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From Prague Spring to perestroika
Link between 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1991 putsch in
Soviet Union not sufficiently appreciated
FRED EIDLIN
This week marks the anniversaries of two events of major historical significance -the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia that took place 40 years ago today, and
the attempted coup d'etat in the Soviet Union in 1991.
In 1968 and 1991, I was in those countries during the crisis periods leading up to
these dramatic events and was an eyewitness to both of them.
As a student in August 1968 I was studying the Czech language in Prague. During
the night of Aug. 20-21, half a million troops of five of Czechoslovakia's Warsaw Pact
allies entered the country suddenly and unexpectedly.
As a professor, I was doing research in Moscow in August 1991. A Russian friend
phoned on the morning of Aug. 19 to inform me that hardliners in the leadership had
taken power. Calling themselves the Extraordinary Committee for the Emergency
Situation, they had staged their power grab while president Mikhail Gorbachev was
on vacation.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
In 1968, I roamed the streets of Prague for three days, observing the confused,
disoriented occupation forces and the massive peaceful resistance movement that
emerged in response. In 1991, I roamed the streets of Moscow for three days,
observing a massive show of military force, angry Muscovites organizing in
resistance, and the collapse of the takeover attempt on Aug. 21.
The intimate connections between these two events has not been sufficiently
appreciated.
In 1987, perestroika -- the policy of economic and governmental reform instituted by
Gorbachev in the Soviet Union during the mid-1980s -- was just beginning to gather
force. At a news conference a journalist asked Foreign Ministry spokesperson
Gennady Gerasimov "What's the difference between the 'Prague Spring' and
'perestroika?' "
Gerasimov smiled and said "Nineteen years."
This sums it up well. Both movements had similar roots and similar causes.
Josef Stalin had established his totalitarian regime in the Soviet Union in the 1930s
through terror, compulsion, and indoctrination. He imposed similar, albeit milder
versions of this regime on the U.S.S.R.'s satellite states.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
From the outset these regimes were inefficient, stupidity-ridden, and disaster-prone.
Western experts knew this, but most assumed these regimes could survive
indefinitely. They assumed that monopolies of force and information, indoctrination and control of all organizational life would suffice to keep
the lid on. They assumed the ruling class, enjoying its power and privilege and fearing the anger of the people, had no reason to want
change. Here they were badly mistaken.
The Prague Spring -- a brief period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia -- and perestroika emerged not among dissidents and not from
disgruntled populations. They began as top-down movements within the Communist leaderships.
When the Czechoslovak leadership changed in January 1968, experts stressed that the new leaders were loyal Communists, so the leadership
change was not significant. Long after Gorbachev came to power, experts continued to stress that, as a Communist, he could not be serious
about fundamental reform.
We now know that many of the most severe critics of the Communist regimes were insiders.
Asked when he got the idea of launching perestroika, Gorbachev spoke of a conversation on the eve of his election as general secretary
during which he said, "Everything has gone rotten. . . . We can't go on living this way." By the time of perestroika, the system had reached
the end of its rope, as it had in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
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It was not U.S. president Ronald Reagan who brought down the Soviet regime but rather dedicated party members like Gorbachev.
Already in 1956, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had denounced Stalin as a mass murderer and an incompetent. In his memoirs, Khrushchev
notes when Stalin invited you to dinner, you didn't know whether you were to be promoted or shot -- definitely not a comfortable work
environment.
After Stalin died in 1953, the new leadership arrested and executed Lavrenty Beria, head of the notorious NKVD -- the secret police. While
they may have been Stalinists, they had no appetite for a new reign of terror of which they would likely be among the victims.
Khrushchev tried to reform the Soviet regime, but didn't know how. He himself admitted that he had trouble getting outside his own Stalinist
skin, and the task of reform turned out to be more complex and difficult than he had realized.
Khrushchev partly succeeded and partly failed, but he let the genie out of the bottle. He kindled the spark that gave rise to both the Prague
Spring and perestroika.
The broad coalition that overthrew Khrushchev in 1964 was torn between recognition of the urgent need for reform and fear of reform. Torn in
opposite directions, it was difficult for the Soviet leadership to make tough decisions at all.
Nevertheless, reform continued throughout the Soviet bloc, albeit cautiously. By 1968, the Czechoslovak reforms were just common sense -not only in Czechoslovakia, but throughout the bloc. Yet common sense flew in the face of the waning but still surviving Communist
orthodoxy, and caused panic within the ruling elites of the more orthodox leaderships.
Yet because Communist orthodoxy flew in the face of common sense, the panicked orthodox Communist leaders had difficulty making clear
just what it was that bothered them.
The Prague Spring forced the Soviet leadership to make a decision it was not ready to make. The Soviets were extremely reluctant to invade
Czechoslovakia, but too alarmed not to invade.
Opting to crush the Prague Spring was a decision with logical consequences. The Prague Spring showed that socialism was a dangerous ideal,
and it was replaced by the notion of "actually existing socialism," that is, socialism is what we've got.
After the invasion, Soviet-style normalcy was eventually re-established, though it was exceedingly difficult to roll back common sense.
A freeze on political reform set in throughout the Soviet bloc. It ushered in a "period of stagnation" that lasted until perestroika.
Fred Eidlin is a political-science professor at the University of Guelph. He is an expert in the politics of Russia, Ukraine and the former Soviet
Union.
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8/21/2008 10:52 AM