Czechoslovakia

Forty years
ago, on the night of August 20th-21st Russian and other Warsaw Pact forces invaded
Czechoslovakia, thus putting an end to the ‘Prague Spring.’

“Lenin wake
up, Brezhnev has gone mad.” This was one of the slogans chanted on the street
of Prague 40 years ago. The upheavals in Czechoslovakia had begun with a stormy
session of the Writers Union which passed a resolution supporting Soviet author
Solzhenitsyn’s protest against censorship.

This ferment
amongst the intelligentsia rapidly spread to the students who demonstrated
against power failures in their hostels. The demonstration was brutally
attacked by the secret police, who wounded several of the students. The
bureaucracy was so rattled that they tried to pacify the students by offering
to pay the hospital bills of the injured demonstrators. The students’ response
was to demand that those responsible be punished and the press publish the
facts. Student leaders warned that if the papers did not report the truth they
would march to the factories and report the incident to the workers themselves.

The split in
the bureaucracy, the fall of Novotny and the rise of Dubcek which followed
these events cannot be explained solely by the actions of the writers and the
students, but must be seen against the background of the developing crisis of
the Czech economy.

Stalinist

The insanity
of the various national Stalinist bureaucracies of Eastern Europe trying to
build socialism in ‘their own’ countries led to each state attempting to
construct every branch of industry ‘independently,’ without giving any
consideration to the inevitable restrictions imposed by the old capitalist
national boundaries.

Bureaucratic
planning ‘from above’ and the concomitant inefficiency, corruption and
mismanagement meant that the necessity of ‘meeting the plan’ led to the
replacement of quality with quantity. Those consumer goods which were produced,
could not be sold on the world market, while their price put them beyond the
reach of Czech workers.

The Czech
economy was grinding to a halt, clogged with bureaucracy. The need to
rationalise the economy, and fear of the consequences among the Czech workers,
led to a split at the top of the Czech bureaucracy, and the emergence of the
Dubcek wing of ‘reformers.’ In the West Dubcek and co. were lauded by the
media, but what and who did Dubcek really represent?

The main
thrust of Dubcek’s programme was an economic reform where directives from the
central plan would be replaced by plans drawn up by individual enterprises or
associations of enterprises. Far from abolishing the privileges of the
bureaucrats, Dubcek was aiming to increase wage differentials and grant
‘incentives’ to the factory managers. This was a classical Bonapartist
manoeuvre balancing on one set of bureaucrats (the factory managers etc.),
against another layer (state bureaucrats).

Initially
the Western press reported that many workers were suspicious of Dubcek, and
with good reason. In the last analysis Dubcek’s reforms would work against the
interests of the Czech workers. Competition between state-owned enterprises
would inevitably lead to the closure of unprofitable factories producing
large-scale unemployment.

From the
beginning Dubcek looked primarily to the intellectuals and students for
support. The Czech bureaucracy was clearly frightened that the ferment in the
intelligentsia would spread to the workers – that was a lesson they had learned
from the "Crooked Circle" in Poland and the "Petofi Circle"
in Hungary, whose agitation sparked off the revolutionary movements of 1956.
They were prepared to grant concessions temporarily, especially to the
intelligentsia, in order to protect their own privileged position.

The rapid
development of the mass movement in Czechoslovakia terrified Brezhnev and the
Moscow bureaucracy. Dubcek’s reforms were timid (incidentally it later emerged
that Dubcek himself was a compromise candidate of the Central Committee, not
even the most radical of the bureaucrats!) but they were enough to act as a
catalyst to the discontent welling up in the working class.

The split in
the bureaucracy precipitated an unparalleled outburst of discussion, protest
meetings and demonstrations. In every factory, college and village a furious
discussion raged. Resolutions poured in demanding the sacking of Novotny and the
speeding up of reforms. Even Communist Party meetings were the scene of noisy
debate. The movement was gathering impetus and the bureaucracy was forced to
swim along with the current, granting reform after reform.

The Kremlin
alleged that the "forces of reaction….with the aim of restoring the
bourgeois system" were behind the movement. This was the standard
contemptible formula employed by the Russian bureaucracy to frighten the
workers into line.

The
Stalinist bureaucracies of Russia and Eastern Europe feared strikes like the
plague because they saw within them the potential for a movement which could
overthrow their rule. Even worse in their eyes was the development of political
organisations around which an alternative socialist programme to the perverted
caricature of socialism that existed in these countries could crystallise.

Heavy
pressure bore down from Moscow on the Czech bureaucrats to ‘put their house in
order.’ The ‘reformers’ meanwhile had realised that they could not simply rule
by the old methods. If the reforms created a dangerous situation for the
bureaucracy, an attempt to go back to their previous policy would be ten times
as dangerous. When a whole people stand up and say "No," no force on
earth can stop them.

Dubcek

Dubcek’s
immediate intention was to grant concessions, removing the worst causes of
discontent, but leaving the power and privileges of the ruling clique intact.
However the movement below could not be allowed to go too far.

The pressure
from Moscow wasn’t the sole cause of Dubcek’s rapid backsliding. His main
concern was to restrict the movement of the Czech masses. With one hand the
bureaucrats gave out concessions, with the other they issued warnings to the
workers to "avoid another Hungary at all costs."

As always
these so-called reformers constantly appealed for "calm," attempting
to lull the masses into passivity. As the pressure from other frightened
Stalinist cliques mounted, the Czech bureaucracy began to retreat step by step
from the concessions they had made.

The Czech
press was warned off printing articles too critical of the Soviet Union. At a
meeting with Romanian Stalinist leader Ceaucescu on August 16th, Dubcek
announced, "We need order in our country. The meetings in Prague [i.e.
public discussions], if they continue, will have a negative effect on the
democratisation process." (‘The Times’, August 17th 1968). They were
taking very seriously the warnings from the Kremlin.

The Russian
bureaucracy were terrified that if censorship were to be abolished in Czechoslovakia,
they would be left with little justification for resisting the clamour of
Soviet intellectuals for the dead hand of bureaucracy to be lifted from
literature and the arts. More serious still would have been the effect on the
working class. A free airing of opinions in the press would provide a focal
point for organised expressions of discontent, inevitably leading in the
direction of a new programme and a new party.

In
Czechoslovakia, as in Hungary in 1956, (where the workers actually set up
workers’ councils, soviets in all but name) the working class would undoubtedly
have tried to move in the direction of the programme drafted by Lenin in 1919,
based around the following four demands:

Free
and democratic elections with the right of recall
No official
to receive a higher wage than a skilled worker
No
standing army, but an armed people
No
permanent bureaucracy, "every cook should be able to be Prime
Minister."

At least one
Czech journal was already raising the idea of genuine, democratic workers councils.
In the course of events, experience would have demonstrated to the workers the
need to by-pass the limitations imposed on them by the Dubcek clique.

In 1956 the
Hungarian workers went much further than the "reformers" like Nagy
and Dubcek had foreseen. They built a genuine workers’ revolution, not a social
counter-revolution to overthrow the socialist property relations, but a
political revolution to oust the bureaucracy and establish a healthy,
democratic workers’ state. That movement was only crushed by the intervention
of Russian tanks at a tremendous cost. Now again in 1968 Moscow was faced with
a stark choice, either intervene which would mean yet another blow against the
power and prestige of Stalinism; or stay out which would probably create an
even more dangerous situation for the bureaucracy, a danger which would not be
confined to the borders of Czechoslovakia. In other words, the invasion was not
a sign of strength on the part of the bureaucracy but of weakness, motivated by
fear.

Superficial

From a
superficial point of view the appearance of tanks on the streets of Prague
spelt immediate and inevitable defeat for the movement in Czechoslovakia. From
a purely military point of view any talk of Czech resistance to the mighty army
of Soviet Russia would be ridiculous. However, for Marxists military factors by
themselves are not decisive in war. If that were the case, then the young
Soviet Republic would have been crushed by the twenty-one armies of foreign
intervention sent against them. But this did not happen. The reason was the
clear internationalist position adopted by the Bolsheviks and the class appeals
made to the workers in uniform of the foreign armies. The result of the
Bolshevik propaganda and fraternisation on the already demoralised troops led
to mutinies in the armies of intervention which became infected with
"Bolshevik influenza."

A genuine
Leninist leadership would have prepared the Czech people for the eventuality of
an invasion, both politically and militarily. If the Red Army had been
confronted by an armed working class organised in soviets it would have made a
tremendous impact on the Russian workers in uniform. As it was, numerous
eye-witness reports tell of the bewilderment and demoralisation of the troops,
as the realisation dawned on them that they had been duped by their leaders.
There were instances of Russian troops breaking down and weeping in the
streets, protesting that they didn’t even know they were in Czechoslovakia. In
this situation a clear internationalist, class appeal would have led to massive
disaffection in the Red Army. The Czech workers and youth showed an instinctive
grasp of the need to fraternise. Mere passive resistance is not enough though.
The interventionist troops should have been made to feel the absolute
determination of the Czech people to fight to the death if necessary to defend
their gains. They should have been confronted with a force so implacable as to
encourage them to disobey the officer with his pistol at their back. Without
such a confrontation the officer caste can always force the troops back into
line with the threat of the firing squad.

The tragedy
of Czechoslovakia was that at the crucial moment the Czech people found
themselves leaderless, disarmed and unprepared. The cowardice of the Dubcek
clique, which preferred to see the country occupied rather than arm the working
class, is a clear indication of their real interests.

Undoubtedly
the Soviet invasion was a defeat for the Czech working class. As in 1956 the
capitalist press had a field day exploiting the invasion as proof of the
barbarity of communism. They shed crocodile tears but were not prepared to lift
a finger to help because they knew that all the Kremlin’s propaganda about
counter-revolution was a lie. There was no desire on the part of the Czech
workers to restore capitalism, rather they were groping towards creating a
genuine workers’ state. Of course the capitalists have no interest in allowing
that to happen. So despite all their hypocrisy, they were quite pleased to see
Russian forces crush the movement, while taking advantage of the cheap
propaganda opportunity to drag the name of socialism through the mud. For
decades the capitalist class in the West and the Stalinist bureaucrats in the
East leaned on each other for support, while simultaneously the western
capitalists used the crimes of Stalinism to discredit socialism, and the
bureaucratic cliques relied on the threat of counter-revolution to control
their own workers.

Bureaucracy

In the end
it proved to be the bureaucracy itself, no longer able to guarantee its power
and privileges on the basis of a nationalised planned economy strangled by the
absence of democratic workers control, who turned towards capitalism as Trotsky
had predicted in the 1930s. In Czechoslovakia their actions were eventually
responsible for the criminal break-up of the country.

The restoration
of capitalism in Russia and throughout Eastern Europe has created a nightmare
for the working class. Every day is providing new lessons in the ‘wonders’ of
the market. In the next period the workers of Eastern Europe will rediscover
the traditions of 1956 and 1968 and the other marvellous struggles of the
working class, and rediscover too the genuine programme of socialism and
Bolshevism. The banner of Marx and Lenin will be recovered from the mud through
which the Stalinist bureaucracies dragged it by a new generation who, standing
on the shoulders of their forebears, will link arms with their brothers and
sisters in the West in the struggle for a socialist future for all humanity.

This is an edited version of an article by Alan
Woods originally published in 1968.