The Prague Spring as a Laboratory

Thomas M. Bohn ist Professor für Geschichte Osteuropas an der Universität Gießen.
Anna Bischof ist Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Collegium Carolinum und Doktorandin an der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.

Hélène Leclerc ist Dozentin am Germanistischen Institut der Universität Toulouse-Jean Jaurès (Frankreich). Sie lehrt Geschichte und Kulturgeschichte der deutschsprachigen Länder. Sie studierte Germanistik an der Ecole Normale Supérieure Fontenay-Saint-Cloud und an der Sorbonne und Bohemistik am Institut des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO, Paris) und promovierte 2006 an der Universität Toulouse. 2019 habilitierte sie im Fach Germanistik.

Darina Volf ist wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Lehrstuhl für Geschichte Ost- und Südosteuropas der LMU München.

Pavel Kolár ist Professor of Comparative and Transnational History of 19th-20th Century Europe (Central, Eastern, South Eastern Europe) am European University Institute in Florenz.

Martin Schulze Wessel ist Professor für die Geschichte Ost- und Südosteuropas an der Universität München und leitet das Collegium Carolinum.

Martin Schulze Wessel ist Professor für die Geschichte Ost- und Südosteuropas an der Universität München und leitet das Collegium Carolinum.

Retrospectively, the Prague Spring appears to have been a coherent but unsuccessful experiment in finding a synthesis of Western democracy and socialism. However, this perspective ignores that different groups and individuals participated in these developments and shaped the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia with their completely varying professional, generational, national, and gender-specific experiences. What appears retrospectively as a goal-oriented reform movement or as an "interrupted revolution" looked in the eyes of the protagonists rather like the situation in a laboratory, where they worked on new syntheses with uncertain results. The volume focuses on the protagonists' ideas of politics, society, and their reform plans. Of particular interest is the question which new thoughts about the interrelation of politics, science, economics, and arts were developed in Czechoslovakia.

The volume focuses on the ideas of politics, society, and economics which were developed in the CSSR during the Prague Spring. For its protagonists it was like a lab situation, where they worked on new syntheses with uncertain results.

The reform efforts in the Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the different influencing groups and individuals

Retrospectively, the reform movement appears to have been a coherent but unsuccessful experiment in finding a synthesis of Western democracy and socialism. However, this perspective ignores that different groups and individuals participated in these developments and shaped the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia with their completely varying professional, generational, national, and gender-specific experiences. The central question of the volume is how various actors perceived, promoted and resisted change, not only in the dramatic spring and summer months of 1968 but also since the early sixties.