socialism – Tragedy and Farce

August 20-21, 1968: The Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia

August 20, 2025 lars4968Leave a comment

On August 20-21, 1968, the combined armies of the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria invaded Czechoslovakia to topple the reformist government of Alexander Dubcek and to ensure that Prague remained firmly entrenched in the Soviet orbit and under communist rule. This Soviet-led intervention was the third time since 1953 in which Moscow was forced to use military power to ensure its control over its East European satellites. It also further underscored the fundamental tenet of Soviet policy toward the region, the idea of limited sovereignty. Diversity within the Eastern Bloc was permissible only within the context of strict Soviet control and universal conformance on two key points: loyalty to the Soviet Union in foreign affairs and the primacy of the communist party in the domestic sphere.

Of all of Moscow’s East European satellites, Czechoslovakia was the last to succumb to full Soviet control and therefore was late to experience de-Stalinization. Since 1948, Czechoslovakia had been ruled by Communist hardliners Klement Gottwald and Antonin Novotny who ensured that unlike Poland or Hungary, Czechoslovakia remained a hardcore Stalinist state firmly within the Soviet sphere of influence. However, by the 1960s the Czech economy began to falter, and cracks within the ruling Communist Party emerged as popular dissatisfaction with communist rule was on the rise.

In early 1968, Novotny was ousted as the head of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party and replaced by Alexander Dubcek in what would become known as the “Prague Spring.” In many ways, Dubcek was a forerunner to future Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Dubcek, like Gorbachev, sought to breathe new life into the Communist system and insisted that all reforms would take place within the framework of the Marxist-Leninist state. Nonethless, as he implemented reforms he began to lose control of the process. Dubcek relaxed censorship while encouraging greater policy debate and limiting the powers of the secret police. He also pledged to put more emphasis on the production of consumer goods, while suggesting the possibility of a multiparty government and democratic elections ten years in the future. From Moscow’s perspective, it appeared that Dubcek was dismantling Communist rule not reforming it.

Soviet leaders were increasingly alarmed by what was happening in Czechoslovakia and the model it might provide for the Soviet people and the other Communist states of Eastern Europe. However, Soviet leadership was divided between those who wanted to avoid a replay of the 1956 Hungarian crisis and counseled patience and those who argued for a swift military solution to the problem. In Eastern Europe there was surprisingly strong support for the latter. The hardline Communist leaders of East Germany and Poland—Walter Ulbricht and Władysław Gomułka—were especially apprehensive and argued for a decisive military intervention. Gomułka’s support for the use of force was a particularly ironic twist because his rise to the top of the Polish communist party in October 1956 against Moscow’s wishes, almost triggered a Soviet military intervention in Poland. In July, the Kremlin insisted on consultations with their Czechoslovak counterparts to better understand the situation. Dubcek defended his reform agenda and resisted demands he reverse course but reaffirmed Czechoslovakia’s alliance with the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.

As Dubcek struggled to convince the Soviets and his fellow East Europeans of his continued allegiance, momentum for a military intervention was growing in Moscow and the other East European capitals. On 3 August, representatives from the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic, the People’s Republic of Poland, the Hungarian People’s Republic, the People’s Republic of Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia met in Bratislava in a last-ditch effort to reach a compromise and avoid military force. The meeting did little to resolve the standoff and only resulted in a vaguely worded declaration subject to contradictory interpretations. The declaration addressed the principles of equality, sovereignty, and territorial integrity while reaffirming the participants unshakable fidelity to Marxism–Leninism, proletarian internationalism, and the implacable struggle against bourgeois ideology and all “antisocialist” forces. More disturbing were the repeated references to fraternal assistance, code word in Soviet parlance for military intervention, and the idea that it was right and duty of all communist states to intervene in another if communist rule were ever endangered or replaced by a non-communist system. This idea would form the basis for what became known as the Brezhnev Doctrine.

At an August 16-17 meeting, the Soviet Politburo unanimously passed a resolution to “provide help to the Communist Party and people of Czechoslovakia through military force”. At an August 18 Warsaw Pact meeting, Brezhnev announced that the intervention would go ahead on the night of 20 August, and asked for “fraternal support”, which the national leaders of Bulgaria, East Germany, Hungary, and Poland duly offered. East German military forces were left out of the invasion at the last minute for fear of reawakening memories of the 1939 German invasion and provoking strong resistance. Romania refused to participate in the intervention and its leader Nicolai Ceausescu condemned the invasion in a August 21 public address calling it a “grave error” that “constituted a serious danger to peace in Europe and for the prospects of world socialism.” His address was perceived as a gesture of disobedience towards the Soviet Union. However, Ceausescu escaped the Kremlin’s ire largely because he continued to run Romania as a hard-core communist state and did not threaten to leave the Warsaw Pact.

Around 11 pm on August 20, more than 200,000 troops and 2,000 tanks from the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria rolled across the border into Czechoslovakia. Armed resistance to the invasion was negligible, but protesters immediately took to the streets. The invaders quickly occupied the capital of Prague and spread out to take control of other major cities, key points of communication, and airports. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev insisted on the participation of at least some of Moscow’s Warsaw Pact allies in the intervention to give it a veneer of legitimacy. Nevertheless, Soviet military forces did most of the heavy lifting.

The invasion caught most of Czechoslovakia and the world by surprise. Although resistance to the invasion was negligible, unlike the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, protesters immediately took to the streets. Within hours, Dubcek, along with other government leaders, was arrested and flown to Moscow in hand cuffs for interrogation. He was surprisingly allowed to return to Prague on August 27, where in an emotional address he acknowledged the error of his ways and agreed to curtail his reforms. He was forced to gradually dismiss reformist aides and government officials who were quickly replaced by hard-line Communists. After anti-Soviet rioting broke out in April 1969, he was removed as first secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and replaced by Gustav Husak, a hardliner who was willing to work with the Soviets. Dubcek was later expelled from the Communist Party and briefly served as ambassador to Turkey, before being made a minor forestry official in Slovakia.

In the years that followed, Husák consolidated his power, further purging the government and communist party of Dubcek loyalists, reimposing centralized control over the economy and reinstating the power of the security service. He also ensured that Czechoslovakia once again became a cooperative member of the Warsaw Pact. Husak’s rule would come to be known as the “Reluctant Terror.” It was characterized as one of strict adherence to Soviet policy objectives and the minimum amount of repression necessary to achieve these objectives and prevent a return to Dubcek- style reformism. As a result, the regime was neither a complete return to Stalinism nor al liberal one either. Husak would continue to rule Czechoslovakia until November 1989 when he and the rest of the communists were overthrown in what became known as the Velvet Revolution

Storming of the Bastille: July 14, 1789

July 14, 2021July 15, 2021 lars4968Leave a comment

On July 14, 1789, Parisian mobs stormed the Bastille—a notorious prison and symbol of royal tyranny—in what is generally regarded as arguably the beginning of the French Revolution. Inspired by the American Revolution, the French Revolution would prove to be a watershed event in the history of Western civilization helping spread many of the ideas that now form the foundation of modern liberal democracy. It would also inspire Karl Marx and other future socialists, with its emphasis on egalitarianism. However, the Revolution, which was originally a popular uprising against the absolute power of the king and the vast inequality between the rich and the poor, would eventually consume itself giving way to the dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte and eventually a restoration of the monarchy.

By the mid-1780s, France found itself in deep economic crisis. Decades of war against Great Britain, especially support for the American colonies in their war for independence, had emptied the state coffers. Moreover, an inefficient and regressive taxation system in which the urban poor and middle class paid most of the taxes and the nobility lived lives of luxury combined with two decades of poor harvests left the country on the brink of financial ruin and a social implosion.

King Louis XVI sought to replenish the state treasury by raising taxes, including a universal land tax from which the nobility would no longer be exempt. However, he lacked the authority on his own to levy any new taxes. The only institution in France with that power was the Estates General an assembly representing France’s clergy, nobility and middle class. The King agreed to convene the Estates General in May 1789, which had not met since 1614, to garner support for his proposed reforms. The assembly consisted of equal numbers of representatives of each estate, and voting had been by order, with the First Estate (the clergy), the Second Estate (the nobility), and the Third Estate (middle class and peasants) each receiving one vote. Under this framework, the Third Estate routinely was outvoted by the combined vote of the nobility and clergy. Now representing roughly 95 percent of the population, the Third Estate demanded political power commensurate with the amount of the population it represented. Members argued that the Third Estate should be doubled in size and that voting should be by headcount and not order. However, a majority of the clergy and nobility balked at this idea.

Unsatisfied, the Third Estate now decided on a more radical course of action. They declared themselves the National Assembly, that was representative of all the people. This new National Assembly expressed its desire to include the other two Estates in its deliberations but also made it clear that it was determined to conduct the nation’s affairs without them. Faced with a growing insurrection and a threat to his absolute power, King Louis XVI tried to prevent the National Assembly from meeting by locking them out of the Salle des États, claiming it needed to be prepared for a royal speech. On 20 June, the Assembly met in a tennis court outside Versailles and swore not to disperse until a new constitution had been agreed. Messages of support poured in from Paris and other cities; by 27 June, they had been joined by 100 clergy and 47 members of the nobility. On July 9 the Assembly reconstituted itself as the National Constituent Assembly.

A showdown between the crown and the general public was looming. The only questions remained how and when and what would be the catalyst. On 11 July, Louis XVI, acting under the influence of the conservative nobles, dismissed his finance minister, who had been sympathetic to the Third Estate, and rumors soon spread that he was preparing to use the military to shut down the Assembly. The news brought crowds of protestors into the streets who thought this was the beginning of a conservative coup and soldiers of the elite French Guards refused to disperse them. Paris was soon consumed with riots, anarchy, and widespread looting. The mobs now had the support of the French Guard, including arms and trained soldiers who were sympathetic to the people.

Events came to a head on July 14, when a mob, with the support of the disgruntled French Guard, stormed the Bastille in search of arms and ammunition and to release the large number of political prisoners rumored to be held behind its walls. After several hours of fighting the Governor of the prison surrendered. Shortly thereafter he was executed and his headed paraded around the city on a pike. Although the revolutionaries found stores of arms and ammunition, there were only seven prisoners at the Bastille: four forgers, two noblemen held for “immoral behavior”, and a murder suspect. Nonetheless, a blow had been struck against Royal authority and noble privilege.

The storming of the Bastille had fundamentally changed the balance of power and revealed the monarchy for the sclerotic and delegitimized institution it had become. It also put in motion a series of events over the next decade that would set not only France but the entire European continent aflame. By 1791, the moderates who held power following the attack on the Bastille gave way to more impatient and revolutionary Jacobin elements of the Sans Culottes—the working class—amidst growing food shortages and a worsening economic crisis. The following August, these revolutionaries would arrest Louis XVI, his wife Marie Antoinette, and the rest of the Royal family. The King was executed by guillotine the subsequent January for allegedly conspiring with Austria and Prussia to overthrow the revolution and his wife suffered the same fate nine months later.

The execution of the royals ushered in the most violent and bloody phase of the revolution, known as the “Reign of Terror.” Over a 10 month period, 17,000 suspected enemies of the revolution were guillotined without a public trial or any legal assistance. Many of the killings were carried out under orders from Maximilian Robespierre, one of the Jacobin leaders who dominated the draconian Committee of Public Safety that had been set up to root out enemies of the revolution. Intoxicated by his power, Robespierre called for increasingly more executions and purges, even though the threat to the revolution, at home and abroad, had receded. By the summer of 1794 many had begun to turn against Robespierre and his excesses. An uneasy coalition of moderates and revolutionaries formed to oppose Robespierre and his followers. On July 27, 1794 Robespierre was arrested and the next day he and 21 of his supporters were guillotined without a trial.

The death of Robespierre would bring the Reign of Terror to an end and lead to a less radical and less violent phase of the revolution. Executive power was now invested in the hands of a five-member Directory (Directoire) appointed by parliament. The Directory, however, would fail to distinguish itself as an effective governing body. The Directory’s four years in power were riddled with financial crises, popular discontent, inefficiency and, above all, political corruption. On November 9, 1799, as frustration with the Directory reached a fever pitch, a young and brash General named Napoleon Bonaparte staged a coup d’état, abolishing the Directory and appointing himself France’s “First Consul.” The event marked the end of the French Revolution and the beginning of the Napoleonic era, in which France would come to dominate much of continental Europe.

Jean Jaurès: Europe’s Last Great Hope

August 12, 2020August 12, 2020 lars4968Leave a comment

In 1914, as all of Europe’s statesmen and diplomats girded themselves for the coming calamity that would become known as World War I, others labored below the surface seeking to head off this descent into the abyss. One such figure was Jean Jaures, leader of the French Socialist party. In the weeks before the outbreak of the war, Jaures tried to organize general labor strikes in France and Germany to force their governments to step back from war and negotiate a peace. He urged all socialist to resist their nation’s call to arms and to unite in the interest of the working class and stop the march to war. Jaures was perhaps Europe’s best and last chance to avoid the coming cataclysm, a chance that was snuffed out by an assassin’s bullet on July 31, 1914.

Jaurès was born into a lower middle-class family that had been impoverished by business failures. He was a towering intellect and a professor of philosophy and historian. However, he was more drawn to politics than teaching. Because of his life experiences, Jaures was always drawn to the plight of the working class. He was a socialist but not in doctrine. His socialism did stem from Marx it was he argued, “the product of history, of endless and timeless sufferings.” He believed that man was good, that society could be made good and the struggle to make it so was to be fought daily. In a sense he was closer to Eduard Bernstein and the evolutionary socialists who argued that the working class was not sinking into impoverishment but making gains and that socialism cold be achieved by working within the system than the more revolutionary Marx who believed it could only be achieved through violent revolution.

As leader of the French socialist party and a brilliant orator, Jaures exercised a powerful voice in the Second International, an organization of 33 socialist parties from around the world working to advance the proletarian revolution. As Europe’s diplomatic crises multiplied in the early part of the 20th century, Jaures tried to move the Second International to focus more on how the socialist parties of Europe might prevent a European wide conflagration that seemed increasingly imminent. In 1907 the Second International adopted a resolution stating, “If a war threatens to break out, it is the duty of the working classes and their parliamentary representatives in the countries involved, supported by the coordinating activity of the International Socialist Bureau, to exert every effort in order to prevent the outbreak of war by the means they consider most effective. The resolution further added, “In case war should break out anyway, it is their duty to intervene in favor of its speedy termination and with all their powers to utilize the economic and political crisis created by the war to rouse the masses and thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.” However, the resolution did not answer the question of how.

For Jaures, the answer was clear, the general strike. The concept of the general strike which provoked heated debate amongst the various members of the Second International. The idea was divisive, especially amongst more orthodox Marxists who believed that war was a natural and unavoidable consequence of capitalism and necessary for advancing the proletarian revolution. At the August 1910 Congress of the Second International in Copenhagen, James Keir Hardie a member of the British Labour Party, proposed a new resolution, which called for a general strike in case of war, in order to simultaneously paralyze mobilization in the relevant countries. The delegates agreed that it was necessary to discuss the resolution, but decided to defer that to the next congress, on August 1914.

As war became increasingly more likely, in the wake of Archduke Frank Ferdinand’s assassination, Jaurès tried to rally the forces of international socialism to prevent a war. Jaurès prophetically warned earlier that a war would unleash the most terrible holocaust since the Thirty Years war An emergency meeting of the executive International Socialist Bureau in Brussels in July 1914 with all the big-wigs of the international socialist movement attending. All the leaders talked about all-out resistance but it soon became clear that the last chance for peace was slipping through Jaurès’ fingers. Jaurès pressed all the attending leader to call a general strike but there would be no general strike. There was no support. All preconceived notions that class interest would supersede nationalism were shattered. One by one all the great socialist leaders rejected Jaurès’ call. Victor Adler, the great Austrian socialist noted the war was popular in Austria, and the Austrian socialists would no resist it. Adler’s comments were echoed by all the other great socialist leaders. What every one failed to grasp was that in all the countries of Europe, everyone believed some one else was responsible for the coming conflict.

Frustrated and dejected, Jaurès returned to Paris. He spoke passionately at one of the last anti-war rallies. Two days later on July 31st Jaurès was assassinated by a over zealous French nationalist, Raoul Villain, who was fearful of Jaurès’ power to prevent France from going to war.