Socialism with a Human Face

Origins

When Alexander Dubček became First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in January 1968 with the support of reform-minded party members, demands that intellectuals and economists had been raising since the mid-1960s were absorbed into the party's official line. Immediately after taking office, Dubček pursued reforms centred on relaxed censorship, freedom of expression and movement, and economic decentralization, and this current crystallized in the slogan "socialism with a human face".

The author of the slogan is known to be Radovan Richta, a philosopher and researcher of technological evolution. According to Russian Wikipedia, the phrase originated in a television address Dubček gave on 18 July 1968, in which he called for "a policy that would keep socialism from losing its human face"; the same account also relates an explanation that Richta first coined the phrase and that Dubček heard it from him. The same source mentions a conjecture that Dubček took up ideas from the American political scientist Arthur Hadley's 1965 book Power's Human Face, but this is presented as a hypothesis rather than an established fact.

The Action Programme and the Prague Spring

In April 1968 Dubček launched an "Action Programme" that included expanded freedom of the press, speech and movement, an economic emphasis on living standards and consumer goods, and the possibility of a multiparty government. The programme also provided for limiting the power of the secret police and for federalizing the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic into two equal national states. In foreign policy it combined the maintenance of good relations with the West with cooperation with the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries, and it envisaged a ten-year transition leading to democratic elections and a new form of social democracy and democratic socialism.

The drafters of the Action Programme were careful not to criticize the actions of the post-war Communist administration as such, confining themselves to pointing out policies they felt had outlived their usefulness. The argument ran that centralized and directive-administrative methods had been needed after the war to fight the "remnants of the bourgeoisie", but that under the premise that the antagonistic classes had been defeated those methods were no longer necessary. It also carried the sense that Czechoslovakia had to move away from Stalinist-era heavy industry, labour power and raw materials and join the world scientific and technological revolution, and the argument that since internal class conflict had been overcome, rewarding workers according to qualifications and technical skill did not contravene Marxism-Leninism.

Although the principle was set that reform must proceed gradually under party leadership, popular pressure demanded immediate implementation. Radical elements became more vocal, anti-Soviet polemics appeared in the press on 26 June 1968, the Social Democrats sought to form a separate party, and political clubs outside the party were created. Conservatives urged severe repression, but Dubček counselled moderation and re-emphasized the party's leading role. In May 1968 Dubček announced that the Fourteenth Party Congress would be convened early, on 9 September; the congress was to incorporate the Action Programme into the party statutes, prepare a federalization law, and elect a new Central Committee.

The relaxation of press censorship went from reduction to abolition on 4 March 1968. It was the first abolition of censorship in Czechoslovak history and, although it lasted only a short time, it was effectively the only reform that was fully implemented. The media quickly changed from an instrument of party propaganda into an instrument of criticism of the government. Liberalization created the occasion for intellectuals and also students, young workers and political victims to take part in broadcast discussions, moving political dialogue from the intellectual sphere to the popular level.

On 27 June 1968 Ludvík Vaculík, a writer and journalist, published the manifesto The Two Thousand Words, expressing concern about conservative elements within the party and so-called "foreign" forces and calling on the people to take the initiative in carrying out the reforms. Dubček, the party Presidium, the National Front and the cabinet denounced the manifesto.

Suppression and legacy

The Soviet Union tried to control Dubček's reforms through negotiations but failed, and the Warsaw Pact invasion of 21 August 1968 ended the period of reform. After the invasion the reform programme was gradually repealed, and Dubček was removed from the post of First Secretary in April 1969. Moscow-approved censorship was reimposed on the media and extended to full censorship in March and April 1969. After 1969 the official party narrative defined the Prague Spring as a failed right-wing, bourgeois coup, and no mention was made of the Warsaw Pact tanks. Of the reforms that were rolled back, only federalization into the Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic survived. After Gustáv Husák succeeded Dubček and took power, the reforms were repealed in the course of normalization.

The reform leaders were destroyed, but the slogan became a reference point marking the limits of democratic reform in later reform discourse within the socialist camp. On Mikhail Gorbachev's visit to Prague in 1987, his spokesman Gennady Gerasimov, asked what the difference was between the Prague Spring and perestroika, replied: "Nineteen years."