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Utopias and “Normality”: 1968 Revisited Fifty Years On

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2019

Jacques Rupnik
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Abstract

The Prague Spring of 1968 did not provoke a major international crisis but at most an “incident” in the making of east-west detente. Yet it deserves to be revisited for three reasons of lasting significance for Europe. First, the Prague Spring revived, beyond the contemporary writings on Czech “democratic exceptionalism,” the European debate about the relationship between socialism and democracy. Second, it was often interpreted as part of an international generational revolt against the establishments, yet it also revealed sharp contrasts between east and west. Can the misunderstandings and different legacies of 1968 in Paris and Prague be enlightening for trans-European dialogue (or lack of) after 1989? Third, Czechoslovakia in 1968 represented the most far-reaching blueprint for reforming the system within the Soviet sphere. Its crushing prevented reform in eastern Europe and Moscow. Although it provided inspiration for Gorbachev's belated, botched attempt to save the system, this was twenty years too late, thus paving the way for its implosion in 1989.

Type
Critical Discussion Forum: 1968
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 77 , Issue 4 , Winter 2018 , pp. 890 - 896
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 2019 

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References

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7. 1968 was the year Karel Kosik’s Dialectic of the Concrete (Dialektika konkrétniho, 1966) and Radovan Richta’s Civilization at the Crossroads (Civilizace na rozcesti, 1967) were translated in western Europe.

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17. The national independence and formation of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, the Munich Agreement of 1938 , the seizing of complete power by the Communist Party in 1948, 1968 and the “Velvet Revolution” of 1988/89.

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