Alexander Dubcek: Socialism With a Human Face
Alexander Dubcek: The Human Face of Socialism
In 1910 Stefan Dubcek, an uneducated and semi-skilled Slovak, left his native village of Uhrovec determined to find a life in which he would not have to live as a peasant, always subservient to a ruling class. He wandered first to Hungary, where, unemployed and repelled by the monarchy, he decided to cross the Atlantic to the United States of America. There he settled into a Slovak community in Chicago. He received twenty-five dollars a week for his work as a carpenter, and in the city he met and married his wife Pavlina. She converted him to Communism and bore him a son, Julius. By the end of 1920, Stefan was restless and Pavlina homesick. They returned to Uhrovec in the spring of 1921 and, on the twenty-seventh of November, Alexander Dubcek was born.
Alexander was denied a normal childhood. During the 1920s, the Marxist seed planted in Stefan by his wife grew into an overwhelming desire to contribute to the building of socialism. When the 4th Comintern appealed to the international working class to journey to the Soviet Union and help develop socialism, Stefan knew that this was his chance. In March of 1925 the Dubceks, along with 105 other families, journeyed across the Soviet Union by train into Kirghizia and to the small village of Pishpek, where they organized a cooperative. This experiment was to prove a bitter disappointment, as squalid living conditions drove many workers from the commune to Soviet towns and cities, where they could earn decent wages. The Dubceks continued to struggle in Pishpek until 1933, when Julius and Alexander both contracted a fairly serious form of influenza. Stefan, who had by now become disillusioned with what he had believed would be an idyllic commune life, took his family to the industrial town of Gorkiy.
The move to Gorkiy played a large role in Alexander’s education and beliefs. There he was enrolled in a much better school than the overcrowded and ill-equipped school in Pishpek. He worked hard at his studies despite the fear and distrust nurtured by Stalin’s terror. As a Slovak he found it hard to make friends, because contact with a foreigner could mean death for a Soviet citizen. Despite the terror, he became convinced that Stalin was the savior of mankind and that he was unaware of the abuses committed by his government. In the Soviet Union Alexander was ingrained with a pro-Soviet attitude that would remain with him for his entire life, and in the years to come he would struggle with a way of thinking taught to all Russian students: to condemn or approve every event without hesitation by observing where it had taken place.
When, in 1938, Stalin declared that all foreign residents must either take out Soviet citizenship or leave the country, Stefan Dubcek and his family once again returned to Slovakia. The country the Dubceks returned to was radically different than that which they had left. Hitler’s invasion and partition of Czechoslovakia for the first time freed the Slovaks from discrimination and oppression by the Czechs. Slovakia was made an independent state under Hitler’s control, while the Czechs were ruthlessly oppressed and forbidden self-government. The Slovak Communist party, which had formerly been controlled by Prague, was now independent. Despite its illegal status in Hitler’s independent Slovak state, the Party managed to recruit hundreds of Slovaks anxious to join the struggle for liberation. Stefan, Julius, and Alexander Dubcek were among the first to join.
During the early 1940’s, Slovak opposition to German control over their country grew, and in 1944 an armed insurrection was planned. Things went wrong early, as the German army invaded and quickly immobilized most of the Slovak force. The revolt degenerated into guerrilla warfare. Nine main fighting groups survived to struggle against the Germans in the last years of 1944. Alexander and Julius Dubcek served in the Jan Zizka brigade, which was forced into a battle with the Germans on November 20. In the battle Julius was killed and Alexander wounded twice in the thigh.
Alexander was taken to the house of Anna Ondrisova to recover from his wounds. Although they had not seen each other for 12 years, they were acquainted from their days at the Pishpek commune. Alexander recovered, and, in the middle of November 1945, they were married. They were wed in the city of Trencin, where Alexander took a job at the local yeast factory. There the couple witnessed the liberation of Czechoslovakia and the reconstruction of a Czechoslovak Republic as Germany fell to the Allied forces. In February 1948, the Communists used their growing public support to remove the bourgeois-democrats from the government and to oust President Benes. In 1951 Dubcek, still a faithful member of the Communist Party, was elected to the Legislative Assembly. The Assembly in actuality held little power, and acted merely as a legitimizing factor for the dictatorial government. At the beginning of 1953, Dubcek was promoted to the post of Regional Secretary of the Banska Bystria region in Central Slovakia. The Communist “Second Republic” into which Dubcek entered was startlingly inefficient, characterized by bad planning and squandering of resources. From 1949 to 1954 the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia engaged in a whole-scale terror of brutal proportions, purging the government of “bourgeois nationalists” and “traitors” as well as harassing non-communists. Dubcek managed to avoid the trials entirely, neither being accused nor accusing others. These purges emptied the government and Communist Party of genuine Marxists, who were replaced by men who cared more about their insecure jobs than their country.
In 1955 Dubcek was selected to take one of the Party’s customary places at the Higher Party School in Moscow, where he received ideological training. When he returned he found supreme power centered in Prague more than ever, in the hands of President Antonin Novotny, who had recently replaced Antonin Zapotocky. Novotny, dedicated to the preservation of the status quo, was concerned with no change other than that which was absolutely necessary to maintain his complete control over the country. Upon his return, Dubcek was appointed Regional Secretary of Bratislava, and at the 11th Congress of the CCP (Czechoslovakia Communist Party) in 1958 he was elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and later that year re-elected to his post in the Slovak Central Committee.
In 1959 a new Constitution was introduced, giving Novotny and his government complete control over Slovakia and denying even the pretence of self-government that Slovakia had maintained since the promise of equal power between Czechs and Slovaks in Czechoslovakia in the Kosice Program of 1945. The Czechs had once again established superiority over the Slovaks, who, although infuriated, could do little about it. Dubcek, one of the few Slovaks still prominent in the government, continued to gain power. In 1960 he was appointed as Industrial Secretary of the Committee and spent the next two years in Prague, devoted to industrial work in an attempt to soothe the ailing Czechoslovak economy.
Khrushchev’s policy of de-Stalinization was pressed heavily upon Novotny’s government. At Khrushchev’s insistence, in 1962 a commission was formed to correct “the errors of the fifties.” Dubcek had been elected to the Czechoslovak Party Presidium in 1962 and was granted a spot on the Commission. Novotny, who had been involved in the terror, was forced to sacrifice his allies as scapegoats to maintain his position. One of those sacrificed was the Slovak First Secretary, Karol Bacilek. Novotny nominated a loyal Slovak, Michal Chudik, to take his place, but the Slovak Central Committee disregarded his nomination and gave the Slovak First Secretaryship to Alexander Dubcek, who was delighted to leave his position in Prague and return to his wife and three sons in Bratislava.
Dubcek, who was beginning to see the foolhardiness of Novotny’s policies, had no choice but to work against him. To gain political support he opted early in his tenure to make himself the main proponent of Slovak reform. In June 1966, Chudik, with Novotny’s encouragement, tried and failed to mount a rebellion against Dubcek and take the Slovak First Secretaryship for himself. His failure despite Novotny’s support cemented Dubcek’s power in the increasingly liberal government. By promising reforms, Dubcek had endeared himself to the intelligentsia, and by setting himself up against Novotny’s government, he had gained the support of the Slovak people.
In 1967, a New Economic Policy crafted by Dr. Ota Sik designed to decentralize Prague’s control and allow far greater freedom to individual enterprises was put into effect. It was introduced on too limited a scale to see success, however, and the same shortages and poor quality of goods persisted. This convinced Dubcek that genuine economic reform would succeed only alongside political reform, a belief that was to prove drastically important later in his life.
Late in August 1967 Novotny made his most disastrous insult to Slovakia. After giving a speech at the Matica Slovenska, an institute that serves as the museum of Slovak history, culture, and folklore, looks after the interests of Slovaks living abroad, and distributes cultural and tourist information, he was approached by Juraj Paska, who asked him for a grant to modernize the nineteenth century building. Novotny replied, “Is that really necessary? Wouldn’t it be better to transfer your papers to Prague? And I think it much more sensible that the Foreign Institute in Prague take care of expatriate Slovaks,” implying that the Matica should close down. Vasil Bilak, who had overheard, furiously asked Novotny how he dared be so offensive. Novotny summoned his car and left. Within the week all of Slovakia knew the story and national feeling surged. Dubcek knew that if he ignored Novotny’s insult, he would lose almost all of his support within the country, so when the Czechoslovak Central Committee met at the end of September, he launched an attack on Novotny and the doctrine of Prague centralism. He denounced Prague’s implementation of the New Economic Model, blaming not the plan but the government for the economic woes of Slovakia.
In the last week of October another Central Committee session was held. At this Plenum Dubcek showed himself to be a vigorous proponent of reform by demanding a complete change of the Party’s structure, of its method of government, and of its relations to the State and to the public. He called for a total separation of Party and State, in effect demanding that Novotny rescind one of his two positions, either President of Czechoslovakia or First Secretary of the Communist Party. Support for Dubcek grew, and in December Novotny appealed to Soviet Ambassador Chervonenko for Russian help. On December 8, Brezhnev arrived, and after talking to Novotny, Dubcek, and various Committee members, told Novotny, “Eto vashe delo”—“It’s your affair.” Without Russian help, the only factor Novotny had left was the army. With Chervonenko’s assistance he planned the arrest of Dubcek and his supporters “in defense of socialism.” Before the plan was initiated, however, General Vaclav Prchlik informed Dubcek, who confronted Novotny with evidence of the plot. Novotny was forced to deny any knowledge of it and cancel his plans.
A special Commission appointed by the Central Committee in December had during this time been examining the situation in order to suggest any changes in personnel that it considered necessary. On January 3, 1968 it decided that Novotny should lose the First Secretaryship, but there was no consensus on his replacement. Lubomir Strougal and Oldrich Cernik were proposed, but both declined. Next came the proposal of Alexander Dubcek by Cernik and with the approval of Novotny. Novotny approved because he believed that the Czech majority in the Central Committee would protest a Slovak leading the Party. He also saw Dubcek as a weak man who could be easily controlled. He was twice wrong, as Dubcek rose to power and proved himself a formidable opponent.
Upon his appointment Dubcek immediately set to work. He slaved through sixteen-hour workdays, reading special reports on every possible subject related to the Party’s rule of the country. Much of the material horrified him, strengthening his resolve to maintain his platform of extensive political reform. By the end of January he had, with the help of Czechoslovak intellectuals and Party members, enthusiastically adopted the principles of what would become the Action Program. First published on April 10, the Program did as much to arouse enemies of the “Prague Spring” as it did to stimulate reform. The Program denied that opposition parties were necessary, instead stressing intraparty democracy with emphasis on initiative, responsibility, and risk-taking. The role of the party was not to be a monopolistic concentration of power but to serve as a device for furthering socialist ideals and arousing socialist initiative. It emphasized a firm alliance with the Soviet Union, full equality between Czechs and Slovaks, strengthening of the National Assembly, and control of security forces. The Program urged the opening of the economy to the world market in phases and a rise in economic competition within the nation. It was intended to serve as a plan for reformist action in Czechoslovakia but much of it, such as the calls for a representative government, was never implemented.
Under Novotny each newspaper had a censor who, informed of State and Party policy from above, prohibited the publication of any threatening materials. When Dubcek attained the First Secretaryship of Czechoslovakia, the policies of the government became increasingly unclear—the censors had no idea what to censor. They convened on the fifteenth of March to pass an appeal for the complete abolition of censorship. The censors remained inoperative until June 26, when censorship was done away with completely by a National Assembly resolution. By the middle of March, papers were being sold out early in the morning despite increased printing, as the Czechoslovak peoples began to take an active interest in affairs of Party and State.
By the end of February, Novotny was rallying opposition to Dubcek within the Party. He met with some success, but during March several scandals involving him or his associates were revealed, tainting his image. The most scathing was the discovery that Major General Sejna and Novotny’s son Jan had imported Western cars at government expense, driven them for a time, and then sold them for their own profit. Novotny, too badly injured by these scandals to politically recover, resigned his position as president on March 22. He was replaced by Ludvik Svoboda. Beginning in March, Dubcek came under increasing pressure from other Warsaw Pact countries to slow down the process of reform and stifle the press. Within his own country, the public demand for a purge of Novotnyites and increased reforms was growing rapidly. His attempts at compromise satisfied neither the Czechoslovak public nor the Warsaw Pact countries, and both groups increased their pressure.
Dubcek began to make private pleas to the press as well as public calls for responsibility. The press responded to his rebukes with the first of many attacks proclaiming his “timidity and weakness.” Earlier, on January 6, Dubcek is thought to have made a promise to Brezhnev that no need for further personnel changes within the Party would be necessary. As the clamor of the populace in support of removing Novotny and his last remaining followers intensified, this became a harder and harder position for Dubcek to hold. By mid-May the public’s voice had grown so loud that Dubcek realized he could no longer resist the call for Novotny’s removal. On May 30 Novotny was dismissed from the Central Committee and the Czechoslovak Communist Party. On April 26 Dubcek had announced the 14th Congress of the Czechoslovak Communist Party would meet early, in October, in order to work towards the removal of the Novotnyites still in power. On June 3, he again yielded to public opinion and moved the convening of the Congress to an even earlier date—September 9.
Despite these concessions, Dubcek’s pleas to the press that they stop their attacks on his leadership and upon the Soviet Union went unheeded. Dubcek’s reforms had not been enough to satisfy the nationwide thirst for reform, and on June 27 several Prague papers published the “2,000 Words Manifesto.” Written by Ludvik Vaculik and signed by seventy leading writers, artists, athletes, and other public figures, the Manifesto encouraged greater reforms and called for strikes and boycotts in order to pressure the government into a purge of the Novotnyites. They offered Dubcek their full support, so long as the government followed their mandates. This put Dubcek in an awkward position. There was little that the appeal could persuade him to do that he was not already doing, and it made his struggle to convince the Kremlin that there was no “counter-revolution” against Communist ideals in Czechoslovakia much more challenging.
Dubcek was forced to make concessions to the Soviet Union as well. On May 4 he agreed to allow “limited staff exercises” in Czechoslovakia. The result was an enormous influx of Soviet troops into the country. When the scheduled “exercises” officially ended on July 2, the Kremlin stubbornly refused to withdraw its troops. Instead of frightening Czechoslovak citizens into rejection of their leaders, as was intended, this rallied them behind Dubcek, so much so that when a coalition of Warsaw Pact countries sent a note on July 15 stating that “the situation in Czechoslovakia jeopardizes the common vital interests of other socialist countries” and recommending action, Dubcek politely dismissed their advice. The Kremlin then called up a huge sum of reserves to the western border of the Soviet Union and invited the Czechoslovak Presidium to Moscow for bilateral talks. The Czechoslovaks demurred, forcing the Russians to meet with them on Czechoslovak ground. On July 29 the two delegations gathered at Cierna-nad-Tisou in Slovakia. The Czechoslovak delegation was determined to stand firm upon three basic points: 1) Czechoslovakia’s loyalty to the Warsaw Pact and to the Soviet Union, 2) Russian withdrawal of all charges of counter-revolution against Czechoslovakia, and 3) use of Czechoslovak troops alone to guard the border with Western Germany.
The first day’s talks were dominated by Brezhnev. For four hours he attacked Dubcek’s government, citing crimes of Czechoslovak “counter-revolutionaries” and assailing the “bourgeois revisionists” in the government. The next morning President Svoboda began the negotiations with a long and emotional defense of the reform movement. Little progress was made over the first two days, as neither side was willing to cooperate. The third day some constructive conversations were held, but a final compromise was well out of reach. The deadlock was pushed aside by Brezhnev’s insistence that all the Warsaw Pact countries save Rumania meet on August 3 in Bratislava to sign a new statement of mutual accord and unity. No agreement was ever reached, and Czechoslovakia entered August uncertain of what to expect.
Dubcek believed the Soviet Union would not invade Czechoslovakia for two main reasons. First of all, he truly believed that he had found the cure for the problems of Socialism and that his reforms in Czechoslovakia were critical to the well being of the proletariat worldwide. Up until the last minute was convinced that his allies in the Warsaw Pact would see this and oppose invasion. His second reason was more politically sound—he saw confusion and division within the Kremlin, which he believed would paralyze it into inaction. All of the Kremlin opposed Dubcek’s reforms, but use of force to stop them was not universally supported. Many, such as Kosygin and Podgorny, hoped that Dubcek and his government would in time restrict the freedoms they had granted, making an invasion unnecessary.
On August 21, 1968 the hopes of Alexander Dubcek and of the entire Czechoslovak nation were crushed as Soviet troops arrived at the Central Committee building. All night long Soviet transport planes carrying troops and tanks had been landing at the Prague airport, ready to suppress any resistance. No resistance came, however, as the Central Committee had never even raised the possibility of using the army. The people of Czechoslovakia resisted peacefully by unanimously rejecting Soviet occupation and supporting their current government wholeheartedly. Political institutions such as the Prague City Committee of the Communist party and the National Assembly continued to convene under the guns of the Soviet occupation force. The Kremlin’s half-hearted attempts to gain support for a quisling government failed completely, forcing them to allow those in power to retain their seats.
Immediately following the invasion, on August 22, Dubcek, Smrkovsky, Kriegel, and Spacek were taken away by Russian soldiers. That night, after spending twelve hours in a sweltering armored car, Dubcek and his companions were flown to an airfield in what Dubcek believed to be Poland. From there they were flown to the Carpatho Ukraine, and from there to a regional party office in Russia, possibly in Ozghorod. At the party office Dubcek had a telephone conversation with Podgorny, the head of the Russian Presidium. Dubcek was ordered to come to Moscow, but he refused unless all who had been detained were allowed to join him.
Dubcek, in a state of nervous collapse and heavily tranquilized, did not participate in the negotiations in Moscow between the Czechoslovak delegation and the Russians on August 25. The Czechoslovak delegation, formed of politicians seized as prisoners and then shipped to Moscow as negotiators, was presented with a series of Soviet ultimatums. Any continuation of the Action Program was instantly rejected by the Russians—the Russians insisted that their invasion had been justified and provided little opportunity for debate or negotiation. Dubcek and the entire delegation met with the Russian Politurbo on the afternoon of the 26th to sign the ultimatum. When arguments erupted between Dubcek and Brezhnev, the Russian and his entire entourage stormed out. Dubcek, who had already been given sedatives, was approached by Russian doctors for further tranquilization. He shouted emphatically, “I won’t sign it then! Let them do what they want, I won’t sign it!” Dubcek eventually allowed himself to be tranquilized, and later that night he and the Czechoslovak delegation signed the “Moscow Protocol.”
The Protocol exuded a strong stench of hypocrisy. It began, “Both sides acted according to the generally acknowledged norms for relations among fraternal parties and countries.” Thus, the Czechoslovak delegation, who had been kidnapped and forced to accept a Russian plan for their country in which they had almost no voice, endorsed the pretense that the negotiations were normal and fair. The Protocol declared the decisions of the 14th Congress of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, which had met during the occupation, invalid and made plans for a special congress to be held once the situation had been “normalized” within Czechoslovakia. Measures were decided upon to control the communications media and to put an end to activities of anti-socialist organizations. The “anti-Marxist” Social-Democratic Party was banned and the Russians promised to remove their troops in stages “as soon as the threat to socialism in Czechoslovakia and to the security of the countries in the socialist communities has passed.” It was even made illegal for a Czechoslovak to refer to the events as an “invasion”, with the acceptable nomenclature being “srpnové události” (“August events”).
Why did the delegation sign such an insulting and injurious proposal? Thinly veiled threats of torture may have played some role, but undoubtedly the greatest factor in persuading the Czechoslovaks was the possibility of massive bloodshed in Czechoslovakia if a peace was not concluded soon. Russians were provoking the Czechs and Slovaks, and any day a revolution could break out. The Russians would waste no time in crushing it and spilling massive amounts of Czechoslovak blood. The only delegate who refused to sign was Frantisek Kriegel, chairman of the National Front and object of significant Kremlin contempt. The Russians intended for him to stay behind in Moscow, where he would suffer his last days as a diabetic deprived of insulin. The Czechoslovak delegation noticed his absence and refused to leave without him, however, and the Russian “hosts” eventually gave in and returned him to his country along with the rest of the delegation.
On August 27 Dubcek addressed the nation, describing the agreement that the delegation had reached with Moscow. His voice filled with agony and suffering, he begged the Czech and Slovak peoples to trust him and to respect the Moscow Protocol despite its tremendous concessions. At one point he broke down completely and remained silent for several seconds. When he resumed his speech, he implored his listeners, “I ask you to forgive me if every now and then there is a pause in this largely improvised and impromptu appearance. I think you know why it is.” After August Dubcek spent most of his time trying either to convince the Russians that he was in control of the country or to convince the Czechoslovaks that he was saving the essentials of the reform movement. Neither was convinced, and he began to lose popularity with both his people and the Kremlin.
The Smrkovsky affair came to dominate politics during a good deal of Dubcek’s remaining time as First Secretary. Smrkovsky, Chairman of the National Assembly, was thoroughly disliked by the Kremlin, and in a secret meeting with Svoboda, Husak, Strougal, and Dubcek in Kiev the Russians demanded his removal. Smrkovsky learned of this meeting and publicly attacked Dubcek. He then stated publicly that he was in very good health and had no intention of resigning his post, a ploy which set off a national campaign to keep him in the Chairmanship. On January 4, 1969 the Metalworkers Union called for a national strike in Smrkovsky were removed from his job, provoking an appeal from Smrkovsky himself to abstain from unconstitutional actions. On January 7, the Presidium voted to remove Smrkovsky and to name Peter Colotka Chairman of the National Assembly. The public responded with dejection, but there was little protest. The Czechoslovaks had lost their spirit. Very soon, however, it would be restored.
On January 16, 1969 Jan Palach entered Wencelas Square and set himself on fire. His self-immolation was a fierce indictment of Dubcek’s leadership and of the concessions made in the previous months, and it immediately reawakened the Czechoslovak spirit. Palach had left behind a note petitioning the government for the immediate abolition of censorship and a band on the distribution of Zpravy, an illegal pro-Russian paper. The Central Committee was flooded with resolutions supporting his demands as throughout the week tension and emotion throughout the country rose. Dubcek, exhausted by the strains of the last months, was thrown into a nervous breakdown by Palach’s death and its fierce criticism of his leadership. He spent the week recuperating in Bratislava. During the week the government did much to restore its legitimacy in the hearts of the people. Black flags were ordered for all public buildings and huge demonstrations were allowed to proceed. Dubcek, with his people united and passionate, was suddenly reinvigorated. For the first time since August he felt strong enough to make demands from Moscow and he focused on securing the removal of the Russian force from his country. He once again had the support of the people, but his time as their leader was about to come to an end.
On the evening of March 28 the Czechoslovak Ice Hockey team defeated the Soviet Union for the second time in the World Ice Hockey Championship of 1969, sending Czechs and Slovaks into a frenzy of national pride. Ecstatic Czechs stormed Wenceslas Square and sacked the offices of the Russian airline Aeroflot. The Russians, taking the pillaging as conclusive evidence that Dubcek was not in control of the country, sent Marshal Grechko to the Czechoslovakia. His first action was to issue to orders to the occupation troops: now they were authorized not only to shoot in self-defense, but also to use their weapons in order to prevent any disturbances. On April 1, Semyonov, who had accompanied Grechko, delivered a message from Brezhnev to President Svoboda demanding the dismissal of Dubcek. Gustav Husak, who had replaced Bilak as Slovak First Secretary after the invasion, had since been demonstrating his obedience and loyalty to the Soviet Union by instituting measures much more repressive than those in Prague. On April 11 Husak called for “a new Party and State leadership which will be able to guarantee peace and security,” a direct bid for his selection as Dubcek’s replacement. It was successful. On April 17 Dubcek asked the Central Committee to relieve him of his position as First Secretary of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia and recommended that Husak take his place. Dubcek was allowed to keep his seat in the Presidium, and on April 28 he replaced Colotka as Chairman of the National Assembly. There he remained through the summer of 1969 while Husak systematically dismantled the achievements of the Prague Spring. Many Czechs and Slovaks had hoped that as a former revolutionary and Marxist intellectual, Husak would stand up to the Russians, but ever since the negotiations in Moscow in August 1968 he had proved himself obedient to the will of the Soviet Union.
On August 21, 1969, the first anniversary of the Soviet invasion, Czechoslovak citizens protested with passive resistance, boycotting trams and restaurants, and observing a five-minute strike at noon. Thousands of Czechs gathered in Wencelas Square and were brutally attacked by the police. The government used these protests as a justification for the imposition of the repressive Emergency Laws, which were announced the following day. Dubcek had little choice but to sign the laws if he wanted to remain in the government. During his time as Chairman of the National Assembly, Dubcek came under great pressure to denounce his reforms and the accomplishments of the Prague Spring. Demoralized and exhausted from this pressure and from signing the Emergency Laws, Dubcek took a much needed vacation in Slovakia. Wherever he went he met with enthusiastic support and sympathy from his people. Amazed to find that he still had their trust and that they understood that he had been forced to sign the Emergency Laws, he resolved never to recant and to stand by his beliefs.
When the Central Committee met on September 25, Dubcek was removed from the Chairmanship of the National Assembly and dismissed from the Presidium. This did not come as a surprise. The new government could not tolerate so great a symbol of reform as Dubcek as long as he refused to denounce the Prague Spring. Dubcek’s leadership of Czechoslovakia had finally come to an end.
But what kind of leader was this man who tried so valiantly and so vainly to humanize socialism? He was above all else a man of the people. His popularity was always his greatest asset, and he could not have succeeded without it. On July 8, 1968 the Prague paper Vecerni Praha published the results of a questionnaire—89% of those who responded wanted to continue the development of Dubcek’s “human socialism,” 87% were satisfied with the present government, and only 7% were unhappy with it. The people loved Dubcek, and he had a great fondness for them as well. During the negotiations at Cierna-nad-Tisou, Dubcek left his quarters and went to the local canteen, where there was a small gathering of railwaymen. He sat with them for an hour and explained the situation that the country was in. As he left one of the workers begged him, “Take care of yourself, Comrade Dubcek. We need you.”
He was also an optimist who often had his head in the clouds. On his way to what was sure to be an indictment of his government at a Warsaw Pact meeting in Dresden in March 1968, one of his secretaries noticed him sitting at the front of the plane alone, writing on a pad. Believing that he was preparing a desperate defense for the meeting, the secretary approached him to reassure him. To his surprise, Dubcek was reconstructing a football match he had seen on television the night before. He showed the secretary mistakes his team had made and demonstrated how the game might have been won.
He was also exceedingly trusting, a trait which often caused him much trouble. He gave the position of Deputy Minister of the Interior to Villam Salgovic, a man with a very different opinion on how Prague should be governed. Because he had helped Dubcek in his fight against Chudik for the Slovak First Secretaryship, Dubcek foolishly believed he could trust him despite their conflicting ideologies. In 1968 it was on Salgovic’s orders that Dubcek was arrested by the Czech secret police and deported to the Soviet Union.
Dubcek’s driving force was always a moral or emotional commitment, and he always lived his life on moral principles. To him, personal relationships and ideals were infinitely more important than ideological purities. His desire for a moral government drove him to “humanize” Socialism and fight against the terrors that occurred before and after his rule. But any attempt at “Socialism with a human face” is a flawed experiment—it is doomed to failure from the start. The people will always want more freedom, more liberties, until the government has lost Socialism altogether. That does not mean Dubcek was a failure. His Prague Spring gave the people of Czechoslovakia a “breath of freedom,” a hope for the future, and a cause to rally to in times of despair. His attempts to reform Socialism may have proved unsuccessful, but in the hearts and minds of the Czechoslovak peoples he will always be a hero.
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