I am indebted to my colleagues Peter Sugar and Ruth Horowitz for their thoughtful comments on an early draft of this article.

1. Numerous studies of the 1968 events have been published, among them Golan, Galia, Reform Rule in Czechoslovakia (Cambridge and New York, 1973)Google Scholar; Kusin, Vladimir V., Political Grouping in the Czechoslovak Reform Movement (London and New York, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sviták, Ivan, The Czechoslovak Experiment, 1968-1969 (New York and London, 1971)Google Scholar. See also Remington, Robin Alison, ed., Winter in Prague: Documents on Czechoslovak Communism in Crisis (Cambridge, Mass., 1969)Google Scholar, and Zartman, I. William, ed., Czechoslovakia: Intervention and Impact (New York and London, 1970)Google Scholar.

2. David W. Paul, “Nationalism, Pluralism, and Schweikism in Czechoslovakia's Political Culture” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1973).

3. See, for example, Taborsky, Edward, Communism in Czechoslovakia, 1948-1960 (Princeton, 1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Suda, Zdenek, The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (Baltimore, 1969)Google Scholar; and Jancar, Barbara Wolfe, Czechoslovakia and the Absolute Monopoly of Poiver: A Study of Political Poiver in a Communist System (New York, 1971)Google Scholar.

4. Taborsky, Edward, “Change in Czechoslovakia,” Current History, 48, no. 283 (March 1965): 168–74 Google Scholar; Gordon Skilling, H., “Communism and Czechoslovak National Traditions,” Journal of International Affairs, 20, no. 1 (1966): 118–36Google Scholar; Schwartz, Morton, “Czechoslovakia: Toward One-Party Pluralism?” Problems of Communism, 16, no. 1 (January-February 1967): 21–27 Google Scholar; Golan, Galia, The Czechoslovak Reform Movement (Cambridge, 1971)Google Scholar; Kusin, Vladimir V., The Intellectual Origins of the Prague Spring (New York and Cambridge, 1971)Google Scholar; and Krejči, Jaroslav, Social Change and Stratification in Postwar Czechoslovakia (London and New York, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Brown, A. H., “Political Change in Czechoslovakia,” Government and Opposition, 4, no. 2 (Spring 1969): esp. pp. 189–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. The Prague Spring is, of course, a misnomer, and the author apologizes for resorting to this popular but inaccurate abbreviation. In the first place, it was not just Prague that was affected by the 1968 changes but the entire country, Czech and Slovak urban and rural; and the political events taking place reflected in a complex pattern the local differences of Czechoslovakia. In the second place, the “Spring” of reform actually began in January and lasted until some months after the August intervention, passing through several quite distinct stages.

7. Political culture has been defined and discussed elsewhere, both by the present author and by others. See Paul, “Nationalism, Pluralism, and Schweikism”; also Almond, Gabriel A., “Comparative Political Systems,” Journal of Politics, 18 (August 1956): 391–409 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture (Princeton, 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pye, Lucian W. and Verba, Sidney, Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Fagen, Richard R., The Transformation of Political Culture in Cuba (Stanford, 1969)Google Scholar. As used here, the term “political culture” refers to a certain observable configuration of values, orientations, and behavior patterns related to the politics of a society. A political culture, so defined, is not completely static, although there is an inherent quality of inertia. Changes in the political culture will generally occur either very gradually or in the context of circumstances involving a sudden, and usually violent, break with the past. A political culture can absorb gradual, incremental changes—hence it is relatively labile. But sudden, large-scale changes will invariably encounter great obstacles, for such changes involve an upheaval in value patterns that are usually deeply rooted. This kind of change is, of course, the nature of a revolution—a violent rupture of traditional norms and practices.

8. Some observers of interwar Czechoslovak politics have faulted the system for having been excessively pluralistic and participatory. Milan E. Hapala, for example, has argued that the Czechs’ attraction to politics “led to an overvaluation of all that was political. The citizen became too deeply involved in politics, his political partisanship taking precedence over other values.” Because of the multiplicity of minority parties drawn together into coalition cabinets, “the programs advocated by the parties and chosen by the voters were modified and, at times, nullified by the need for compromise.” Hapala, Milan E., “Political Parties in Czechoslovakia, 1918-1938,” in Rechcigl, Miloslav Jr., ed., Czechoslovakia: Past and Present, 2 vols. (The Hague and Paris, 1968), 1: 138–39.Google Scholar

9. Kann, Robert A., The Habsburg Empire: A Study in Integration and Disintegration (New York, 1957), pp. 375–79 Google Scholar; Čapek, Karel, President Masaryk Tells His Own Story (New York, 1935), p. 1935.Google Scholar

10. Beneš felt that the overlapping constituencies of the parties made coalition politics easier and less conflict-ridden than in other European democracies. See Edward Beneš in His Own Words, comp. K. Hudec (New York: Czech-American National Alliance, 1944), p. 27.

11. Even though the Communists polled a plurality of the votes (38.1 percent) in the 1946 parliamentary elections, this vote cannot realistically be interpreted as a mandate for the totalitarian policies of the post-1948 years. Many voters chose the Communists because they offered the most radical social reform programs, including the vengeful promise of redistribution of German properties. Some others apparently voted Communist for reasons only indirectly related to specific policies—for example, the Communists’ muchadmired record of wartime resistance to the Nazis and their local collaborators. Many Communist voters became disillusioned after 1946 because of the party’s obstreperous governmental tactics within the Third Republic coalition. By January 1948 there was evidence that the Communists were losing the plurality of support that they had won in 1946.

12. By “Schweikian” tendencies I mean passive or nonviolent patterns of behavioral response to crisis, as symbolized by the adventures of Jaroslav Hašek’s fictional character the Good Soldier Schweik, in the famous post-World War I novel of that name. “Schweikism” can include both compliance and resistance on the part of individuals vis-à-vis an oppressive system, but the outward behavioral passivity typically masks a deep-seated and profound inner rejection of the alien system. See Paul, “Nationalism, Pluralism, and Schweikism,” pp. 253-300.

13. Although the 1948 Communist coup was the necessary prerequisite to the most radical changes in social policies, the basic socialist course was set in the immediate postwar period with the nationalization of large industry and a sweeping land reform. The latter program was, of course, abandoned later in favor of collectivization.

14. See Machonin, Pavel et al., Ceskoslovenskd společnost [Czechoslovak Society] (Prague, 1969)Google Scholar, and Krejči, Social Change and Stratification.

15. Sviták, The Czechoslovak Experiment, p. 4.

16. KAN, the Club of Committed Nonpartisans (Klub Angažovaných Nestraník), was a loose network of local clubs formed for the purpose of discussing politics and seeking to influence legislation. Many of KAN’s more prominent members were assumed to have personal political ambitions, although KAN itself was never advanced as an opposition party. In the course of 1968 the most important function of KAN- was as an active but as yet relatively weak lobby for democratic and humanitarian causes.

17. “Svoboda”—Die Presse in der Tschechoslowakei, 1968 (Zurich: Internationales Presseinstitut, 1969), pp. 35-36 and passim.

18. On October 31 some Prague students were arrested for publicly protesting a power cut-off in their hostel. Further demonstrations ensued in protest against the arrests, and the police responded with beatings and more arrests. The demands of the students now escalated to include academic and political freedom. The Novotný government at first condemned the students, then criticized the police, and finally, after more than a month had passed, released the incarcerated demonstrators. A general wave of indignation swept through Prague in response to this incident, and many influential party members shared in the censure of the regime. It is very likely that the Strahov hostel incident thus contributed to the timing of Novotný’s downfall, which occurred within a month of the students’ release.

19. Zbyněk Vokrouhlický, “Jednota v pluralitě,” Mladá Fronta, Sept. 17, 1968.

20. A moving account of Club 231 activities is given in the autobiography of one of the club’s founders, Brodský, Jaroslav, Solution Gamma (Toronto, 1971).Google Scholar

21. See, for example, Butvin, J. and Havránek, J., Dějiny Československa, vol. 3 (Prague, 1968), pp. 14–279 Google Scholar; Harrison Thomson, S., Czechoslovakia in European History (Princeton, 1943)Google Scholar; and Brock, Peter and Gordon Skilling, H., eds., The Czech Renascence of the Nineteenth Century (Toronto, 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22. Among these shortcomings was the inevitable necessity of compromise in order to achieve coherent governmental policies. See note 8 above.

23. See Beneš, Václav, “Background of Czechoslovak Democracy,” in Rechcígl, Miloslav Jr., ed., The Czechoslovak Contribution to World Culture (The Hague, 1964), pp. 267–76.Google Scholar

24. Krejči, Social Change and Stratification, pp. 27-62; also Otto Ulc, “The Impact of Modernization on Political Development in Czechoslovakia,” paper presented to the conference on Eastern Europe, “The Impact of Modernization on Political Development,” Columbia University (March 23-24, 1973). It should be noted that Czechoslovakia was already a relatively egalitarian country, even during the “bourgeois” period. Income differentiation, especially in the Czech lands, was relatively low.

25. Machonin, Československá společnost. This remarkable book, published before the reimposition of censorship in 1969, is no longer in print, and consequently copies of it are hard to find. Two preliminary efforts, both edited by Machonin, are somewhat more readily available: Sociální struktura socialistické společnosti (Prague, 1966) and Změny v sociálni struktuêe Československa a dynamika sociální-politického vývoje (Prague, 1967). For an excellent review of the 1969 volume see Gellner, Ernest, “The Pluralist Anti-Levellers of Prague,” Government and Opposition, 7, no. 1 (Winter 1972): 20–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26. Machonin refers only to the vertical pattern as “stratification” and calls the second pattern simply “horizontal differentiation.” I see no reason, however, to make this distinction, since the groupings that Machonin describes are characterized by features suggestive of social strata in the conventional sense; that is, they are distinguished by the relative social positions, educational levels, attitudes, and habits of their members.

27. Some Yugoslav social scientists, for example, argue that even though social differentiation exists today, the tendency is toward its eventual elimination or diminution. Ci. Horvat, Branko, An Essay on Yugoslav Society (White Plains, N.Y., 1969), pp. 145–76.Google Scholar

28. Z. Mlynář and V. Pavliček, “Politická organizace ve výtahu k vyvoji sociální struktury socialistické společnosti” [The Relationship Between Political Organization and the Social Structure of Society], in Machonin, Sociální struktura, pp. 642-59.

29. See Ginsberg, Morris, Sociology (London, 1934), pp. 40–41 Google Scholar, for the earliest use of the term “quasi-groups.”

30. Machonin, “K obecnému vymezení pojmu ‘sociální struktura, ’” in Sociální struktura, pp. 15-43 (quotation on p. 28).

31. Cf. Krejči’s discussion of this relationship, which he calls “position within the power structure” (Social Change and Stratification, pp. 105-30).

32. This is a vertical pattern much starker and more power-related than those frequently used to describe Yugoslav and Polish societies. In the latter cases, vertical stratification reflects commonly perceived rankings of people in terms of social prestige; there are numerous gradations within the vertical scale, with political leaders at the top, peasants normally at the bottom, and several other occupational groups in between. See Horvat, Essay on Yugoslav Society, pp. 145-76, and Szczepański, Jan, Polish Society (New York, 1970), pp. 105–46 Google Scholar. Czechs and Slovaks, too, see themselves in terms of social status (prestige) but seem also to recognize the more fundamental power differentiation as something far more significant.

33. It is, of course, significant that one aspect of Czechoslovakia’s repluralization was the tendency among these elites themselves to develop distinct group identities conscious of their own collective interests.

34. Those of us concerned with contemporary social theory are indebted to Ralf Dahrendorf for his brilliant argument refuting the classical Marxian assumption that property ownership alone is the basis of class relations in industrial society. See Dahrendorf, , Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (Stanford, 1959).Google Scholar

35. Literární noviny (Prague) and Kulturny život (Bratislava) were particularly interesting in this light. See Hamsik, Dušan, Writers Against Rulers (New York, 1971)Google Scholar, for a discussion.

36. Mlynář, Zdeněk, “Problems of Political Leadership and the New Economic Mechanism,” World Marxist Review, 8 (December 1965): 81 Google Scholar; emphasis in the original.

37. “K niektorým problemom štruktúry našej politickej śustavy” [On Some Problems in the Structure of Our Political System], Právny obzor, 48, no. 1 (1965): 28.

38. Ibid., p. 30.

39. Ibid., pp. 30-33.

40. “Niektoré problemy socialistickej demokracie z hĬadiska postavenia občana v našej spoločnosti” [Some Problems of Socialist Democracy from the Viewpoint of the Position of the Citizen in Our Society], Právny obzor, 49, no. 3 (1966): 217-18.

41. Kusin, Political Grouping, pp. 211-14 and passim.

42. Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict, pp. 179 ff. Dahrendorf distinguishes conflict groups from others by virtue of their interest in the political relations of domination and subjection.

43. A number of former Social Democrats pleaded with Communist leaders privately on several occasions to let them restore their party. The Communists steadfastly refused, and the would-be SD restorationists accepted Communist authority for the time being. One active SD sympathizer with whom I have subsequently spoken told me he believed it was only a matter of time before the SDP would have sprung back to life, with or without the Communists’ blessing, and had it come back it would have attracted an enthusiastic mass following. Whether or not he was right, the Communists seemed to fear the prospect.

As far as the possibility of new parties was concerned, KAN was at times mentioned as one prospect. In a small village near Karlovy Vary, KAN activists worked out a joint program of public works together with the local Communist officials. But such a practical instance of KAN’s activities was atypical. KAN was mainly concerned with more general and philosophical matters, such as freedom. Moreover, KAN's organization was very loose, its followers were ideologically diffuse, and it had no clear-cut political program.

44. As Golan and others have demonstrated, the reforms as such were not immediately ended with the occupation. Dubček and his colleagues remained in office for several months into 1969, and many of the reforms continued to be implemented as well. But the question of interest groups, and certainly of opposition parties, was destined to become a dead issue after August 1968.

45. Taborsky, Edward, Conformity Under Communism: A Study of Indoctrination Techniques, Annals of International Affairs Pamphlet (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1958)Google Scholar; Bauer, Raymond A., The Nezv Man in Soviet Psychology (Cambridge, Mass., 1952)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The importance of the “new socialist man” image as developed in the Stalinist period is debatable as far as the specific traits of the original model are concerned, but the general characteristics of commitment and self-denying altruism are still relevant as ideals for all Communist movements. The goal, even couched in these general terms, is a very elusive one and may well be unattainably Utopian.

46. Paul, “Nationalism, Pluralism, and Schweikism.” See chapter 6, entitled “Schweikism: The Behavior Patterns of an Oppressed Nation.”

47. For a brief discussion of recent underground pluralist activities see the dispatch by Bruce A. Manuel, “Czech Nonviolent Resistance Simmers,” Christian Science Monitor, May 4, 1973, as well as numerous dispatches in the Rome-based emigre paper Listy.