Prague Spring - Aftermath

Aftermath

In April 1969, Dubček was replaced as first secretary by Gustáv Husák, and a period of "normalization" began. Dubček was expelled from the KSČ and given a job as a forestry official.

Husák reversed Dubček's reforms, purged the party of its liberal members, and dismissed from public office professional and intellectual elites who openly expressed disagreement with the political transformation. Husák worked to reinstate the power of the police authorities and strengthen ties with other socialist nations. He also sought to re-centralize the economy, as a considerable amount of freedom had been granted to industries during the Prague Spring. Commentary on politics was forbidden in mainstream media and political statements by anyone not considered to have "full political trust" were also banned. The only significant change that survived was the federalization of the country, which created the Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic in 1969.

In 1987, the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged that his liberalizing policies of glasnost and perestroika owed a great deal to Dubček's "socialism with a human face". When asked what the difference was between the Prague Spring and Gorbachev's own reforms, a Foreign Ministry spokesman replied, "Nineteen years." With the fall of socialism in 1989, Dubček became chairman of the federal assembly under the Havel administration. He later lead the Social Democratic Party of Slovakia, and spoke against the dissolution of Czechoslovakia prior to his death in November 1992.