated partly in the Soviet Union, who believed the Czechoslovak Communist Party could renew itself through reform. Nevertheless, the programme he announced on 5 April 1968 — the Action Programme — was the most ambitious attempt at reform within the Eastern bloc since 1956.

The Action Programme included:

• End of pre-publication censorship — newspapers, television and radio could report independently.
• Guarantee of freedom of assembly and of travel, including the freedom to travel to the West.
• Rehabilitation of victims of 1950s political trials.
• Economic reform — allowing market mechanisms and more consumer goods to ease the shortages of the 1960s.
• Internal party reform — opening up debate within the Communist Party, allowing secret ballots at party congresses and breaking the principle of "democratic centralism".
• Federalisation — a new constitutional settlement in which Slovakia would have parity with the Czech lands.

Dubček framed the programme in a single memorable phrase: "socialism with a human face" (socialismus s lidskou tváří). Crucially, the programme did not propose:

• Legalising opposition parties.
• Leaving the Warsaw Pact.
• Leaving Comecon.
• Abandoning communism.

Reform	Action Programme, April 1968
Censorship	Abolished
Travel to the West	Permitted
Opposition parties	Still banned
Warsaw Pact membership	Maintained
Slovak status	Federal parity with Czech lands
Economy	Market mechanisms within plan

The response inside Czechoslovakia was euphoric. Newspapers, long bound by party discipline, suddenly carried open debate. Writers who had been censored returned to print. A sense of possibility — what Czechs called the "Prague Spring" — spread across the country.

Moscow's alarm

From the Kremlin the view was very different. Brezhnev, General Secretary of the CPSU since 1964, watched the Prague Spring with mounting anxiety. The concerns of the Warsaw Pact leaders were interlocking:

• Precedent. If Czechoslovakia could relax censorship and permit party pluralism, East Germans, Poles and Hungarians would soon demand the same. Walter Ulbricht of East Germany and Władysław Gomułka of Poland were especially alarmed; they feared spillover into their own populations.
• Security. Czechoslovakia was a front-line Warsaw Pact state sharing a border with West Germany. Moscow could not tolerate any weakening of its military integration.
• Party control. The idea of genuine internal party debate undermined "democratic centralism" — the Leninist principle that once party leaders had decided, debate was closed.
• Ideological contagion. A reformed communism that was popular threatened the legitimacy of unreformed communism everywhere else in the bloc.

Between March and August 1968, Moscow and its allies tried pressure short of invasion. A series of meetings was organised to demand that Dubček rein in the reforms:

• Dresden, 23 March 1968 — Warsaw Pact leaders warned Dubček.
• Warsaw Letter, 15 July 1968 — signed by the USSR, GDR, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria, accusing Czechoslovakia of endangering socialism.
• Čierna nad Tisou, 29 July–1 August 1968 — bilateral Soviet-Czechoslovak talks in a small railway town on the Soviet border. Dubček gave vague assurances.
• Bratislava, 3 August 1968 — multilateral Warsaw Pact meeting. A communiqué appeared to endorse Czechoslovak sovereignty.

Dubček believed he had bought time. In fact, Brezhnev had already begun preparing the military option.

The Two Thousand Words

On 27 June 1968 the writer Ludvík Vaculík — one of the critics of 1967 — published a manifesto in four Czechoslovak newspapers titled "Two Thousand Words that Belong to Workers, Farmers, Officials, Artists and Everyone". Signed by around 70 leading cultural figures, it praised the Action Programme but called on citizens to defend and deepen the reforms against those who wanted to reverse them. It proposed local initiatives such as citizens' committees.

Dubček and the Communist Party leadership condemned the manifesto as irresponsible. But for Moscow it was confirmation that the reforms were slipping out of party control and into the hands of ordinary citizens. The Two Thousand Words is often cited as a turning point: after it, the question in Moscow was no longer whether to intervene but when and how.

Warsaw Pact invasion, 20–21 August 1968

On the night of 20–21 August 1968 Warsaw Pact forces invaded Czechoslovakia. The operation, codenamed Operation Danube, was the largest military action in Europe since the Second World War.