Appropriately, for a major Czechoslovak crisis in the twentieth century, the ‘Velvet Revolution’ of 1989 came late. It had initially been planned for 1988. Gorbachev’s procrastination and other circumstances probably account for the minor delay that put the Velvet Revolution among the fateful eights of the country’s history.15 It should be noted, however, that although it was obviously understood as the undoing of the legacy of the 1948 communist takeover, it was not framed as a continuation of the “interrupted revolution” of 1968. To be sure, some sidelined 68ers and a number of western observers were inclined to point to that continuity with the aspirations of the Prague Spring, but the main protagonists of 1989 in Prague were eager to distance themselves from the “illusions of 1968.” The aim was no longer the democratization of socialism but simply democracy. Instead of searching for a ‘third way’ between capitalism and Soviet-style Socialism, the goal was the introduction of markets without adjectives: “the third way leads to the Third World” said Václav Klaus, the promoter of radical free-market economic reforms. Furthermore, the “return to Europe,” translated into foreign policy terms, was no longer about extending the margins of maneuvering in central Europe between east and west, but to join western (“Euro-Atlantic”) institutions as quickly as possible. Václav Havel rather than Alexander Dubček became president and the embodiment of these goals.
The reasons are understandable: it was not easy in 1989 to identify with a project that crashed tragically and was followed by twenty years of relentless ‘normalization.’ In dealing with the divide between ’68ers and ’89ers, it may be useful to distinguish between “illusions” (ideas that you can reform the system from within the Communist Party) and utopias (which entail a future-oriented project known as ‘socialism with a human face’). All one can add is that 1968 was the last Czech attempt to propose not a blueprint but a vision (deemed utopian or inconsistent afterwards), which transcended the country and concerned Europe as a whole. By way of contrast, 1989 was the first revolution not to propose a new social project; a revolution without violence and utopias, but also without a strong new idea. It was indeed, as historian François Furet called it, a “revolution-restoration” or, as Jürgen Habermas called it, “catch-up revolution” (Nachholende Revolution).16 The aim was to restore national and popular sovereignty, the rule of law, private property, and to imitate the western model. For that reason, the Velvet Revolution of 1989 has since the 1990s been considered in Prague as an “anti-1968,” and today the commemorations concern the tragedy of the invasion of August 1968 rather than the hopes and aspirations of the Spring.
Understandable as the distancing from the ideas and illusions of 1968 may be, it has, two potential snags: if your aim is to imitate western economic and political models, you cease to be interesting for the west. In addition, and more importantly, what if you are imitating a model in crisis? In thinking that one through, you may be forgiven for straying and stumbling upon ideas, projects, and utopias associated with the Prague Spring of 1968.
1 Philip Windsor and Adam Roberts, Czechoslovakia, 1968: Reform, Repression, Resistance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969).
2 Václav Havel, “La citoyenneté retrouvée,” Introduction to J. Rupnik and F. Fejtö, eds., Le printemps tchécoslovaque 1968 (Bruxelles: Editions Complexes, 1999), 12.
3 Gordon H. Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976); Archie Brown and Gordon Wightman, “Czechoslovakia: Revival and Retreat,” in Archie Brown and Jack Gray, eds., Political Culture and Political Change in Communist States (New York: Macmillan, 1977), 159–96.
4 Milan Kundera, “Český úděl,” Literarni Listy 7–8, December 19, 1968, (“Czech Destiny”), trans. Tim West; Václav Havel, “Český úděl?” (“Czech Destiny”), Tvar, April 1969. The three articles (with Kundera’s reply to Havel) reprinted in Literarni Noviny, December 27, 2007.
5 Milan Kundera, “Český úděl,” 5.
6 Václav Havel, Český úděl?
7 1968 was the year Karel Kosik’s Dialectic of the Concrete (Dialektika konkrétniho, 1966) and Radovan Richta’s Civilization at the Crossroads (Civilizace na rozcesti, 1967) were translated in western Europe.
8 Jan Patocka, Sebrané Spisy, vol. 12 (Prague: OIKOYMENH, 2016), 241–43.
9 Antonin J. Liehm, “Generace znamena v cestine singular i plural,” Introduction to Generace (Praha, 1969 [banned before distribution] and 1990). The book was translated in several languages with a lengthy afterword by Jean-Paul Sartre, “The Socialism that Came in from the Cold,” Introduction to Antonin J. Liehm, The Politics of Culture (New York: Grove, 1973).
10 Their radicalism in undoing what they had helped to bring about two decades earlier perplexed the non-communists and particularly those belonging to an in-between generational group: see the samizdat volume Zivot je vsude, Almanach roku 1956 (Praha: Paseka, 2005), edited by Josef Hiršal and Jiří Kolář, with contributions of Skvorecky, Hrabal, Julis, Kolar, Hirsal, Zabrana, Kubena and a certain Václav Havel.
11 Milan Kundera, Preface to the French edition of Josef Skvorecky and Claudia Ancelot, Miracle en Bohème [Mirákl: Politická detektivka in original Czech] (Paris: Gallimard, 1978), x.
12 Ibid., x–xi.
13 Zdenek Mlynar, Mraz prichazi z Kremlu (Köln: Index, 1979), 306–7. Translated into English as Nightfrost in Prague: The End of Humane Socialism (New York: Karz Publishers, 1980).
14 J. Dienstbier, quoted in G.E. Castellano and D. Jun, “The Awkward Revolution,” The New Presence (Winter 2008): 17.
15 The national independence and formation of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, the Munich Agreement of 1938, the seizing of complete power by the Communist Party in 1948, 1968 and the ‘Velvet Revolution’ of 1988/89.
16 See for example, François Furet, L’Enigme de la désagrégation communiste (Paris: Fondation Saint Simon, 1990); and Jürgen Habermas, Die nachholende Revolution: Kleine Plotisiche Schriften VII (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1990): 179–94.
03
The Prague Spring and the Evolution of the Position of Leonid Brezhnev
Alexander Stykalin
Institute of Slavic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow
The
