Alexander Dubček

Secretary of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party (1968-1969)

• Born: November 27, 1921
• Birthplace: Uhrovec, Czechoslovakia (now in Slovakia)
• Died: November 7, 1992
• Place of death: Prague, Czechoslovakia (now in Czech Republic)

As first secretary of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, Dubček led the liberalization movement known as the Prague Spring. He attempted, unsuccessfully, to move Czechoslovakian politics and economy away from Stalinist notions of Marxist socialism.

Early Life

Alexander Dubček (DEWB-chehk) was born in Uhrovec, Czechoslovakia. His father, Stefan, and his mother, Pavlina, had returned to Czechoslovakia from Chicago only a few months before his birth. Although he had become a United States citizen in 1916 at age twenty-five, Stefan was disenchanted with the United States. In 1917, he joined the American Socialist Party, led by Eugene V. Debs, and shortly thereafter was imprisoned for eighteen months when he refused to honor a draft notice. Following his release, and with the encouragement of Pavlina, Stefan began to study the writings of Karl Marx. Their great dissatisfaction with the United States led Stefan and Pavlina to return to their homeland in 1921. By this time, West Slovakia was part of the new state of Czechoslovakia.

In March, 1925, the Dubčeks moved across the Soviet Union to Frunze, a village in Kirgiz Soviet Socialist Republic. Stefan and Pavlina, along with hundreds of other West Slovaks, were responding to an appeal from the Comintern for workers to help the Soviet Union in the construction of a Communist state. Life was difficult in Kirgiz, and many Slovakian children succumbed to malaria in the first year. Alexander and his elder brother Julius (born in Chicago in 1920) escaped the disease. In 1933, the Dubčeks moved to Gorki, an industrial city some 250 miles east of Moscow. Neither Pavlina nor Stefan questioned the direction taken by the Communist Revolution under Joseph Stalin. At home and at school, Alexander was taught to believe that Stalin must do whatever was necessary to preserve the Revolution.

In 1938, Stalin forced all foreigners in the Soviet Union either to become Soviet citizens or to leave the country. This convinced Stefan that he should return with Alexander to Czechoslovakia. They were reunited there with Pavlina and Julius, who had returned in 1936 after Julius had become seriously ill. Although Stalin had forced their departure from the Soviet Union, Alexander retained his enthusiasm for the goals of the Communist Revolution. His thirteen years in Russia helped to shape his later political decisions.

In March, 1939, Slovakia became a puppet state for the Nazis after Adolf Hitler sent troops into Czechoslovakia. Alexander, following the example of his father, joined the illegal Communist Party of Slovakia. In August, 1944, Alexander participated in the Slovak national revolt against the fascists and was twice wounded. His brother Julius was killed. In May, 1945, Czech and Slovak lands were liberated, and, in November, Alexander married Anna Ondrisova, whom he had known since his days in Russia. Despite his Communist beliefs, the wedding was held in a church and, in a touch of considerable irony, was blessed by the pope.

The Communist Party assumed power in Czechoslovakia in February, 1948, and shortly thereafter Dubček was given a position in the party apparat (bureaucracy). He was one of fifteen junior secretaries in Trenčín assigned to prepare the nationalization of the economy. Thus began Dubcek’s very quiet rise to leadership in Czechoslovakia.

Life’s Work

Between 1949 and 1955, Dubček held Slovak Communist Party posts in Trenčín, Bratislava, and Banská Bystrica. In Banská Bystrica, Central Slovakia, Dubček served as regional secretary. His main responsibility was to increase agricultural production through socialist farming methods. Dubček appeared to be an unexceptional and unexciting party bureaucrat. He was completely loyal to party ideology. During these years, the Czechoslovak Communist Party, of which the Slovak Communist Party was a section, carried out a reign of terror similar to the Stalinist purges of the 1930’s. Dubček remained on the fringes of the terror, never becoming a suspect and never becoming an accuser.

Early in 1955, the party selected Dubček to study at the Higher Party School in Moscow. He spent three years in the Soviet Union, learning the fine points of party management. In February, 1956, the Soviet Communist Party and the Higher Party School were thrown into confusion by Nikita S. Khrushchev’s anti-Stalinist speech before the Twentieth Party Congress. Dubček completed his course of study, although the ideological certainties being taught when he entered the Higher Party School in 1955 now were shaken to the core. On his return from Moscow in 1958, Dubček was made regional secretary of the Bratislava Party. Over the next five years, Dubček rose so quickly in the Communist ranks that, in 1963, he was selected by the Slovak Communist Party’s central committee to succeed Karol Bacílek as first secretary of the Slovak Communist Party.

Dubček’s position in the party brought him little public notice. He was, even in Slovakia, virtually unknown outside the bureaucracy. He was a notoriously poor orator with a benign personality. He may well have receded to total obscurity had it not been for economic and political circumstances that forced Antonín Novotný to resign as first secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party on January 5, 1968. Opposition to Novotný was particularly intense in Slovakia. Dubček not only permitted journalistic criticism of Novotný but also encouraged it by suggesting that Novotný, who also served as president of the Czechoslovakian Republic, treated Slovaks unfairly. The Czech president received little help from Leonid Brezhnev (the Soviet leader resented Novotný’s long friendship with Khrushchev), and by the autumn of 1967 it was apparent, in party circles at least, that Novotný was finished.

Czechoslovak’s were surprised by the announcement that Dubček had succeeded Novotný as first secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. Dubček’s selection owed much to the support he received from Slovakian members of the party’s central committee and to the fact that potential Czech successors were tarnished by their association with Novotný. There is also reason to believe that Brezhnev may have assisted in the selection.

When he took control of the party in January, 1968, Dubček contended that Czechoslovakia was an “inseparable part of the world socialist system, firmly linked to the Soviet Union.” He never thought the reform effort he was about to unleash would in any way subvert Czechoslovakia’s relationship with Moscow. From the outset, Dubček let it be known that he would ease restrictions on the press and radio, that he would encourage political democratization, and that he would remove from party posts those who had been adamant against any changes.

On February 22, 1968, Dubček spoke to the nation from Prague, with Brezhnev present, and promised “the widest possible democratization of the entire socio-political system.” Three weeks later, Novotný, who had retained his presidency, resigned and was succeeded by Ludvík Svoboda. Svoboda was sympathetic to Dubček’s policies. On April 9, the Action Program, which became the touchstone for the Prague Spring , was published. It called for personal freedoms, significant political reform, a new constitution for the Slovak peoples, and economic liberalization. By this time, Brezhnev and Soviet Party leaders were concerned. Dubček tried to reassure Moscow that his efforts should not be seen as anti-Soviet, but suspicions in the Kremlin remained acute. Early in July, at the conclusion of the Warsaw Pact military maneuvers, the Soviet Union refused to withdraw its forces from Czechoslovakia. Two weeks later, Kremlin leaders demanded a meeting with Czech officials. The meeting was held at Cierna on July 29. Dubček again told Brezhnev that the Prague Spring was no threat to the Warsaw alliance. Brezhnev angrily responded that Dubček offered balm to “counter-revolutionaries” and “bourgeois-revisionists.” The meeting ended unsatisfactorily for both sides.

On the night of August 20, 1968, some 300,000 troops from Hungary, Poland, East Germany, Bulgaria, and the Soviet Union entered Czechoslovakia. The Czechs, and the rest of the world, were taken by surprise. The next morning, Dubček and several other Czech officials were arrested and taken to Moscow. They were joined three days later by President Svoboda. Out of touch with the circumstances in Prague, where Warsaw forces met severe resistance, Dubček had no reason to doubt Brezhnev’s threat to make Czechoslovakia another socialist republic of the Soviet Union. On August 27, Dubček tearfully spoke to his countryfolk in a way that signaled the end of the Prague Spring. It would be necessary to reconcile the dreams of reform to the reality of Soviet dominance.

From September, 1968, until mid-April, 1969, Dubček tried to salvage some of the Action Program by following a moderate course. He was caught between pressure from Moscow and from Czechoslovakian liberals, who thought he was compromising the reform effort. Czech nationalists continued periodic demonstrations against the Soviet presence, with the worst rioting occurring in January, 1969, after a philosophy student, Jan Palach, set himself afire. In March, Dubček was forced to impose censorship on the press.

In mid-April, 1969, Dubček resigned to take the far less important post as president of the Federal Assembly. By this time, most of his reform-minded associates had been removed from their party positions. In January, 1970, Dubček was made ambassador to Turkey. He received this post, in part, because his great popularity in the country continued to embarrass party hard-liners. As long as he remained in the country, he was a lightning rod for the discontented. Six months after he arrived in Ankara, he was ordered to return to Czechoslovakia, and every effort was made to force him to admit that Soviet intervention was necessary. He refused. On June 27, 1970, it was announced that Dubček had been expelled from the party. He spent the next decade as a supervisor in the government’s forestry department in Bratislava. He retired in 1981 but was kept under surveillance until 1987.

In 1989, Dubček returned to prominence when Czech reformers, inspired by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, revived the Prague Spring and threw out the party’s old guard. Dubček once again spoke to the adoring masses in Prague and, in December, made himself available for the presidency of the Czechoslovakian republic. Although showing great respect for their onetime leader, the reformers stood behind Václav Havel, a stalwart reformer of more recent vintage, as their candidate for president. Dubček was instead elected as head of the parliament.

Dubček opposed the breakup of Czechoslovakia, but nevertheless was considered a front-runner for the presidential office in the new Slovak Republic. An automobile accident, however, ended the life of the popular reformer.

Significance

Dubček was an unlikely leader of the Prague Spring in 1968. He had no oratorical skills, and his public personality lacked any semblance of charisma. On many occasions, he had averred his support for the Soviet Union as leader of the communist world. He never intended to do anything to weaken the ties between Moscow and Prague. His commitment to Marxist ideology (as interpreted by Vladimir Ilich Lenin) was firm and unshaken throughout his political career. He believed, however, that Marxist socialism was never incompatible with democratic principles. For Dubček, Stalinist repression was an aberration; it was not a true expression of how the communist system should function. When he became first secretary, he acted on what he believed. He assumed that the Brezhnev regime would accommodate his policies of greater personal, economic, and political freedom. He was shocked and embarrassed when the Kremlin turned on him and the country he led. Indignity was added to humiliation when Dubček, to save himself and his countryfolk from further repression, severely moderated his stand on reform. Although he remained a popular hero to most in Czechoslovakia, Dubček suffered a precipitous political demise in 1968.

For fifteen years after 1968, the Prague Spring appeared to be nothing more than a brilliant, but brief and failed, attempt to establish an independent communism. In the mid-1980’s, however, the Prague Spring took on a new significance. When Gorbachev succeeded Konstantin Chernenko as Soviet Communist leader in 1985, he initiated a reform effort that emulated the Action Program of the Prague Spring. Like Dubček, Gorbachev saw no conflict between Marxism-Leninism and greater personal, political, and economic freedom for all who live in the communist world. No wonder Dubček, in 1988, heartily endorsed Gorbachev’s call for opening political discussion (glasnost) and for restructuring (perestroika) on all matters important to the Warsaw Pact countries.

Bibliography

Dubček, Alexander. Czechoslovakia’s Blueprint for “Freedom”: The Original and Official Documents Leading to the Conflict of August, 1968. Washington, D.C.: Acropolis Books, 1968. A collection of speeches, proclamations, and other statements by Dubček. The book, however, is unattractively printed and difficult to follow.

James, Robert Rhodes, ed. The Czechoslovak Crisis, 1968. London: Wiedenfeld & Nicolson, 1969. This excellent book provides, from a variety of perspectives, a thorough discussion of Novotný’s fall and Dubček’s struggles with Moscow.

Kusin, Vladimir V. Political Grouping in the Czechoslovak Reform Movement. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972. This is an account of the creation of reform political organizations from the post-World War II era through 1968. It is essential background information for understanding the Prague Spring.

Littell, Robert. The Czech Blackbook. New York: Frederick Praeger, 1969. Littell provides a superb introduction to the events of 1968. Contains a highly useful day-by-day account of the happenings from August 20 to 27, 1968.

Shawcross, William. Dubcek. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970. This is the principal biography of Dubček in the English language. Shawcross, a journalist, has produced a detailed and surprisingly balanced study of Dubček’s political career. Written within two years of the main events in Dubček’s life, the biography lacks the necessary perspective and cannot be considered definitive. It is, however, well written and informative.

Skilling, H. Gordon. Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976. Skilling’s work provides the best account of all aspects of the Prague Spring. The book gives superb insights into Dubček’s behavior during 1968. There is, as well, an excellent discussion of relevant scholarship on the events of 1968 published in the early 1970’s.

Skoug, Kenneth N. Czechoslovakia’s Lost Fight for Freedom, 1967-1969: An American Embassy Perspective. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999. Skoug, an American diplomat who lived in Czechoslovakia from 1967 until 1969, recounts events in the country during those years, including Dubček’s reforms, the Soviet invasion, and Dubček’s eventual resignation.