In the winter of 1969, a history student at Charles University, in the Czechoslovakian capital city of Prague, set himself on fire. His name was Jan Palach and his suicide was a political protest against the Soviet Union’s occupation of his country. In his suicide note he simply stated that he wanted more freedom of speech in his nation. His death marked the dwindling end of what has come to be known as the Prague Spring of 1968.
By the late 1960’s, Czechoslovakia had become a stagnant nation. After World War II the country ushered in its era of communist rule. After the Stalinist terrors of the 1950’s, the economy had weakened, censorship had killed any desire for learning or intellectual curiosity, and culturally the nation seemed to be at a dead end. Antonin Novotny, the First Secretary of the Communist Party increasingly looked more and more like a dinosaur, unwilling to adapt to the changing needs of the time. Then Aleksander Dubcek entered the scene. Dubcek, a moderate socialist working for reform of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, devised a plan called the Action Programme that would reinvent the government apparatus and make living conditions more than just mere drudgery for the citizens of his nation. The Action Programme called for freedom of speech and an end to media censorship, limited free enterprise, the right to form political parties outside the Communist Party, an end to citizen surveillance by the police, and more political representation for the Slovakian people who felt that the government was unfairly favorable to the Czech half of the country. In short, it was to be an end to the Stalinist-era totalitarian rule that no longer seemed to be relevant. Dubcek became popular with not only the people of Czechoslovakia but also with a band of reform-minded politicians and the StB, the Czechoslovakian secret police. Dubcek and his followers politely asked Novotny to step aside and he did.
That is when trouble began with the USSR. Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretariat of the Soviet Union, did not trust Dubcek. While Dubcek sincerely wished to remain close partners with the USSR despite the changes promised in his reforms, Brezhnev feared a loosening of totalitarian rule in Czechoslovakia would set off a wave of defections by countries involved in the Warsaw Pact. While Dubcek scrambled to find a moderate position between the demand of the Soviets and the promises he had made to his people, the government of the USSR was making secret deals with members of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party to undermine the authority of Dubcek and have him overthrown.
So far the people of Czechoslovakia were peacefully embracing the Action Programme. In the streets there were some calm demonstrations. The media and the intelligentsia were embracing new avenues of thought. Three new political parties, the KAN, K-231, and the SDP were formed without interference from the dominant Communist Party. All the while, Brezhnev continued to pressure Dubcek to return the country to old-style Stalinist rule. Then in September of 1968, Soviet tanks crossed the borders into Czechoslovakia from neighboring East Germany, Poland, and Hungary. Then a band of Communist Party officials stormed into a meeting being led by Dubcek and declared they were taking over the government. The politicians in the meeting looked at them with confused faces then told them to leave. They did and then went into hiding. But the Soviet troops stayed and the Czechoslovakian people remained non-violent but showed their resistance by verbally assailing the soldiers in Russian and removing street signs to confuse them as they tried to navigate Prague. After the coup d’etat failed, the Soviets kidnapped Dubcek and brought him to Moscow.
During Dubcek’s absence the Soviet government continued to sow discord in the Czechoslovakian ruling council by secretly encouraging some members to push for reform while encouraging other members to support normalization. The ensuing conflicts weakened the government and prevented any real changes from taking place. Meanwhile the Soviet soldiers were going on drunken rampages, raping, looting, assaulting, and killing the citizens of the country they were occupying. They also engaged in the vandalism of television and radio stations as well as the offices of newspapers and book publishers. The Czechoslovakian people continued to hold peaceful demonstrations, mostly in Prague. After a couple months of occupation, though, it seemed as if things would stagnate for ever.
That is when Jan Palach committed suicide to protest the Soviet invasion of his country. At first, the people saw this as a rallying cry to push the Prague Spring forward. The Soviet troops saw it as a reason to crack down harder on rebellion. In the coming weeks, several other people committed suicide by publicly lighting themselves on fire but nobody knew about it because the media was being forced into silence and censorship.
Finally, in January of 1969 two unrelated sports events set off further unrest. Czechoslovakia and the USSR had two hockey matches and the Czechoslovakian national team won both. In celebration, the people of Czechoslovakia flooded the streets in celebration. Initially this had nothing to do with politics. Then after the second match, the accompanying street celebration turned into a riot in which the Czechoslovakian mob destroyed a Soviet Aeroflot office. After the riot ended, the Soviet officials convinced the Czechoslovakian government that Dubcek had to go. Dubcek’s refusal to carry out the Soviet’s orders and his inability to move the Prague Spring into a more productive stage was making him appear to be a weak and ineffective leader to people on both sides.
Gustav Husak, a Slovakian politician, took over as First Secretariat of the Communist Party. Although he was one of the original supporters of Dubcek’s Action Programme, he later took sides with Brezhnev and returned Czechoslovakia to its dreary totalitarian gloom and hopelessness. By that point, the people of his nation wanted a return to calm and order more than political reform. Media censorship was re-established. All political parties except for the Communist Party were banned. Free enterprise ended. In response, thousands of people left the Communist Party and went along with their rule albeit grudgingly and without enthusiasm. The country mostly stayed the same until the Velvet Revolution happened twenty years later.
Williams, Kieran. The Prague Spring and Its Aftermath: Czechoslovakian Politics 1968 – 1970. Cambridge University Press, 1999.
