At the Chicago Democratic Convention in August 1968, yet again it was police violence by Mayor Daley's goons that drew national media attention to what was essentially a harmless prank by Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Phil Ochs and other Yippies (Youth International Party). Featured events at the Yippies' Festival of Light in Lincoln Park (where the police riot occurred), included snaking dancing, poetry, mantras, the Yippie Olympics, a Miss Yippie Contest, and Pin the Rubber on the Pope.
In addition to attacking non-violent protesters engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience (remaining in the park after the 11 p.m. closing time), police also viciously attacked reporters, cameramen, as well as going on a clubbing rampage in the neighborhood (Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner was one of the local residents who was attacked).
All this magically transformed the Yippies non-violent prank into front page news. Though ironically they had to share the limelight with the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Violent Soviet repression of Dubcek's freedom movement also made this event international front page news.
Prague Spring and the Collapse of the Soviet Empire
Kurlansky's sections on Prague Spring and the 1968 student/intellectual uprising in Czechoslovakia are especially. As the US faces increasing levels of FBI and police repression, it's extremely heartening to learn about successful organized resistance in the brutal totalitarian regimes of cold war Eastern Europe . Moreover, Kurlansky's analysis of the role these movements played in the ultimate collapse of the Soviet bloc contrasts with the official US view that ingenious US foreign policy caused the fall of the USSR . It's quite common for the US power elite (particularly Zbigniew Brzezinski) to attribute the Soviet collapse to the American scheme to "lure" them into invading and occupying Afghanistan , which ultimately bankrupted the Soviet economy.
1968 author Mark Kurlansky clearly believes the Soviet's August 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia marks the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire. In his view, the appearance of Soviet tanks on Czech streets killed the dream of eastern block reformers that socialism could be made more democratic. Without that dream, they had no choice but to turn to capitalism when they ultimately took power in the late eighties.
He points out that the student/intellectual protest movement that brought Alexander Dubcek to power in January 1968 became less public but didn't disappear in the government repression that followed the Soviet invasion. The Soviet action also served to strengthen reform movements in other Soviet Bloc countries - especially Romania and Poland - where government leaders were under pressure to condemn the invasion.
Alexander Dubcek: the Father of "Prague Spring"
Kurlanksy goes into some
detail describing the background and personality of Alexander Dubceck, the
father of "Prague Spring." Dubcek was definitely no wild-eyed radical seeking
to overthrow communism. In every respect, he was the ultimate communist
bureaucrat: blindly loyal, dutiful, honest, and somewhat bumbling.
Dubcek, who had always believed in democratic reform, never spoke openly about
it because he was also very pro-Soviet. In fact, he never imagined the Soviets
would invade. Dubcek and his subordinates considered the Soviets their friends and
protectors. In this respect, Czechoslovakia was unique among eastern bloc
countries in voting in a communist government at the end of World War II
(rather than having it forced on them).
Parallels Between Dubcek and Nixon
Dubcek was clearly more moderate than the students and intellectuals in the street. As Kurlansky describes it, he was actually somewhat dismayed at being suddenly thrust into power in January 1968 - owing to his predecessor's inability to contain the student protest movement and the Slovak nationalist movement that exploded simultaneously in late 1967. At the same time, Dubcek was deeply principled, unlike many Communist Party officials, and resisted Soviet pressure to use police and military violence to suppress the freedom movement. Aside from his refusal to invoke military force against students and workers, his situation parallels that of Richard Nixon's in some ways. Nixon was also forced to enact a number of progressive initiatives (The Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Social Security Supplemental Income) in response to a large and vocal protest movement. There are some interesting essays in the Nixon Library regarding the political pressures that led Nixon to embrace these reforms: http://www.nixonera.com/library/domestic.asp
As Kurlansky points out, Dubcek had no real platform until April 1968, when he issued an Action Program with three planks: 1) commitment to Czechoslovakia 's socialist political/economic system, 2) ending secret police repression of personal and political beliefs, and 3) ending the monopoly of power by the Communist Party.
The immediate result was liberalization of foreign travel, increased access to foreign periodicals in Czechoslovakia, as well as an increase in media exposes about Czech and Soviet corruption and Stalin's notorious purges. Freedom of artistic expression also increased, and everywhere Czech students wore blue jeans and long hair, listened to rock and jazz, displayed psychedelic posters and even held an international film festival.
Soviets Forced to Keep Dubcek in Power
Brezhnev, the Soviet prime minister, had been one of Stalin's henchmen in several purges. As a result, he put extreme pressure on Dubcek to crack down on these "excesses." Dubcek, however, was also profoundly antiwar. Even as Russian tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia , he explicitly ordered a robust, well-trained and armed Czech military not to fire on them. As in Tiananmen Square in China , the main opposition to the tanks was tens of thousands of unarmed civilians, which only served to blacken the Soviet's reputation, both in Czechoslovakia and the world press.
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