I do not wish to disappoint you but perhaps I will do. According the title of this presentation, you would have a right to expect from me a historical analysis. I wonder whether it would be the right point. Instead of this I will try to offer you some historical analogy useful for understanding the present.

Naturally it would be fine to learn more about the impact of the Prague spring on the Eastern Block. This impact was definitely profound in the short run both on the public opinion in Eastern Block as well as on the communist ruling class. But I am afraid it was hardly any in the long run. Frankly speaking, as a politician I do not see any impact of Prague Spring today. There is no political nostalgia in a contemporary politics for the ideas of the Prague Spring even in the Czech Republic, not to speak about other countries.

Generally observed, the most relevant element of the Prague Spring was its very termination during another year´s season of the same year, in summer. I mean the Soviet Russia´s invasion on August 21, 1968. Only this Summer, August aftermath gave to the Prague Spring 68 its real meaning worth of analyzing.

The Prague Spring defined in such a way , i.d. with its unhappy ending in summer of the same year, produced two messages learnt and accepted in that time by majority at least in the East:

The first message ( or „impact“), connected more with the Spring than with the Summer, said that dreams to „humanize“ or to reform the communist totalitarian state or the communist ideology were pure illusions. Attempts to invent or introduce some „Third way“ or a converged political or economic system (which would combine a butter of capitalist market economy with the money for that butter in terms of totally controlled socialist pseudo- welfare state) - were determined to fail. Also nobody tried them again. The totalitarian state emerged as an aberrant entity to be accepted or destroyed but not to be reformed. (In the same time the western university students were busy trying to destroy on the barricades something quite different - the good conservative values of the Western society. Naturally they did not found for that much understanding from their eastern colleagues.)

The second message (or „impact) connected more with the Summer than with the Spring, may be seen as the following one: efforts of any Central or Eastern European state to escape the Soviet empire were out of question in times of a bipolar world. It became clear that it was impossible to repeat a special case of Austria from 1954. On the contrary, a bitter experience of Hungarian Autumn 1956 was reconfirmed in Prague Summer 1968. The Brežněv Doctrine emerged and started to be taken seriously by everybody in Eastern as well as in the Western part of Europe.

So, to be more precise, I am convinced that Prague Spring defined narrowly - without its Summer termination - as seen from the time horizon of summer 2008, lost its relevance for the contemporary politics. Political dreams in the contemporary world acquire other, perhaps more violent, perhaps more prudent or creeping nature than the past dreams trying explicitly to reform or to „upgrade“something unreformable.

As a politician I cannot afford the luxury to inquire about the former impact of an ideological concept leading into a blind alley. Therefore I would not deal with the first one of these two messages - which is clear - , but only with the second one, concerning the Prague Summer. So not the Spring but the Summer is essential for me now. The reason why has to do with the following fact: International circumstances have changed since 1968 and we do not have to deal with a totalitarian superpower, nevertheless military interventions of the same nature as in Summer 1968 are happening again. We have an uneasy feeling to witness something like permanent „déj? vu“.

The 40 years anniversary of the Prague Summer coincides this year with another, very regrettable event, which took place also in August. It coincides with the recent violation of the sovereignty of Georgia by the Russian Federation.

A striking similarity of both events can be seen on the first glance by everybody – and what is extremely important - in spite of the different context of both events, the world in summer 2008 being rather different from the world of summer 1968.

What does it mean when a similar action of a similar country takes place in a quite different international context? - This is for me now a key question. Let me, please, to share with you some ideas.

Russia is no more a totalitarian state. (But a „managed democracy“ married to the „directed“ market economy.) Russia is no more the one of the sole two superpowers with opposing ideologies. Nuclear deterrent in the hands of both former superpowers is no more the decisive orienting principle of their bilateral relations and it is no more a key base of the balance of power in the contemporary world. Russia has some common strategic interests with the United States. Russia does not have for its disposal a viable ideology as a political instrument in international politics any more (with exception of nationalism for the domestic consumption). Russian society is relatively open and is now used to participate on the openness of the free world. Economic links of Russia with the rest of Europe are real, important and create a real mutual interdependency.

In 2008, we do not live in a bipolar world any more. The other remaining superpower, United States, had to acknowledge that its power has limits, cannot be overstretched and these limits are not set up by the activities of any second superpower but more or less by a broad set of dispersed factors. Russia obviously has no means to return to its former superpower status so far. Emergence of new big Asian powers and a rapid increase of their economic performance put them on a path of becoming new global players. Ideological dividing lines in the contemporary world are no more situated between „capitalism“ and „socialism“ as it was the case in the Sixties. The world seems to become a multipolar one, so far with a one leading but not omni-powerful power, representing the western values - the power which has serious problems right now. (Compare it with the end of the Sixties or the beginning of the Seventies under Nixon.)

Russia clearly does not try to export some home- made ideology (in this respect there is nothing to export), it exports only its passports or puppet politicians for use in abroad. It does not try to safeguard a monolitical caracter of a totalitarian empire to prevent any ideological reformist infection, as it was the case in the Sixties and before. It plays a classic „real politics“ by trying to acquire or re-acquire zones of influence by power or even by force and military means, to obtain a better leverage on its political competitors or clients. And Russia seems to believe to have to fight against an encirclement by enemies, regretting publicly the fall of the Soviet Union. It was Putin who called the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. „the greatest catastrophe in modern Russian history“.

In a bipolar world of the second half of Sixties (with its rather fresh experience of Cuban missile crisis), a Soviet Union´s military action against Czechoslovakia from Summer 1968 remained unpunished and didn´t provoke any real retaliation from the side of the other superpower or from Western Europe. We have to admit quite frankly that it was finally considered by the Western politics as an internal affair of the Soviet block. Stability of this block was reestablished - and a possible geopolitical destabilization in a sensitive area of Central Europe with its unforeseeable consequences was avoided. Peace in Europe and the security of the Western Europe were not put in doubt by this military intervention. A clash between superpowers because of Czechoslovakia was ruled out. From the viewpoint of international stability, generally speaking, the Soviet action against Czechoslovakia in Summer 68 was not seen then as a step dangerously challenging the geopolitical balance of the time.

On the other hand, in the contemporary not too stable world, heading for multipolarity, with moving boundaries of influence, this type of action must be seen in a quite different optics. It has to be seen as a very dangerous one. One historical analogy comes to my mind in this respect.


Let us take Europe just before the First World War. The world in the first decade of the 20th century was a multipolar one, concentrated on Europe. There was one mightiest power, Great Britain, dominating the oceans and a largest colonial empire. Than US not taking part in a pronounced way in international politics, a rapidly growing Russia, nevertheless absorbed in its own internal problems. Then powerful, prosperous but frightened France – and finally the Willhelminian Germany.

The Imperial Germany of the time was haunted by the idea of encirclement by other big powers. It had a strong feeling to be challenged by France and by Russia on the continent and by the Great Britain and the others all over the world. Its foreign policy was guided by a false nightmare of lacking a „breathing space“ and not having the place in the world which it should deserve, a place of a real big power. An unequal war fleet compared to the British one was Germany´s a permanent obsession. - All ideas of a very doubtful value, as we know.

Based on those rather doubtful assumptions, Germany started to wage actions which should give to it powerful leverages on its concurrents, which should enlarge its own „zone of influence“, dangerously trying to change the existing balance of power. A hectic build-up of its own high sea war fleet which would equal the British one, attempts to create a German „Mitteleuropa“ together with an agonizing Austria, economic and political penetration of Turkish Empire, military provocations in French Marocco, all this were warning preludes for a real catastrophe. It was finally started with the general preventive attack of Germany on slowly mobilizing Russia through pushing its own ally - Austro-Hungarian Empire - to attack a Russian client - Serbia.

(Naturally, Serbia „provoked“ by being implied in the famous assassination of the Austrian archiduke in Sarajevo, as recently Georgia „provoked“ by trying to re-impose its sovereignty in Southern Ossetia. Or – as some also argued – as freedom loving Czechs and Slovaks provoked in 1968 the Soviets by demanding too much freedom….).

We all know the outcome of this behaviour – the general cataclysma of the First World War which changed Europe once for ever. We should keep this story in mind and not to forget it. Naturally, historical analogies are not mechanically applicable. Nevertheless sometimes they can be of some help when we try to understand the present world politics and its risks.

Some practices in international politics did not evaporate with the time. To play geopolitical games by means of the old instruments and approaches in the times when the world undergoes profound changes may be very risky. The iceberg-like stability of the past bipolar world, which allowed the Prague August 21 intervention without any international consequences, is no more with us. An old-fashioned expansive real-politics of a big power is all the more dangerous if it is based on false ideas, historical obsessions, past glories and unfounded ambitions. We should be very careful observers able to distinguish alarming signals, indicating a risky behaviour. First of all we should not tolerate it and should try to stop it as early as possible.

This type of behaviour has to be identified and its risks have to be clearly spelt out. The costs of any such adventure have to be established and unambiguously communicated to its authors. Anybody trying to play risky geopolitical games in terms of the old „realpolitics“ has to take into account that these games are by their nature „zero-sum games“ and are seen as such also by other players.

That is my understanding of the legacy of the Prague Spring-Summer 1968 offered to us now.