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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2025
The 1960s in Czechoslovakia witnessed a remarkable political movement to foster what was then called “socialism with a human face” by merging the egalitarian-distributive vision of socialism with quasi-Western democratic values. This article investigates the social and emotional origins of Czechoslovak reformism and argues that the movement was rooted in the intersection between social class discontent and the collective emotional pain of a revolutionary intelligentsia that I call the “red-collars.” In doing this, the article explores how the post-revolutionary class structure and shared “melancholic” feelings of the red-collars (a mix of discontent with their material/social circumstances and regret for their part in Stalinist revolutionary excesses) shaped their ideological transformation from Stalinism to democratic socialism between 1948 and 1968. Throughout the 1960s, by declaring emotional pain over their past Stalinism, the red-collars voiced their desire to reform the system and reclaim what they considered the “humanistic core of socialism.”
1 In this article, I use the term “intelligentsia” or “intellectuals” to refer to the whole spectrum of people with a university or high school education. This is in accordance with the usage of the term inteligence in the Czech and Slovak languages. The term was often used as a value-free substitute for “petit-bourgeoisie,” which had a negative connotation in the Marxist lexicon.
2 Peter Hrubý, Fools and Heroes: The Changing Role of Communist Intellectuals in Czechoslovakia (New York: Pergamon, 1980), xvii.
3 Marci Shore, “(The End of) Communism as a Generational History,” Contemporary European History (2009), 311.
4 Vítězslav Sommer, “‘Are we still behaving as revolutionaries?’: Radovan Richta, theory of revolution and dilemmas of reform communism in Czechoslovakia,” Studies in East European Thought (2017), 104.
5 William M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006); Ute Frevert, Emotions in History: Lost and Found (New York: Central European University Press, 2011).
6 For some of the recent contributions in the field of cultural and social history, see Jaroslav Pažout, Mocným navzdory. Studentské hnutí v šedesátých letech 20. století (Prague: Prostor 2008); Miroslav Vaňék, Byl to jenom rock’n’roll?: Hudební alternativa v komunistickém Ceskoslovensku 1956–1989 (Prague: Academia, 2010); Paulina Bren, The Greengrocer and His TV: The Culture of Communism after the 1968 Prague Spring (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010); Jiří Knapík and Martin Franc, Volný čas v českých zemích 1957–1968 (Prague: Academia, 2013); Zdenek Nebřenský, Marx, Engels, Beatles: Myšlenkový svět polských a československých vysokoškoláků, 1956–1968 (Prague: Academia, 2017).
7 Max Weber, “‘Objectivity’ in Social Science and Social Policy,” in The Methodology of Social Sciences, eds. Edward A. Shils and Henry A. Finch. (News Brunswich, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2011), 90; Pål Strandbakken, “Weber’s Ideal Types: A Sociological Operation between Theory and Method,” in Theory in Action: Theoretical Constructionism, ed. Peter Sohlberg and Håkon Leiulfsrud (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2017), 60.
8 In particular, the manners, sensibilities, cultural preferences, and aspirations of the 1960s youth (or in other words, the baby-boomers, 1968ers or shestidesiatniki) is the focal point of the literature on the 1960s. For a discussion about the emphasis on the “generation of youth” in the literature on the 1960s, see Anne E. Gorsuch and Diane P. Koenker, “Introduction: The Socialist 1960s in Global Perspective,” in The Socialist Sixties: Crossing Borders in the Second World, ed. Anne E. Gorsuch and Diane P. Koenker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 14–16.
9 Jiřina Šiklová, “O mládeži a sociologii mládeže v Československu.” in Záhadná generace: Mýty a skutečnost, ed. Mikolaj Kozakiewicz (Prague: Mlada Fronta, 1968), 168–88. The paper was later translated into English as well: “Sociology of Youth in Czechoslovakia,” Acta Universitatis Carolinae—Philosophica et Historica 2 (1969): 79–107.
10 Frank L. Kaplan, Winter into Spring: The Czechoslovak Press and the Reform Movement 1963–1968 (Boulder, CO: East European Quarterly, 1977); Dušan Hamšík, Writers against Rulers: The Heroic Struggle of Writers and Intellectuals against Official Repression on the Eve of the Czech Uprising (New York: Random House, 1971); Elena Londáková, Rok 1968 Novinári na Slovensku (Bratislava: Historický ústav SAV, 2008); Jan Mervart, Naděje a iluze: čeští a slovenští spisovatelé v reformním hnutí šedesátých let (Brno: Host, 2010); Michael Voříšek, The Reform Generation: 1960s Czechoslovak Sociology from a Comparative Perspective (Prague: Kalich, 2012). Juraj Marušiak, Príliš skoré predjarie …: Slovenskí študenti v roku 1956 (Bratislava: Veda, 2020).
11 Pavel Urbášek and Jiří Pulec, Vysokoškolský vzdělávací systém v letech 1945–1969 (Olomouc: Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci, 2012), 111–13.
12 Cited in Jiří Maňák, “Orientace KSČ na vytvoření socialistické inteligence,” in Bolševismus, komunismus a radikální socialismus v Československu sv. 2, ed. Zdeněk Kárník and Michal Kopeček (Prague: Dokořán, 2004), 110.
13 Cited in John Connelly, Captive University: The Sovietization of East German, Czech, and Polish Higher Education, 1945–1956 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 250.
14 Connelly, Captive, 254.
15 “Ústřední úřad státní kontroly a statistiky,” Statistická ročenka republiky Československé 1957 (Prague: Orbis, 1957), 238; “Ústřední úřad státní kontroly a statistiky,” Statistická ročenka republiky Československé 1958 (Prague: Orbis, 1958), 362; “Ústřední komise lidové kontroly a statistiky,” Statistická ročenka Československé socialistické republiky (Prague: Státní nakladatelství technické literatury, 1963), 422.
16 Jaroslav Krejčí, Social Change and Stratification in Postwar Czechoslovakia (London: Palgrave, 1972), 49.
17 Krejči, Social, 43.
18 Krejči, Social, 47.
19 Štátny úrad štatistický Československé, Statistická ročenka Republiky Československé 1958 (Prague: Orbis, 1958), 92; Statistická ročenka Československé Socialistickě Republiky 1963 (Prague: Orbis, 1963), 117.
20 Pavel Machonin and Jaroslav Krejčí, Czechoslovakia, 1918–92: A Laboratory for Social Change (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998), 160.
21 Krejčí and Machonin, Czechoslovakia, 160.
22 Lenka Kalinová, Sociální reforma a sociální realita v Československu v šedesátých letech (Prague: Vysoká škola ekonomická, 1998), 83.
23 Jaroslav A. Piekalkiewicz, Public Opinion Polling in Czechoslovakia, 1968–69: Results and Analysis of Surveys Conducted during the Dubcek Era (New York: Praeger, 1972), 21.
24 Jiřina Šiklová, “Sociology of Youth in Czechoslovakia,” Acta Universitatis Carolinae- Philosophica et Historica 2 (1969): 94.
25 Piekalkiewicz, Public, 21.
26 For the number of white-collar people, see “Složení a počet členu KSČ,” Rudé Právo, June 21, 1966, 3; for the total number of white-collar people in the country, see, Krejči, Social Change, 43; and Statistická ročenka Československé Socialistickě Republiky 1963, 113.
27 According to the census data provided by the Hungarian Statistical Yearbook, the number of people employed in the workforce in Hungary was 4,759,600 and 17.1 percent of those people were office workers. Based on these numbers, there were around 837,689 white-collar workers in Hungary in 1960. 1970 évi népszámlálás (Budapest: Központi Statisztikal Hivatal, 1977), 5. For the Party membership in Hungary, see Raymond Sin-Kwok Wong, “The Social Composition of the Czechoslovak and Hungarian Communist Parties in the 1980s,” Social Forces (1996): 66–68.
28 This calculation is based on the statistical information provided in Daniel Chirot, “Social Change in Communist Romania,” Social Forces (1978), 469.
29 One must also note that Poland and Czechoslovakia had a similar number of white-collar Party members even though Poland was two-and-a half times more populous. I calculated the number of white-collar workers in Poland based on the data provided in Krzysztof Zagórski, “Urbanization and Resulting Changes in Class Structure and Education,” International Journal of Sociology 7 (1977): 50–51; and David S. Mason, “Membership of the Polish United Workers Party,” The Polish Review (1982): 139–44.
30 Karel Kaplan, Kronika komunistického Československa: Doba tání 1953–1956 (Brno: Barrister & Principal, 2005), 42–63.
31 Hrubý, Fools, 9–26.
32 See for instance, Čestmír Císař, Paměti: Nejen o zákulisí Pražského jara (Prague: SinCon, 2005), 390–91; Libuše Šilhánová, Ohlédnutí za životem (Portál: Prague, 2005), 103; Ivan Klima, My Crazy Century (New York: Grove Press, 2013), 123–24. Also see Antonin J. Liehm, Generace (Prague: Československý spisovatel, 1990).
33 “Zpráva o činnosti výskumných a vyvojových ustavov v strojárenskom sektore na Slovensku,” Slovenský národný archív (S.N.A. hereafter), Sekretariát ÚV KSS, year 1954, k.86, f.04, ar.j. 20,b.9.
34 “Dopisy čtenářů: O naši novou školu,” Literární Noviny 11, March 12, 1955, 9.
35 Karel Kaplan, Sociální souvislosti krizí komunistického režimu v letech 1953–1957 a 1968–1975 (Prague: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny, 1993), 9.
36 Krejči, Social, 43.
37 The data is from 1965. Krejči, Social, 72.
38 Jiří Pernes, Krize komunistického režimu v Československu v 50. letech 20. Století (Brno: Centrum pro studium demokracie a kultury, 2008), 32.
39 Marína Zavacká, “Identity and Conflict: Communist Activist in Local Environment (1949–1956),” in Overcoming the Old Borders. Beyond the Paradigm of Slovak National History, ed. Adam Hudek (Bratislava: Institute of History), 160.
40 Cited in Zavacká, “Identity,” 160.
41 Cited in Zavacká, “Identity,” 161.
42 Frank L. Kaplan, Winter into Spring, 24.
43 Milan Bárta, “Cenzura československého filmu a televize v letech 1953–1968,” Securitas imperii (2003), 9.
44 Vladimir Jancura, “Cenzúru mal poľudštiť zákon,” Pravda, November 9, 2016, (https://zurnal.pravda.sk/neznama-historia/clanok/410291-cenzuru-mal-poludstit-zakon/).
45 Ivan Klima, My Crazy Century, 121.
46 Ladislav Mňačko, “Pravdivejšie a zodpovednejšie,” Kultúrny život, September 24, 1955, 1.
47 Mňačko, “Pravdivejšie,” 1.
48 Císař, Paměti, 306.
49 Císař, Paměti, 279–81.
50 Císař, Paměti, 360–62.
51 Ota Šik, Jarní probuzení iluze a skutečnost (Prague: Mlada fronta, 1990), 33–34.
52 Šik, Jarní probuzeni, 30–31 and 77.
53 Šik, Jarní probuzeni, 40.
54 Šik, Jarní probuzeni, p. 50.
55 Zdeněk Suda, Zealots and Rebels: A History of the Ruling Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1980), 269–70.
56 Matěj Bílý, “Reakce již bourá pomníky a my… teprve projednáváme! Některé aspekty debaty o XX. sjezdu KSSS ve vybraných nižších organizacích KSČ,” Securitas Imperii (2017): 63–64.
57 Cited in Muriel Blaive, Promarněná příležitost: Československo a rok 1956 (Prague: Prostor, 2001), 65.
58 Bílý, “Reakce,” 70.
59 N.A, f. 1261/0/11, sv. 90, aj. 108/7, Zpráva o pruběhu kampaně po XX. Sjezdu KSSS, 19.3.1956, p. 6.
60 Kevin McDermott and Vitezslav Sommer, “The ‘Club of Politically Engaged Conformists’? The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Popular Opinion and the Crisis of Communism, 1956,” Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2013), 21. (https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/publication/CWIHP_WP_66_the_club_of_politically_engaged_conformists_web.pdf).
61 Klíma, My Crazy Century, 115–16.
62 Blaive, Promarněná, 133; Jaromír Mrňka, Svéhlavá periferie: každodennost diktatury KSČ na příkladu Šumperska a Zábřežska v letech 1945–1960 (Prague: Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů, 2015), 166–69.
63 Archív Ústavu pamäti národa (hereafter AÚPN),), KS ZNB S-ŠtB Operatívne zväzky, Spisy o udalostiach v Maďarsku; KS A9 č.1; B8 7 inč. 7; p. 89.
64 AÚPN, KS ZNB S-ŠtB Operatívne zväzky, Spisy o udalostiach v Maďarsku; KS A9 č.1; B8 7 inč. 7; page 89. Karol Bacílek (b.1896) was one of the important actors in the organization of purges and trials against the alleged Slovak “bourgeois nationalists” in the early 1950s. After heading key ministries in Prague, he became the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Slovakia in 1953.
65 Josef Charvát, Můj labyrint světa: Vzpomínky, zápisky z deníku (Prague: Galén, 2005). 429–30.
66 Charvát, Můj labyrinth, 429–30.
67 Cited in Hrubý, Fools, 67.
68 “Poznámky—Listy—Epigramy,” Kultúrny život, July 14, 1956, 8.
69 Miloš Hájek, Paměť české levice … 149.
70 Miloš Hájek, Paměť české levice … 160.
71 Zdeněk Mlynář, Nightfrost in Prague
72 Mlynář, Nightfrost,
73 Mlynář, Nightfrost, 43.
74 Jiřina Šiklová, Bez ohlávky (Prague: Kalich, 2001), 85.
75 Šiklová, Bez ohlávky, 85.
76 S.N.A., Sekretariát ÚV KSS, 1956, k.137, f.04, ar.j. 24/a. “Stanovisko politického byra ÚV KSČ k diskusii v strane,” 1.
77 “Stanovisko politického,” 2.
78 “Stanovisko politického,” 1.
79 “Stanovisko politického,” 2.
80 See Shore, “Engineering,” 397–441.
81 Stanislav Neumann, “Sjezdová diskuse,” Literární noviny, May 5, 1956, 7; also cited in Shore, “Engineering,” 416.
82 Pavel Kohout, “Z diskuse,” Literární noviny, April 29, 1956, 10.
83 Kohout, “Z diskuse,” 10.
84 Čtenáři o sjezdu Československých spisovatelů,” Literární noviny, May 26, 1956, 7.
85 Čtenáři o sjezdu,” 7; also cited in Kaplan, Winter, 16.
86 For the speeches made at the Party meetings, see “Z diskuse na zasedání ÚV KSČ dne 5. a 6. prosince 1956,” Rudé pravo, December 11, 1956, 3–4.
87 Miloš Krno, “Martin Klzký kritizuje kult osobnosti,” Pravda, October 20, 1956, 6.
88 Pavel Juráček, Deník II (1956–1959) (Prague: Torst, 2017), 44.
89 H. Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 401.
90 Kaplan, Kronika, 590–97, 667.
91 Ladislav Mňačko, Oneskorené reportáže (Bratislava: Vydavateľstvo politickej literatúry, 1963).
92 Frank Oswald, “The Case of Ladislav Mňačko,” Transition (1965): 34.
93 Ladislav Mňačko, “Oneskorená reportáž: Na cintoríne,” Kultúrny život, May 18, 1963, 6–7 and 9; “Úsmev,” Kultúrny život, May 25, 1963, 11; “Vymyslený prejav vymysleného obhájcu pred vymysleným súdom,” Kultúrny život, June 1, 1963, 7; “Nočný rozhovor,” Kultúrny život, June 8, 1963, 7.
94 “Rozhovor o nočnom rozhovore,” Kultúrny život, June 22, 1963, 12.
95 “Rozhovor,” 12.
96 “Rozhovor,” 12.
97 “Listy pre súdruha Ištvána a nielen pre neho,” Kultúrny život 29, July 20, 1963, 6.
98 “Listy pre súdruha,” 6.
99 “Listy pre súdruha,” 6.
100 “Listy pre súdruha,” 6.
101 “Listy pre súdruha,” 6. Karel Havlíček Borovský (1821–156), a Czech author and journalist, who wrote satirical poems criticizing the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph.
102 “Listy pre súdruha,” 6.
103 “Listy pre súdruha,” 6.
104 “Listy pre súdruha,” 6.
105 While, as far as I know, there is no statistical data about the readership of the magazine, the editors of the magazine themselves observed that the intelligentsia (teachers, academics, doctors etc.) constituted the bulk of their readership. See Jana Holková, Kultúrny život a slovenská jar 60. rokov (Bratislava: Národné literárne centrum, 1998).
106 Juraj Špitzer, “Záznamy,” Kultúrny život, June 29, 1963, 3.
107 Špitzer, “Záznamy,” 3.
108 Špitzer, “Záznamy,” 3.
109 Z. A. B. Zeman, Prague Spring (New York: Hill and Wang, 1969), 130 and 138.
110 See for instance, Dušan Hamšík, “Procesy, které dělaly dějiny,” Literární noviny, March 28, 1968, 1–3; Alexandr Kliment, “Koho se to týká,” Literární noviny, April 11, 1968, 1; Pavol Števček, “Po prvé, úp druhé,” Kultúrny život, April 12, 1968, 1; Zdenka Neumannová, “Pláč generací,” Literární noviny, June 20, 1968, 1–2.
111 Zeman, Prague, 17.
112 Piekalkiewicz, Public Opinion Polling, 87.
113 For the ideological orientation of the Central Committee members, see Williams, The Prague Spring, 47–48; Jan Pauer, “Sovětská vojenská intervence a restaurace byrokraticko-centralistického systému v Československu 1968–1971,” in Proměny Pražského jara 1968–1969. Sborník studií a dokumentů o nekapitulantských postojích v československé společnosti, ed. Jindřich Pecka and Vilém Prečan (Brno: Doplněk, 1993), 174.
114 For the differentiation within the reformist camp, see Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution, 496–98.
115 Williams, The Prague Spring, 15.
116 The main members of the working groups responsible for the writing of the Action Program were Jan Fojtík (b. 1928), Karel Kaplan (b. 1928), Radovan Richta (b. 1924), Zdeněk Mlynář (b. 1930), Bohumil Šimon (b. 1920), Antonín Červinka (b. 1926), Stanislav Provazník (b. 1933), Pavel Auersperg (b. 1926). All members of the team became party members and obtained university education during the immediate postwar years. Mlynář, Nightfrost in Prague, 87–88.
117 For the English translation of the Action Program, see “The Action Program of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia,” in Winter in Prague: Documents on Czechoslovak Communism in Crisis, ed. R. A. Remington (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969), 90.
118 Remington, “The Action Program,” 90.
119 Remington, “The Action Program,” 95.
120 Voříšek, Reform Generation, 227–28. Jakub Šlouf, Takový socialismus nechceme!: Kultura protestu průmyslového dělnictva v českých zemích v letech 1945–1968 (Prague: Akropolis, 2023), 229–31.
121 Šlouf, Takový socialismus, 229.
122 Piekalkiewicz, Public Opinion Polling, 15 and 95.
123 Piekalkiewicz, Public Opinion Polling, 95.
124 Ludvík Vaculík, “A co dělníci,” Literarni listy 6 (April 4, 1968), 5.
125 Vaculík,“A co dělníci,” 5.
126 Šlouf, Takový socialismus, 235.
127 Jakub Končelík, “Dva tisíce slov: Zrod a důsledky nečekaně vlivného provolání,” Soudobé dějiny (2008): 491–94.
128 “The ‘Two Thousand Words’ Manifesto, June 27, 1968,” in The Prague Spring 1968: A National Security Archive Documents Reader, ed. Jaromír Navrátil (New York: Central European University Press, 1998), 174.
129 “The ‘Two Thousand Words,’” 171–72.
130 “Opět z redakční pošty,” Literární listy, July 11, 1968, 4.
131 Piekalkiewicz, Public Opinion Polling, 13 and 46.
132 Piekalkiewicz, Public Opinion Polling, 21.
133 “Observer picture archive: The Prague Spring, 27 July 1968,” Guardian, July 22, 2018 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/22/observer-archive-the-prague-spring-27-july-1968?CMP=share_btn_tw&fbclid=IwAR2QKFclJQGq1R8wPWuQAcaiVqbjv3dTjLhB9BZ2IOwV4nDG9PyU8I3ltcA).