unequivocally that in the spring of 1968 the Action Program was the only realistic and legitimate blueprint for the country's future. As a consequence, it was backed by a majority of the population, a majority of party members, and -from the end of May 1968by a majority of elected party secretaries as well.'

| tional Western-type democracy. But could one realistically have expected that from Communist reformers? The reform wing of the CPCS was quite frank on this point: it repeatedly stressed that this reform did not mean a return this reform did not mean a return❘ to a liberal political system. Given the political status quo in Czechoslovakia and in Eastern Europe generally, only a political dreamer could have expected the ruling party-which had, after all, launched the reform and which launched the reform and which enjoyed popular support to relinquish its power.

THE KEY REFORM leader during the Prague Spring was, of course, Alexander Dubcek. Mr. Shawcross does his best to help us reach a better understanding of this person as a man, as a Communist official, and as a reform politician, and the resulting biography is a

The Action Program called for national reconciliation and for the rehabilitation of all victims of political persecution by the former regime. It sought to preserve the leading role of the CPCS-although more in terms of ideas than in terms of absolute political❘ power. While envisaging an active role for small private enterprises both in services and in production, it did not advocate decollectivization of agriculture or the return of public enterprises to private ownership, nor did it challenge central planning. The reform did, how-❘ respectable piece of journalism. ever, seek to replace command planning with indicative planning and to substitute economic methods of management for bureaucratic controls. It also envisaged some kind of workers' control of enterprises, as well as steps to implement constitutional guarantees of civil rights and democratic freedoms. In foreign policy, there was never any intent to break with Comecon or the Warsaw Pact.*

Did this official program go too far, or did it remain too "Communist"? From the point of view of non-Communists it could have been regarded as too modest because it fell far short of restoring a tradi

3 A poll taken in May 1968 revealed that about 90 percent of non-party members, 85 percent of party members, and 87 percent of secretaries of district and regional committees of the CPCS preferred the new political model to its predecessor. See Rok 1968 (The Year 1968), Prague, 1969, p. 170.

• Documents on Today's CSSR, Prague, Svoboda Publishing House, July 1968.

One can take issue with the author's judgment that Dubcek was naive, as well as with one or another of his conclusions. A more important deficiency, however, is that Mr. Shawcross-as an outside observer-had to rely on second-hand information and at second-hand information and at times has utilized sources whose reliability can rightfully be questioned both by scholars and by those who were intimately involved in the reform movement. At one point, the author on the basis of an unspecified source-quotes Dubcek as having described his tactics in dealing with Soviet party tactics in dealing with Soviet party ieader L. I. Brezhnev with the statement that "I just try to smile at Brezhnev as he shouts at me. I say 'Yes, yes, I agree' and then I come home and do nothing (p. 175)." To put it mildly, such tactics were not at all part of Dubcek's style.

It was not insincerity on Dub

cek's part, but rather a serious lack of communication that lay at the base of the misunderstandings between Dubcek and Brezhnev. To cite one example, Brezhnev told Dubcek at Dresden that Smrkovsky was not a promising political figure. Dubcek neither agreed nor disagreed-he simply remained silent. Brezhnev took this silence as signifying acquiescence, whereas Dubcek meant it as dissent. A few days later Dubcek proceeded to promote Smrkovsky to the presidency of the National Assembly and membership in the CPCS Presidium. Brezhnev blamed Dubcek for breaking an agreement which the Czechoslovak leader felt he had never made."

What kind of a man was Dubcek? A convinced Communist, of course, and an experienced party apparatchik as well. But also a sincere believer in "socialism with a human face" and a courageous reformer. Domestically, he achieved much more than was generally expected, yet at the same time he never once yielded to strong public pressures in favor of actions that went beyond what he thought proper and feasible. Thus, he did not follow the suggestion to abandon the people's militia, and he categorically rejected demands to legalize the Social Democratic Party. Nor did he ever sanction the ambitions of the organizations KAN (The Club of Committed Non-Party People) and K-231 (The Club of Former Political Prisoners) to become political parties, and he strongly condemned the liberal "2000 Words Manifesto." But while Dubcek did

5 From a personal interview with Mr. Smrkovsky in May 1968.

• This document, written by Ludvik Vaculik and published in Literarni listy (Prague) on June 27, 1968, was a strong appeal to push the democratization of Czechoslovakia.

not retreat in the face of these political pressure groups, neither did he outlaw them. He expressed deep disagreement with the Communists who signed the "2000 Words Manifesto," but he did not expel them from the party or take action against any of the nonCommunist signatories. He sought to control the reform movement by political rather than traditional bureaucratic-administrative means. And these tactics enabled him to refuse demands going beyond the limits of the Action Program without losing popular support.

The situation dictated such a cautious approach. The pre-January 1968 composition of the CPCS Central Committee remained unchanged until after the August invasion, and Dubcek had to steer a precarious course between the Scylla of public opinion and the Charybdis of the conservative majority in the party's ruling body. The fact that he managed to win the unanimous support of the July session of the CC for his firm reply to the threatening Warsaw letter of July 15, 1968,' attests to his political acumen.

A skillful political tactician, yes, but unfortunately less perceptive as a political strategist. For instance, it was poor strategy for Dubcek needlessly to delay until early April publication of the Action Program which had been available as early as February

"This letter was sent to the CPCS Central Committee by leaders of Warsaw Pact states Bulgaria, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and the Soviet Union after a July 14 meeting in Warsaw which Czechoslovakia had refused to attend. The message expressed strong concern over the threat to socialism and to continued Communist control in Czechoslovakia and strongly suggested that fellow socialist states would not stand by idly if the situation deteriorated further. For a translation of the text, see Robin Alison Remington, Ed., Winter in Prague-Documents on Czechoslovak Communism in Crisis, Cambridge, Mass., M.I.T. Press, 1969, pp. 225-31.

1968, and it was equally unwise for him to hold off on convoking the extraordinary 14th Congress of the party much sooner."

However, the most serious failure of Dubcek's leadership lay in his handling of the external side of the Prague Spring. It has become commonplace to quote come commonplace to quote Dubcek's famous statement of the night of August 20, 1968, when he heard that troops of his Warsaw Pact allies had illegally entered Czechoslovakia:

I who have devoted my whole life to cooperation with the Soviet Union, now they do this to me. This is the great tragedy of my life.'

Indeed, it was the greatest tragedy for Dubcek and for his country. for Dubcek and for his country. But much of the fault must be laid at Dubcek's door. The Prague Spring could have succeeded only

if cooperation between Czechosloif cooperation between Czechoslovakia and her Soviet and East European allies had been preserved. With the CPCS Presidium divided, with hundreds of Soviet agents operating in the Czechoslovak army, state apparatus, and security forces, and with the peo-❘ ple's militia and the workers yet to be shocked into militant support to be shocked into militant support of the Dubcek regime by the trauma of invasion-there was no realistic hope of protecting the Prague Spring by military means.

The Congress was originally slated for early 1969, but at the May 1968 Plenum of the CPCS CC, Dubcek, acceding to liberal forces pressuring him to move forward the date in order to hasten renovation of the party leadership, rescheduled the Congress for September 9, 1968. On the day after the August 21 Warsaw Pact invasion, a large number of delegates elected to attend the September gathering held an emergency secret session at a Prague factory. As noted below, the Soviet Union soon forced the Czechoslovak party leadership to nullify these proceedings.

• Quoted in Galia Golan, Reform Rule in Czechoslovakia, p. 239.

The only course open was to convince the Soviet leaders that the reform was fully controlled by the party and realistically limited by the parameters set forth in the Action Program.

Was Dubcek, in fact, in control of the situation? If we mean "control"" in a democratic sense, he was. If we mean "control" in Soviet terms, he was not. In the July 29-August 1 meeting at Cierna-nad-Tissou, Brezhnev expressed doubts whether Dubcek was still in control of the Czechoslovak reform movement; Dubcek was quite sure that he was, and he pointed out that he had received a resolution supporting his policies signed by four million people. Brezhnev argued that this was no evidence, that he knew how resolutions could be produced. Dubcek assured the Soviet leader that this resolution was different, having been initiated directly by the people. Brezhnev rejoined: "How can you claim that you are in control of the situation if the people sign a resolution without your prior knowledge?" 1o This brings us back to the unavoidable conclusion: even if there had been no KAN, no K-231, no Social Democrats, no "2000 Words Manifesto"-in short, none of the controversial elements of the Prague Spring-the gap between the revived democratic political culture of the Czechoslovak reform movement and the Soviet interpretation of this movement would likely have proved unbridgeable.

TO BE SURE, it was no easy task to keep the process of the Czechoslovak political revival within limits acceptable to the CPSU. This

10 This symptomatic episode was reported to the reviewer by a participant in the Cierna meeting.

is made abundantly clear in the selections published in Czechoslovakia: the Party and the People, particularly those written by the former Communist, Ivan Svitak. While one may agree with his doubts concerning the ability of the Communist politicians to forsake their one-party system, his slogan, "Push your head against the wall," was hardly useful guidance for young people and no alternative to the positive Action Program. Likewise, one may sympathize with the honest effort of Social Democrats to revive their political party, described with great scholarly objectivity by Dr. Kusin. But should one have expected anything other than immediate Soviet invasion had they succeeded? Anyone reading Dr. Golan's careful analysis of events, the report of Dr. Zeman, or Dr. Brahm's summary of SovietCzechoslovak relations during 1968-69 cannot escape the impression that, on the one hand, the possibilities for reform were very limited, while, on the other, the reform program was too farreaching and was carried forward in too democratic a manner to remain within those limits. Ironically, it was the very democratic momentum developed by the reform that was at once its greatest strength and its Achilles' heel.

These observations lead to the further question of whether the Prague Spring might have fared better if the freedom of the Czechoslovak press had been slightly limited, if some of the Communist intellectuals had been more restrained, if the non-Communist reformers had been more sensitive to the geopolitical and external aspects of the Prague Spring, and if Dubcek and his colleagues had been more frank with the public. The reviewer believes that the an

11 Nullification of the proceedings of the extraordinary 14th Congress by the CPCS leadership nine days later (at Soviet insistence) was on the grounds, forwarded by Gustav Husak, that a significant portion of the Slovak delegates due to attend the September 9 official Party Congress had not attended the secret meeting of August 22.

was not intended to help the CPCS continue the reform, the leadership persisted in telling both the party and the people that the postJanuary policies would be carried out, albeit with the elimination of some of their "excesses" and with some concessions (to the Kremlin) reflecting the new situation. Wanting to believe, the masses acted as if the program remained operational. They supported the progressive core of the CPCS leadership by every available means, including demonstrations and strikes. These actions, however, only intensified the dilemma of the leadership. On the one hand, the Dubcek group had no alternative but to live up to its obligations accepted in Moscow (where they had been transported shortly after the invasion), most of which ran counter to the regime's post-January program. On the other hand, it did not want to betray or disappoint the people, who were now acting as a genuine political pressure group. Paradoxically, popular support for Dubcek, while helping him to remain in power for the time being, made his leadership untenable in the long run. A chain of major political crises-precipitated in quick succession by the student strike, the appointment of Dr. Peter Colotka (instead of National Assembly Speaker Smrkovsky) as Speaker of the Federal Assembly, the self-immolation of Jan Palach, and the public demonstrations in the wake of two consecutive Czech victories over the Soviet team at the world icehockey tournament in March 1969 -cumulatively provided the proSoviet conservatives and the Husak-led centrists with the ammunition they needed to drive out the reformist Dubcek group. They then were able, by using “salamislicing" tactics, gradually to elim

or the psychology of revolution in a developing country, but in the absence of such a framework of analysis, Krupskaya's life as presented by him is of interest mainly for what her relations with more powerful figures-such as Lenin, Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, and Bukharin-tell us about them and about the new political❘ order they were building. Bride of the Revolution sheds considerable light on the tensions that developed in 1922-23-after a series of strokes had increasingly incapacitated Lenin-between Lenin and Krupskaya, on one side, and other Bolshevik political leaders, especially Stalin, Zinoviev, and Trotsky, who were hastening to fortify their power position against the day of Lenin's death. During this period, leaders such as Kamenev and Trotsky, whose help Krupskaya sought in her efforts to execute Lenin's wish to reduce the already great and growing power of Stalin, failed to support her and thus lost whatever chance they might have had to thwart Stalin's future power plays. In 1925-26, Krupskaya's criticisms of Stalin's and Bukharin's peasant policies, which she considered un-Leninist, were suppressed. Stalin himself threateningly defended the suppression of one anti-Bukharin article. In this and similar incidents, Bukharin and other top leaders, all of whom accepted the concept of the Politburo's infallibility, unwittingly helped pave the way for Stalin's subsequent dictatorship. While Krupskaya even subsequently showed her antipathy for Stalin by intervening-sometimes with partial success-on behalf of victims of terror and by other humanitarian acts, she for the most part lent the prestige of her status as Lenin's widow to the Stalinist "general line" of the party.

McNeal convincingly argues that Krupskaya's efforts to promote the right of party members to dissent from Politburo policies could not succeed because the very tradition of "Leninism," in the name of which she spoke, was itself supremely authoritarian. Bolshevik thinking, including Krupskaya's, not only reflected this tradition but was itself the product of a much older Russian authoritarian heritage. The author cites evidence (p. 195) that Krupskaya as early as 1919 saw in the old Tsarist bureaucracy a model for Soviet educational administration and "had a hand in the formation of the Soviet system of intellectual dictatorship" (p. 202). She was, for example, one of the architects of the elaborate Soviet system of censorship of libraries.

Yet, despite her limitations and confusion and despite her harsh experiences in Stalin's Russia, McNeal sees Krupskaya's life as "marked by . . . an integrity that is her own." He concludes: "Krupskaya was a pathetic figure at the end of her life-a puppet of the dictator whom she hated. . . ." (p. 295).

ACCORDING TO a "Publisher's Note," a draft manuscript of Jasny's book was completed before the author's death in 1967, but it needed "some clarification and systematization before publication." In Part I (pp. 1-57), which summarizes the history of the Soviet economy from 1917 to the early 1930's, Jasny focuses on the disastrous effects of Lenin's policy of "war communism" in 1918-20❘ and of Stalin's agricultural collectivization and coercive industrialization. He contrasts these policies, which he judges extremely irrational and immensely destructive, to the beneficial effects of the

semi-market economy of the New Economic Policy (NEP), which Lenin instituted after the uprising of naval forces at the important Kronstadt base in March 1921 and other urgent evidence had made it clear that without concessions to the starving masses Soviet power was in danger of rapidly crumbling. In this section, we are briefly introduced to several score of economists, such as Vladimir Groman, Vladimir Bazarov, the brilliant theorist Nikolai Kondratev, the journalist Nikolai Sukhanov, and others. Unlike their better known (at least in the West) colleagues such as Julius Martov, Fiodor Dan, Rafail Abramovich, and others, these men-mostly of Menshevik (in effect, social democratic) persuasion but in some cases "neo-narodniks"-loyally and often brilliantly served the Soviet regime in the relatively favorable circumstances provided by NEP. However, although they had no organizational connections with exiled economists, they maintained ties with their former associates by correspondence and in some cases by personal encounters, and they never concealed their aversion to dictatorship and utopianism.

Not surprisingly, they became scapegoats for the "show trial" organized by Stalin's political police in March 1931, to which Part II of Jasny's book (pp. 60-89) is devoted. The author argues convincingly that this trial was a judicial farce -"an episode in the long train of show trials which were part of Stalin's increasingly bitter fight for the dictatorship" (p. 61). A point that Jasny might have made, but did not, is that the scapegoating technique characteristic of the methods used by Stalin against both non-Communist and later against Communist critics and op