UNLOCKED -- Socialism With a Human Face: The Prague Spring and Its Defeat (Czechoslovak Socialism Part II)

The Regrettable Century

Continuing what has become a series on Czechoslovak Socialism, we dive into the attempt to reform the Czechoslovak system. The official ML narrative and the liberal narrative about the Prague Spring are the same, they say that it was an attempt to re-establish bourgeois democracy. However, it seems clear that the intentions of its participants were the opposite. They appear to have been a genuine attempt to revitalize and push forward the communist project.

The Action Programme of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia

https://www.marxists.org/subject/czech/1968/action-programme.htm

Stoneman, Anna J. “Socialism With a Human Face: The Leadership and Legacy of the Prague Spring.” The History Teacher49, no. 1 (2015): 103–25.

Prague Spring Archive at MIA (worth browsing for historical first impressions)

https://www.marxists.org/subject/czech/index.htm

The Prague Spring of 1968: a glimpse of socialism?

http://isj.org.uk/the-prague-spring/

Liehm, A. J. (1978). The Prague Spring and Eurocommunism. International Journal, 33(4), 804. doi:10.2307/40201691

Skilling, H. Gordon. "The Prague Spring Reassessed." Slavic Review 38, no. 4 (1979): 663-66. doi:10.2307/2496570.

Reform and Counter-reform in Bureaucratic Power

https://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/reform.html

Music: Karel Kryl - Veličenstvo kat

(English Translation)

In a gloomy light of a gothic hall

the scared profiteers are gazing into their missals

and a horde of slayers is asking for blessing

After all the first of the knights is his majesty executioner

Aaah look the first of the knights is his Majesty Executioner

Priest – the devil who served the mass

is wearing a stole made from a hangmans slope

Having a bottle of vitriol under the purple rochet

The smell of sulfur coming from the mortars

is crawling under the red hood of the first from all the knights

his Majesty Executioner

Aaah to the first of knights look it is his Majesty Executioner

On the national flag there is

an emblem with guillotine

And the barbed wire

smells by something decayed

In our region is a flock of raven nesting

the master hangman reigns these people

The king is kneeing infront of Satan

eagers to have the sceptre

And the rabble is hanging the wise council

at the plane tree

And the heretic crowd is exhilarated and rejoices

After all the first of knights is his Majesty Executioner

Aaah the first of knights is his Majesty Executioner

At a streetcorner a murderer is holding a lecture about moral

Infront of the prison's door the guardians are walking

From the military armour plate the black sign proclaims

that the first of the knights is his Majesty Executioner

Aaah that the first of the knights is his Majesty Executioner

Over the government palace

rises the flag with guillotine

The children love the ice cream cornets

The judges were upset about them

so they killed their ice cream man

A horrible state it was,

as you had to watch

the writing beeing forbidden

and the singing beeing forbidden

And they didn't have enough

they commanded the kids

to pra

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