SbO
VITEZSLAV NADEJE
unprincipled, power-hungry politician, or is he guided by good intentions
necessitating a pragmatic approach which the underground fails to
appreciate, in either case providing a lever with which the hardliners
can dislodge him ? Are the Czechs blind in not recognizing Husak as a
possible Kada r, or do they reject outright the philosophy of the lesser
evil? Does this state of affairs prove the existence of counterrevolu–
tiona ry forces obstructing the pa th to socialism, or it is proof that
socialism is an unworkable system?
There are no cut and dried answers but a certain pattern does
seem to emerge from the mass of confused and sometimes contradictoI)1
facts.
Shortly after the invasion Husak proclaimed: "We must not for–
sake a single aim ... of this great struggle for a new content of social–
ist democracy." This may have been a declaration of faith (as his sup–
porters claim) and not a mere tactic paving the way to the First Sec–
retaryship. But in believing that he was capable of leading the nation
along a cautious but nevertheless specifically national road to socialism
(while avoiding the "excesses" of the Dubcek era), Husak made the
same mistake as Gottwald and Zapotocky after the war. All three
failed to recognize the Soviet Union for what it is today: a superpower
pursuing a policy of expanding where it can and preserving the status
quo where it cannot. Socialist ideas about man's freedom to decide his
destiny and develop his personality are as alien to the Soviet leaders as
"national roads to socialism." Even so, some might a rgue, when his
illusions had been dispelled by the Czech ha rdliners and the Kremlin,
Husak, addicted by then to the sweetness of power, preferred to aban–
don his principles rather than his position.
In
any case, there was no single conception of the "new content
of democracy" even in
1968.
Two basic trends crystallized among the
reformers. One stressed the importance of economic reform, dele–
gating greater authority to managers and experts, increasing trade with
tlte West, introducing profit criteria and market relations, while re–
laxing centralized control. The other underlined abolition of the Party's
automatic monopoly of power, extension of decision-making to work–
ers' councils and mass organizations, and institutionalization of plat–
forms for the existing plurality of politica l opinions. Husak was never
affiliated with the latter group, but technocrats may detect some of
their theses in his speeches.
This would seem to substantiate the argument that the Russians
invaded Czechoslovakia not out of fea r tha t its economic reforms (in
essence similat- to those advocated by Lieberman in the USSR and in-
