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Overview
The author's account is based on all available written sources, including unpublished Communist Party documents and interviews conducted in Czechoslovakia in 1967, 1968, 1969. He examines the historical background, the main reforms and political forces on 1968, international reactions, the Soviet intervention, and the experiment's collapse, concluding with his reasons for regarding the events of the Prague spring as a movement of revolutionary proportions.
Originally published in 1976.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691617008 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 03/08/2015 |
| Series: | Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto , #1600 |
| Pages: | 944 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.90(w) x 10.00(h) x 2.20(d) |
Read an Excerpt
Czechoslovakia's Interrupted Revolution
By H. Gordon Skilling
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1976 Princeton University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-10040-1
CHAPTER 1
Communism and Czechoslovak Traditions
Communist regimes have almost without exception repudiated the dominant traditions of their countries' history and claimed to have established brand-new patterns of politics and society. At the same time they have sought to depict communism as a projection of the "revolutionary" and "progressive" elements of their national heritage and to incorporate these in the mythology of the new order. In most cases, as, for instance, Soviet Russia, the past thus rejected was autocratic and reactionary, and only selected radical traditions were regarded as the forerunners of communism. In Czechoslovakia, however, the dominant tradition was democratic, deeply rooted in the feelings of the people, and regarded positively by most Czechs and by many Slovaks. The communists, therefore, had to renounce the advanced and progressive features of the past, such as the legacy of Masaryk, since these were integral elements of the dominant tradition. In another respect, also, Czechoslovakia seemed to stand in stark contrast to other communist countries. The regimes have usually, willy-nilly, been affected and influenced, often unconsciously, by their own historical backgrounds, including those elements which were condemned. For a decade or more, Czechoslovak communism seemed to have been successful in erasing the dominant national traditions and to have escaped even their indirect influence. In the sixties, however, the forces of the past began once more to make themselves felt.
National Traditions and the Communists
The strongest traditions with which the Czechoslovak communists had to grapple were those that had evolved during the twenty years of the First Republic between the two World Wars. Created largely as a result of the victory of the Entente and the decisions of the Paris Peace Conference, Czechoslovakia emerged as an independent state after three centuries of subservience and brought Czechs and Slovaks together in a single political entity for the first time in history. Modeled politically in the image of the Western democracies by its two great leaders, the first President, Tomáš G. Masaryk, and his successor, Edvard Beneš, Czechoslovakia, the new state, alone in Eastern Europe, maintained a democratic system during the two decades between the wars. True, many of the "traditions" of Czechoslovakia were new and broke with the historical experience of the Czechs and Slovaks within the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. There were, however, important elements of continuity, so that the Republic could be regarded as a logical culmination of the national awakening and of decades of striving for a democratic life, social advance, and self-government.
There were great disparities in the pasts of the Czechs and Slovaks, and their union in a single state, although not without historical justification, represented a new departure. Before 1919 the Czechs had risen to a high level of economic, social, and cultural development and had played an important political part in Austria; the Slovaks had remained at a lower level of development in all respects and possessed almost no political rights in Hungary. Their nationalism was less pronounced than that of the Czechs and was strongly influenced by the pressures of the Magyar environment and by the authority of the Catholic Church. The national movement, insofar as it existed, was mainly inspired and led by those Protestants and Catholics conscious of Slovak linguistic and cultural links with the Czech nation. After 1919, leadership by the larger nation, the Czech, led to the dominance of their traditional values, as represented by Masaryk and Beneš, and the subordination of the distinctive ideals of Slovak nationalism. The concept of a "Czechoslovak" nation asserted by Czech leaders even denied that a separate Slovak nation existed. Many Slovaks, including General Milan Štefánik, cofounder of the Republic, accepted the notion of Czechoslovak national unity. Others increasingly stressed separate Slovak identity and urged autonomy for Slovakia. Other minorities, such as the Germans, Magyars, Poles, and Ruthenians had to reconcile themselves to the supremacy of the "Czechoslovaks" as the state-nation and to life within a community reflecting the spirit and ideas of the Czechs.
The concept of an independent Czechoslovak state had not attracted the left-wing socialists who eventually formed the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPCz), as they had hoped for either a socialist revolution in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy as a whole, or the incorporation of the Eastern European peoples in a continent-wide Soviet federation. When independence was achieved, they accepted the new state as a political reality but viewed it as an "imperialist" state subordinated to the general interests of the ruling classes of the Western powers. Bohumir Smeral, a leading pre-war socialist, and eventual founder of the Communist Party, endorsed the doctrine of proletarian dictatorship and pressed for membership in the Communist International, but openly recognized that conditions in Czechoslovakia were not ripe for revolution. By preserving a large party he hoped ultimately to win mass support for revolution. Although opposed to the new political and social order, Smeral defended the territorial integrity of the new state and rejected the idea of self-determination for the national minorities.
The democracy established by Masaryk and the major Czechoslovak parties was treated by the communists as a f acade which veiled the dominance of the bourgeoisie and condemned the workers to wage slavery and exploitation. The "Castle" (Hrad), i.e. the President's office, was considered the pinnacle of power of the ruling classes, and Masaryk, and later Beneš, as the personification of capitalist rule. Although the communists benefited from the democratic rights established by the constitution, and functioned, subject to some restrictions, as a legal party during the life of the Republic, they considered themselves as outside the existing system and as its avowed enemy, and used its parliamentary and electoral opportunities as a means for its ultimate abolition. Always in radical opposition, they were treated by their opponents as outsiders, and not as legitimate participants in the democratic process. Although the communists functioned within a working democracy for two decades, this experience did not exert a strong influence on their thinking and behavior when they eventually achieved power.
When the CPCz was formed in 1921, it was a massive party, representing a substantial part, perhaps a majority, of the members of the post-war Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party and could therefore be regarded as a legitimate heir of Austrian social democracy. This movement had been originally Marxist in outlook and international in its appeal and included representatives of all the nationalities of the Monarchy. But Czech socialism had become increasingly nationalist in orientation and like the rest of the movement, revisionist or evolutionary in strategy and tactics. Although after 1918, many Czech socialists, under Smeral's leadership, at first inclined toward the Comintern and its revolutionary program, at heart they were really left-wing socialists, rather than Bolsheviks. The left-wing element soon lost their dominant position to the more moderate wing of social democracy, which endorsed the Masaryk program of national liberation and became a governing party. There was also a substantial pre-war non-Marxist socialist tradition among Czechs, so that under these influences and Masaryk's leadership, the new state was "socialistic," but in a sense that was unacceptable to the communists with their dogmatic, revolutionary approach.
The efforts of the Comintern were bent toward transforming the Czechoslovak movement, with its strong social democratic traditions, into a "Bolshevik" party, on the Leninist model. This required a constant struggle against so-called social democratic vestiges within its ranks and culminated in 1929 in the appointment of Moscow's choice, Klement Gottwald, as leader. Hostile to the existing Republic and its "bourgeois" democracy, the party, under his direction, devoted itself to the attainment of a proletarian revolution and the establishment of a Soviet Czechoslovakia. Successive purges produced a strong corps of pro-Moscow leading cadres and reduced the party to a small, sectarian, Moscow-oriented movement, shorn of its original social democratic and national heritage and lacking in popular appeal. Marx was replaced by Lenin in their pantheon, just as he was replaced by Masaryk in more moderate socialist circles. When the Comintern in 1924 adopted the doctrine of national self-determination, including even the right of secession, and the CPCz incorporated this in their program, their ultimate objective became the disintegration of Czechoslovakia as a multinational state. As a result, communism's appeal was not so much to members of the ruling Czech nation as to the minority peoples, especially the Magyars in Slovakia and the Ruthenians. Nonetheless, in the years of deepening economic crisis, the party, with its radical program, began to gain support among the working class, and even among the intellectuals, and became a significant political factor, well represented in parliament.
In the closing years of the Republic, the rise of Hitler to power, the danger of German aggression, and the formulation of the policy of the Popular Front by the Comintern led the Czechoslovak communists to adopt a more positive attitude toward the state and its democratic system.
Still under Gottwald's leadership, in 1935, they embarked on a campaign for the defense of the Republic and its independence against the external threat from Germany, and of its democratic order against internal foes. This involved communist support for Edvard Beneš, who was elected as President in that year. The conclusion of the Czechoslovak-Soviet pact of mutual assistance in the same year removed any contradiction between the party's line and the foreign policy of the state. After Munich, the CPCz bitterly condemned what they called Beneš' capitulation to the ultimatum of the Great Powers and opposed the partition of the country, the subsequent Nazi occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, and the formation of a separate Slovak state. This enhanced the patriotic image of the party and widened its popular appeal. From 1939 to 1941, however, this policy was abandoned, the war was denounced as "imperialist" and Beneš' liberation movement was condemned. When the Soviet Union became involved in hostilities in 1941, however, the communists revived the democratic and nationalist approach and launched a crusade for the reconstitution of Czechoslovakia in its pre-war form.
Their willingness to cooperate with Beneš and to take part in the restored democratic system in 1945 suggested that they had abandoned their earlier hostility to Czech traditions and had themselves absorbed and been influenced by them. Until 1948 Gottwald seemed to have been successful in fusing Czech national interests with communist beliefs and objectives and by following what he called "a national path to socialism," won substantial support and sympathy for the Communist Party. The seizure of power in 1948 indicated, however, that the conversion of the communists, if there had been one, was superficial and that their repudiation of the nation's democratic past was total and permanent. Thereafter for twenty years, communism became the dominant, indeed the exclusive, political force and established new traditions of crucial significance for the future and in particular for the events after January 1968.
Czechs and Slovaks
In one important respect there was striking continuity between the communist and pre-communist periods, namely, the restoration of Czechoslovakia after World War II mainly in the form and within the boundaries established by the Paris peace settlement of 1919. Masaryk's strategy of a union of Czechs and Slovaks was thus confirmed by the communists and has been continued ever since. Moreover, the longstanding Czech belief in the territorial integrity of Bohemia and Moravia, and the argument of Masaryk and Beneš for incorporating the whole of these regions, in spite of a large German minority, into the liberated Republic, were again endorsed in 1945, although with the important change, to be discussed later, of the expulsion of the Germans. The less ancient tradition of including in the state Polish and Magyar minorities and the lands where they lived, largely within the 1919 frontiers, was also reaffirmed. The only exception to the restoration of the pre-war territorial structure was the cession of Subcarpathian Ruthenia to the USSR. This area had been assigned to Czechoslovakia in 1919 primarily for strategic considerations and had always been a heavy burden on the resources of Prague governments. Its loss, unlike the cession of Poland's eastern territories, did not represent the reversal of a deep historic tradition and was little lamented. Indeed, it was accepted by President Beneš and other non-communists as a sacrifice well worth making in return for the assurance of the integrity of the rest of the Republic.
The reunification of Czechs and Slovaks in a single state brought to an end the "independence" which Slovaks had enjoyed after 1939. During the First Republic the Slovaks had experienced great cultural and political development as contrasted with their lot under the Magyars, and many of them had identified strongly with the new Czechoslovakia. Their failure to secure the autonomy which they had expected and the assumption by the Czechs of a dominating role in the Republic had caused other Slovaks, led by Andrej Hlinka and his successor, Jozef Tiso, to expound a more pronounced Slovak nationalism and to demand home rule, or even independence. In successive elections the Slovak People's Party proved to be the strongest in Slovakia but was always outvoted by the combined votes of parties with a Czech or Czechoslovak orientation. Only after Munich was Slovakia granted the long-desired autonomy, but important elements in the People's Party began to turn toward complete independence as a preferable goal. The establishment, in 1939, for the first time in history, of a separate Slovak state, even under the suzerainty of Nazi Germany and under conservative, clerical-fascist leadership, created a distinctive tradition that was bound to have a continuing impact on Slovak thought.
During the war the communists had formed a separate illegal Slovak party and some of its leaders had at first flirted with the notion of a future Slovak Soviet state. The CPCz leadership in Moscow, and eventually the leading Slovak communists at home, such as Gustáv Husák and the poet, Laco Novomesky, however, committed themselves fully to the restoration of the pre-war Republic. During the Slovak Uprising of 1944, both communists and non-communists endorsed this policy and accepted the authority of the Beneš government in London. They insisted, however, that the Slovaks must be recognized as a distinct nation and must be guaranteed home rule in a liberated Czechoslovakia. They rejected, therefore, not only the brief experience of Slovak independence, and the nationalist philosophy of Fathers Hlinka and Tiso, but also the pre-war concept of a single "Czechoslovak" nation and the very limited autonomy granted to the Slovaks in the First Republic. The Kosice government program of 1945 proclaimed anew the principle of Czech-Slovak unity but at the same time asserted the doctrine of Slovak equality and autonomy, thus forecasting a substantial change in Czech-Slovak relations.
In the early post-war months the communists, both Czech and Slovak, were vigorous advocates of a distinct Slovak identity and of Slovak autonomy, but conscious of their own political weakness in the Slovak regions, they soon turned toward centralist rule in the Republic as a whole. Even after 1948 the communists continued to recognize the separate identity of the Slovak nation and to protect its cultural and linguistic rights, and in the 1948 constitution provided for organs of Slovak self-government. Nonetheless the powers of the government in Prague waxed steadily and the reality of home rule waned. Moreover, the Communist Party, having reunited its Czech and Slovak branches in 1948, was predominantly Czech in membership and in leadership. The campaign against Slovak nationalism in the fifties resulted in the execution of Vladimír dementis, the imprisonment of Husák and others, and the subordination of the Slovak party to Prague. Czechoslovakia again became a state ruled by Czechs, but this time with even greater indifference to Slovak rights than before 1939. The 1960 constitution openly articulated extreme centralism and reduced even the forms of Slovak self-government to nil. After 1963 there was a resurgence of Slovak cultural nationalism and a certain advance in the political position of the Slovaks, but they continued to be minor partners in a predominantly Czech state and party.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Czechoslovakia's Interrupted Revolution by H. Gordon Skilling. Copyright © 1976 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
- Frontmatter, pg. i
- CONTENTS, pg. vii
- PREFACE, pg. xi
- LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS, pg. xv
- PART ONE. THE HISTORICAL SETTING, pg. 1
- PART TWO. STALINISM IN DECLINE, pg. 43
- PART THREE. THE POLITICS OF CHANGE, pg. 183
- PART FOUR. THE NEW MODEL OF SOCIALISM, pg. 331
- PART FIVE. CONTENDING POLITICAL AND SOCIAL FORCES, pg. 491
- PART SIX. THE INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT, pg. 615
- EPILOGUE. Dubček's Decline and Fall, pg. 813
- CONCLUSION. Reform, Revolution, or Counterrevolution?, pg. 824
- APPENDICES, pg. 853
- A BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE, pg. 891
- INDEX, pg. 899