As soon as the most brutal terror had passed, the number of Communists who were fed up with the politics of their party began to increase. They considered the leading functionaries and their blindness the greatest danger for the future of the country. The impossibility of founding a new party or establishing a faction within the party itself led to the emergence of groups of party members who were against the dull-witted dogmatism and absolute absence of democratic principles in both the party and society.
After the official party doctrine had rejected its primary ideological pillar — Stalin’s doctrine of the escalating class battle and his method of rule (that is, handing over every critic to the courts and then to the firing squad) — there was only one pillar left, one prophet: Lenin. The founder of the Bolshevik Party and the first architect of revolutionary terror was, after all, more educated than the Georgian seminary dropout. He had lived many years in Europe, even in democratic Switzerland and England. Even though he scorned democracy, his work contained defenses of, or even demands for, open criticism or at least a free exchange of opinions within the party he led. Now members of the party exploited this fact to defend their right to advocate opinions other than those of the leading functionaries.
By invoking Lenin, Communist rebels were demarcating another border they were not willing to cross. Even the most critical pronouncements tried to convince the ruling power that their advocates were actually acting in the interest of socialism, its development and enhancement. Their goal was not to overturn it but merely to return it to its roots. (The poison of these roots had already been forgotten, debilitated by myth.)
One of the leading lights of the nonparty opposition, Václav Havel, expressed his distaste for the “rebelliousness” of the Communists:
Please realize that your relativizing antidogmatism, which admires itself for its tolerance, is tolerant of only one thing: itself, that is, its own attitudinal amorphousness.
Rebellious communists, as long as they stayed in the ruling party, could enjoy many advantages, even rights, that were denied the rest of society. But in order to achieve some sort of change, it was necessary to reestablish an independent, or at least less dependent, judiciary. It was necessary to limit the influence of the semieducated and uncreative party apparatus and abolish censorship, which hindered the free exchange of opinions and the development of the spiritual sphere of life. It was necessary to extricate the economy from its dependence on unattainable long-term plans. All of this the party rebels tried to achieve, sometimes covertly, sometimes more openly. And even though they often invoked Lenin or some party resolution, their demands subverted the foundation of the ideology of exculpatory Communist domination. A totalitarian power cannot coexist with an independent judiciary, with free expression, or with an impugned ideology, which tries to justify its irreplaceable societal mission. Thus it cannot exist without absolute rule.
Dreams and Reality
There are moments in history when it appears that everything that recently seemed like destiny — for example, the unalterable run of everyday events — can be changed. It often seems as if a large part of a generation has been struck by a bedazzling flash of a belief in the possibility of change. People go into ecstasy; the vision of a better society (the bygone image of a paradise that preceded all the toilsome history full of cruelty and suffering) impels them to deeds they couldn’t have imagined only a short time before. Because paradise can exist only in dreams, only in myths, a cruel awaking usually follows, and enthusiasm turns into a hangover. Even in our modern history, such moments of hope flare up.
Our forefathers were at first blinded by a vision of national independence and citizenship within the Slavic tribe, which would gain self-confidence by inclining toward the powerful “Russian Oak.”
In June 1848, the Slavic Congress met in Prague. Pavel Jozef Šafařík read a fanatical speech ending with the challenge: For me it is not the time for long speeches, for artificial speechifying; that is something for another place and time. Only deeds concern us, action. The path from serfdom to freedom is not without struggle — either victory and a free nation or honorable death, and after death glory. The hall erupted in exultation.
Even the pragmatic František Palacký gave way to his feelings:
Something our fathers never dreamed of, something that in our youth kept entering our hearts like a beautiful dream, something we only recently did not dare to long for, today is coming to pass.
Soon after this congress, revolutionary events occurred that were connected with fantasies of establishing a democratic regime. As is well known, the revolution was suppressed (without blood, as is usual in Bohemia). Enthusiasm vanished, the participants in this Slavic and then democratic dream ended up in prison or retired into seclusion. Some — like Sabina — were bought off by the police; others — like Palacký—devoted themselves to scholarship.
Several generations passed without such fantastic visions. Only in 1918, at the end of the First World War, did a moment arrive that seemed to fulfill the dreams of contemporaries and forefathers alike. The Prague people behaved in exemplary fashion, recalls Jan Herben in his biography of Masaryk. They rejoiced, hung banners, sang hymns. (They also destroyed monuments. It’s difficult to understand what was exemplary about the whole thing.)
A few days later the otherwise severely critical historian Josef Pekař gave an impassioned speech on the grounds of the Czech Academy:
The day will come when they will tell us: You are free! This day of great tidings in which our joy tries to compensate for centuries of oppression and to measure our strength with the pain of entire generations who waited in vain for the morning star of freedom. They tried in vain, for years will pass before we will be able to consider and absorb the entire significance of this historical turnaround, the entire contents of our happiness. For the freedom that greeted us is not the freedom our fathers and grandfathers looked forward to: not freedom within Austria, but freedom from Austria, not the freedom of the feudal classes, but the freedom of all!
It also seemed that 1968 would bring a change that promised to touch the lives of most citizens. Not everyone saw it in the same way, however. For some, this was an attempt to cleanse the image of socialism in which they had once believed. For others, it was hope for the renewal of at least a limited democracy.
Substantial gatherings swelled with supportive petitions; enthusiastic ovations by courageous orators promised the end of dictatorship. A year earlier, people had participated in the May Day celebrations only with distaste. This time they went out spontaneously to emphasize and demonstrate their faith in the new leadership of the country. In an April public opinion poll, three-quarters of respondents expressed support for the process of renewal and the leading politicians Alexander Dubček, Josef Smrkovský, and the newly elected president, General Ludvík Svoboda.
Just as during the time the National Theater was being built and people donated their life savings and jewelry, the Fund of the Republic arose at the impetus of a few enthusiasts and collected almost eighty pounds of gold in two weeks.