Špatně informovaní entuziasté?
Ill-informed Enthusiasts?

Summary/Abstract: In this essay the author examines how some general trends in modern history were projected into the reform movement of the ‘Prague Spring’ of 1968. He considers differences in the ideas about Socialism held by the Czechoslovak reformers on the one hand and the left-leaning members of the public in the West on the other, differences conditioned chiefly by different historical experiences. He compares the importance of the ideological and the technocratic ways of thinking in the reform process, and considers the share of the nationalist factor, the effect of emerging public opinion, and the participation of non-Communist members of the public in the process. With the suppression of the ‘Prague Spring’, he argues, Socialism as an historical project probably missed its last chance to free itself from its policebureaucratic incarnation and to become an attractive modern alternative.

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