THE SOVIET MILITARY INTERVENTION in Czechoslovakia in August 1968 was inevitable once the Kremlin realized that political ideological and economic pressure would not create any internal force capable ...

When he returned to the latter post 20 years later, he was still a popular figure, but the possibility of “socialism with a human face” no longer existed. Today, ...

“If we had all followed the path that Czechoslovakia began, avoiding distortions and extremes, I think . . . the world would be different, and it wouldn’t be so hard to implement these … ...

Forty-five years ago this month, history’s most notable attempt to resolve socialism’s inherent contradiction began. It failed, as all attempts had previously and all have since.

Mikhail Gorbachev’s goal, according to his associates, was “socialism with a human face.” The belief that communism was reformable was what led him to risk introducing fundamental change.

In March 1968, when Antonin Novotny resigned as the President of Czechoslovakia in the wake of a corruption scandal, a couple of months after he had been removed from the more important post of ...