Socialism with a human face

Socialism with a human face (in Czech: socialismus s lidskou tváří, in Slovak: socializmus s ľudskou tvárou) was a political programme announced by Alexander Dubček and his colleagues agreed at Presidium of Communist Party of Czechoslovakia on April 1968 after he became the chairman of the Party in January 1968.

It was a process of mild democratization and political liberalization that would still enable the Communist Party to maintain real power. Still it initiated the Prague Spring, which on the night of 20–21 August 1968 was crushed by the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Background

The programme was an attempt to overcome the disillusionment of the people of Czechoslovakia with the political and economic situation at the time. As the name suggests, the plan was to breathe new life into the ideals of socialism, which had lost popular support due to the government policies of the previous two decades. It never intended to bring back market capitalism.

Programme

The programme initially called for greater participation of the people in local and country politics under the umbrella of the Communist Party, for greater freedom of the press and of culture, and emphasised the need for personal initiative in economics. The most loathed representatives of the previous style of rule were left to go.

The programme did not envisage the existence of independent political parties or private ownership of companies. Participation in Eastern Bloc structures was not questioned. The events of the Prague Spring, especially their speed and escalation, outstripped the original programme, to the surprise and dismay of its authors.

Prague Spring and Soviet invasion

Main articles: Prague Spring, Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, and Normalization (Czechoslovakia)

The subsequent developments became known as the Prague Spring, which on the night of 20–21 August 1968 was crushed by the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. The Soviet Union feared losing control over the country and invaded Czechoslovakia on August 21, 1968, with 200,000 troops and 5,000 tanks.

The liberalizing reforms were eliminated step by step, and the country eventually returned to the centralized model with the Communist Party organizing every aspect of political and economic life. Most of the influential people involved in the programme lost their political power and became targets of persecution.

The only surviving change was federalisation of the country (by creating the Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic in 1969). The Communist Party soon labeled socialism with a human face as an "attempt to destroy the advantages of socialist society and bring back the old system of exploiting people" and accused Western imperialism and emigrants for starting and nurturing the programme.

In 1987 the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged that his liberalizing policies of glasnost and perestroika owed a great deal to Dubček's socialism with a human face. When asked what the difference was between the Prague Spring and his own reforms, Gorbachev replied, "Nineteen years."