On the Question of Czechoslovakia

Hussain Ahmed

‘…Democratization of the economy includes in
particular the realization of the independence of
enterprises and enterprise groupings and their
relative independence of state bodies ... the right
and real possibility of different groups of working
people and different social groups to formulate and
defend their economic interests in creating the
economic policy...’



- The Action Program; excerpt from the Reform
Program of Czechoslovak Communist Party[1]



Such was the state of the theoretical deviation of
the Czechoslovak Communist Party (CCP) that
capitalism was being propagated and restored in such
blatant terms in Czechoslovakia. The Soviet invasion
of Czechoslovakia in 1968 was a measure to defy the
counter-revolutionary acts of the Czechoslovak
government under Dubcek.



Having stated the counter-revolutionary nature of
proceedings in Czechoslovakia, the details of which
shall be elucidated upon below, it is imperative to
assess how the CCP managed to instill the antithesis
of socialist economy in Czechoslovakia.
Czechoslovakia provides a classical example of the
failure of both the policy of de-Stalinization under
Khrushchev and the cosmetic policy of
neo-Stalinization under Kosygin and Brezhnev. The
iron-fist that Stalin used to implement socialism
across the Soviet Union was thawed out by both these
polices, and hence began the gradual deterioration
and dissolution of the SU. The seeds of the return
to capitalism had already been laid in the mid-1960s
by the Lieberman Reforms that significantly reduced
the jurisdiction of the state planning commission
Gosplan. Czechoslovakia moved swiftly under the
leadership of Antonin Novotny to implement reform.
However, external pressure and security dangers
forced Novotny to back down on reform in 1967. This
move was severely criticized by the reformist
leader of the Slovak Communist Party Alexander
Dubcek, and the deadlock paved the way for Brezhnev
to provide tacit approval to Dubcek’s policies.
Hence, Dubcek replaced Novotny as the head of the
CCP. Further, the mixed economy strategy termed ‘New
Economic Mechanism’ (NEM) that was adopted in
January 1968 by the Kremlin provided a façade to the
Czechoslovak leadership that the ailing economic
performance of Czechoslovakia would drastically
improve if the NEM was adopted. Reformist measures
implemented by Dubcek were intended to cater to the
bourgeois class, especially the clique of bourgeois
intelligentsia that wrested political control under
Dubcek, reversing the trend that had been set since
1948 when the bourgeois class lost political
control.

‘…the whole struggle of the bourgeois
intelligentsia, especially the technical
intelligentsia, is to sabotage the further socialist
growth and development of the basic means of
production and to slowly dismantle them, fragment by
fragment, using one deceptive device after another
to fool the workers’[2].

Amid this rapid transformation of Czechoslovakia to
capitalism, the Kremlin finally realized that the
geo-strategic position of Czechoslovakia and its
progressively analogous societal fabric would serve
to disintegrate the Soviet Union. Though Dubcek
participated in meetings of Comecon and the Warsaw
Pact, committing his loyalty to both pacts, the
Kremlin decided to invade and occupy Czechoslovakia
under the flagship of the Warsaw Pact, and hence put
an end to the counter-revolution that had brewed.
Prague was captured on August 20-21, 1968.



It can be argued that the Czechoslovakia reserved
the democratic right to dissent from the mainstream
Soviet political policy from within the platform of
the CCP, and furthermore to secede from the Soviet
bloc altogether if it wished to do so. True that
Dubcek was supported by Khrushchev and Brezhnev, but
the underline underpinning of socialism was being
revised in the first place. Unfortunately,
Czechoslovakia might have been undone by the
vacillation in Soviet policy of de-Stalinization and
neo-Stalinization. Democracy entails that the
fundamental rights of others must not be impinged.
Under the policies of democratization and
liberalization, the principle of socialist
internationalism was being defied. Class antagonisms
had arisen with the bourgeoisie gaining advantages
over the workers. This had raised the opposition to
Novotny. He was attacked at various forums,
including the Writers Union Congress in June 1967
and the Communist leaders’ meeting in Warsaw in July
1968. As part
of Comecon, Czechoslovakia had to obey and respect
the fundamental tenets of Comecon. The SU used the
pretext that Czechoslovakia issued statements such
as ‘…Cooperation of Czechoslovakia with capitalist
countries is not influenced by interference from
COMECON as a whole or from individual states...’ and
further ‘We are examining the possibility of joining
the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund’
as evidence of Czechoslovak indifference and
deviance from socialist principles.



The question on the Czechoslovak democratic right to
differ has already been explained above, while the
question of autonomy will be dealt with in this
section.



While the tenets of Marxism-Leninism maintain the
right of a nation to secede, it is worth expounding
upon the definition of a nation, and the conditions
under which the National Question applies. We must
therefore consider Stalin’s work ‘Marxism and the
National Question’ to answer this question of
conflict. Under the accepted definition of nation
put forth by Stalin in the work cited above, we can
clearly grasp the fact that the people of
Czechoslovakia were not one nation. This fact can be
substantiated with the fact that after the
disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Czechs and
Slovaks formed separate states viz Czech Republic
and Slovakia. Stalin made the fundamental
differentiation of organization of labor:
international class organization based on
transnational solidarity, and that of the
‘organizational "demarcation" of the workers
according to nationalities’. Clearly, the case of
Czechoslovakia proved a case for rallying masses
around the principle of nationality, and not
of international solidarity. Stalin maintained that
the ‘the principle of international solidarity of
the workers is an essential element in the solution
of the national question’. This element was not
catered to in its truest sense, and was hence one of
the most crucial aspects of the counter-revolution
in Czechoslovakia.








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[1]
http://www.workers.org/marcy/cd/samczech/czech/czech02.htm


[2]
http://www.workers.org/marcy/cd/samczech/czech/czech02.htm