Editor's Note
Editor's Note

Summary/Abstract: Thirty years ago hope was crushed in Prague. Although their efforts were marred by suspicions of civil society and the legitimacy of non-communist alternatives to political and economic development, the Prague reformers, oblivious to the major geo-strategic arrangements of the ideological age, searched for socialism with a human face. Alexander Dubček and his comrades were hostages to the myth of the predestined role of the party, and their concessions to pluralism by today's criteria were much too modest. Even the archive documents glaringly confirm how limited and self-restrained these reforms were; nevertheless they were enough to make Wladyslaw Gomulka and Walter Ulbricht nervous and push the Soviet leaders into action. [...]

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