Czechoslovakia: Crisis in World Communism [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION The 1968 events in Czechoslovakia brought to a climax what may have been the most serious internal crisis in the Communist world since World War II. For the first time in history a ruling Communist party was challenged from within by reformers who questioned the very basis of its power. They attacked the authoritarian form of government considered as the model since the Soviet Union had established its domination of the international Communist movement in the early 1920s. The Czechoslovak Communists proposed an alternative that, although purported to implement the orginal tenets of Marxism, in fact incorporated some essential features of Western democracy. The proposed fusion of Marxist ideology, one-party rule, constitutional guarantees of political dissent and a state-operated but decentralized economy had never been attempted before. The presence of such apparently contradictory elements in the Czechoslovak model cast doubts on its political viability. Yet the experiment failed—before it could prove itself—not because of inner contradictions but because of foreign intervention. The reform movement was the product of the Czech and Slovak national traditions of the past hundred years and of the specific situation in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s. The Czechs had a stronger democratic tradition than other peoples of east central Europe. Their active participation in parliamentary government dated back to the advent of Austrian constitutionalism in the 1860s. In the period between the 2 world wars, when all countries of the area gradually resorted to authoritarianism, Czechoslovakia survived longest as a parliamentary democracy. 1