(University of Padova, Italy)
alessandro.catalano@unipd.it

„Complicated Legacy of Prague Spring during the Autumn of Communism“

The paper explores the importance of the Prague Spring legacy among ex-communists – especially those from exiled circles – who played a significant role as mediators between former reform communists and the international socialist movement. For many Czech politicians and intellectuals who embraced socialism, a major concern was the specific relation to the 1968 liberalization attempt of Czechoslovak communism. This was caused by the fact that Prague Spring represented a unique attempt to transform ‘actually existing’ communism from within. Nevertheless, during the two following decades, such an endeavour still represented a serious political question for many socialist thinkers. Furthermore, the Prague Spring question also became a major common issue for leftist political groups in Western Europe. Thus former reform communists had to face a paradoxical situation when confronted with the constantly growing discrepancy between the political development in Czechoslovakia – where during the 1980s the socialist political forces had been constantly losing power – and between a growing interest in the Prague Spring issue coming from various European communist and socialist parties.

For a long time, Prague Spring represented a model of potential liberalization of communist states, which entailed a specific strategy, articulated by the Czechoslovak socialist opposition during the first half of the 1970s. This led to a resilient prompting of reforms by means of joint pressure of major European leftist powers towards the top of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. Different political models based on exerting ‘pressure from bellow’ were gradually established. As compared to the rapid growth of Václav Havel’s international appeal, the political interest in Prague Spring abroad went on a backslide. This was evident at least until Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985.

In this context, an important role was played not only by the fruitful discussions running in samizdat and the Listy Journal, but also by two lessknown projects – Experiences of Prague Spring 1968 and Crisis in the Systems of the Soviet-Type Systems – coordinated from Vienna by Zdeněk Mlynář. On the one hand, for Western readers they represented one of the most significant information sources about the situation in the countries ‘behind the Iron Curtain’ (about Prague Spring and later on about the crisis of these systems in the late 1980s). On the other hand, it can be argued that these informational channels were responsible for a lack of understanding of the 1989 revolutionary events from the perspective of European leftist parties. A complicated process of shaping the official socialist opposition in Czechoslovakia during the ‘autumn of communism’ mirrors to certain extent these unresolved conflicts as well.