68 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
68 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
The '''Prague Spring '''was a protest wave and period of liberalization
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in Czechoslovakia under [Stalinism](Leninism "wikilink") in
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[1968](Timeline_of_Libertarian_Socialism "wikilink").
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[Colin Ward](Colin_Ward "wikilink") describes it as:
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> In a broadcast on the anniversary of the Soviet Invasion of
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> Czechoslovakia a speaker looked back to the summer of 1968 in Prague
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> as one in which, as she put it, "Everyone had become more gentle, more
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> considerate. Crime and violence diminished. We all seemed to be making
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> a special effort to make life tolerable, just because it had been so
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> intolerable before".
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> Now that the Prague Spring and the Czechoslovak long hot summer have
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> retreated into history, we tend to forget - though the Czechs will not
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> forget - the change in the *quality* of ordinary life, while the
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> historians, busy with the politicians floating on the surface of
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> events, or this or that memorandum from a Central Committee or a
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> Praesidium, tell us nothing about what it felt like for people in the
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> streets. At the time John Berger wrote of the immense impression made
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> on him by the transformation of values: "Workers in many places
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> spontaneously offered to work for nothing on Saturdays in order to
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> contribute to the national fund. Those for whom, a few months before,
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> the highest ideal was a consumer society, offered money and gold to
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> help save the national economy. (Economically a naive gesture but
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> ideologically a significant one.) I saw crowds of workers in the
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> streets of Prague, their faces lit by an evident sense of opportunity
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> and achievement. Such an atmosphere was bound to be temporary. But it
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> was an unforgettable indication of the previously unused potential of
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> a people: of the speed with which demoralisation may be overcome." And
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> Harry Schwartz of the New York Times reminds us that "Gay,
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> spontaneous, informal and relaxed were the words foreign
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> correspondents used to described the vast outpouring of merry Prague
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> citizens." What was Dubcek doing at the time? "He was trying to set
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> limits on the spontaneous revolution that had been set in motion and
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> tried to curb it. No doubt he had hoped to honour the promises he had
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> given at Dresden that he would impose order on what more and more
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> conservative Communists were calling
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> '[anarchy](Anarchism "wikilink")'". When the Soviet tanks rolled in to
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> impose *their* order, the spontaneous order gave way to a spontaneous
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> resistance. Of Prague, Kamil Winter declared, "I must confess to you
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> that nothing was organised at all. Everything went on spontaneously
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> ..." And of the second day of the invasion of Bratislava, Ladislav
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> Mnacko wrote: "Nobody has given any order. Nobody was giving any
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> orders at all. People knew of their own accord what needed to be done.
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> Each and every one of them was their own government, with its orders
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> and regulations, while the government itself was somewhere very far
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> away, probably in Moscow. Everything the occupation forces tried to
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> paralyse went on working and even worked better than in normal times;
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> by the evening the people had even managed to deal with the bread
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> situation."
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> In November, when the students staged a sit-in at the universities,
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> "the sympathy of the population with the students was shown by the
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> dozens of trucks sent in from the factories to bring about food free
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> of charge," and "Prague's railway workers threatened to strike if the
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> government took reprisal measures against the students. Workers of
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> various state organisations supplied them with food. The buses of the
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> urban transport workers were placed at the strikers disposal ...
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> Postal workers established certain free telephone communications
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> between university towns."\[1\]
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## References
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<references />
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1. [Colin Ward](Colin_Ward "wikilink") (1973) [Anarchy in
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Action](Anarchy_in_Action "wikilink") |