Prague Spring 1968 at 50

[...]the most far-reaching reform within the Soviet sphere provided, twenty years on, a belated (and thus doomed) inspiration for Mikhail Gorbachev's attempt to save the system. Havel's take, in contrast, was more sober and realistic: restoring basic freedoms was no doubt wonderful, the la...

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Published inSociologický časopis Vol. 54; no. 3; pp. 435 - 441
Main Author Rupnik, Jacques
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Prague AV ČR Czech Academy of Sciences - Institute of Sociology 01.01.2018
AV ČR - Akademie věd České republiky - Sociologický ústav
Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences
Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
Subjects
Capitalism
Censorship
Culture
Democracy
Economic reform
Exceptionalism
Free markets
Freedoms
Messianic movements
Messianism
Police
Politics
Radicalism
Reforms
Revolutions
Social change
Socialism
Societal Essay
Society
SYMPOSIUM: REMEMBERING PRAGUE SPRING 1968
Czech Republic
Czechoslovakia
Central Europe
Europe
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Summary:[...]the most far-reaching reform within the Soviet sphere provided, twenty years on, a belated (and thus doomed) inspiration for Mikhail Gorbachev's attempt to save the system. Havel's take, in contrast, was more sober and realistic: restoring basic freedoms was no doubt wonderful, the last time we had them was thirty years ago, and indeed this is considered 'normal' in most civilised European countries: ... if we're going to imagine that a country has placed itself at the center of world history because it wishes to establish freedom of expression-something taken for granted in most of the civilized world-and to check the tyranny of its secret police, in all seriousness we shall become nothing more than self-complacent hacks, laughable in our provincial messianism! [...]there is another dimension of the spring of 1968 as the 'supreme stage' of reformism in the Soviet bloc and its implications for the divided Europe. Instead of searching for a 'third way' between capitalism and Soviet-style socialism the goal was the introduction of markets without adjectives: 'the third way leads to the Third World' said Václav Klaus, the promoter of radical free market economic reforms.
ISSN:0038-0288
2336-128X