In Part One Alan Woods analysed the
meaning of Dubcek and the reform movement
within the Czech bureaucracy.
Part Two explains why the
Russian bureaucracy
intervened and how the Czech workers
were left leaderless in
the face of military
intervention.

To mark the 40th
anniversary of the invasion of Czechoslovakia,
we are here reprinting an article by Alan Woods, first written on September 4,
1968, and published in the Winter edition of the Spark, in which he clearly
relates the momentous events that shook the Stalinist regimes and explains
their significance.

Founded after the Russian Revolution, the Third Communist International was a mighty force in the fight for world revolution. But under Stalin, it was transformed into a tool of the Soviet bureaucracy, and then abandoned altogether in 1943.