PROBLEMS OF THE FEDERALIZATION OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA IN JANUARY – AUGUST 1968

Abstract

The article is devoted to studying the preparatory stage of the constitutional reform aimed at the transition of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (CSR) from a unitary to a federal state system. The lower chronological limit of the article (January 1968) is dictated by the coming to power in Czechoslovakia of communist reformers who, in the context of the democratization of social and political life, began to search for ways to solve the Slovak question in Czechoslovakia. The upper chronological limit (August 1968) is determined by the beginning of the invasion of the troops of the Warsaw Pact Organization member states into Czechoslovakia intending to suppress the "Prague Spring". The methodological basis of the proposed article is the principles of historicism and objectivity. The author also used a set of special methods of historical knowledge. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the systematic analysis of the influence of the Slovak question on the events of the «Prague Spring» of 1968. During the «Prague Spring» of 1968, the communist government and society finally realized that the asymmetric model of the Czechoslovak state had exhausted itself and was not subject to rehabilitation. Under such circumstances, one of the primary tasks of the «Prague Spring» of 1968 was the reformation of Czech-Slovak relations and the state system of the Czechoslovak SSR according to the principle of «equal to equal.» The aspiration of the Slovaks to introduce a symmetrical model of a common state by making appropriate amendments to the Constitution of the Czechoslovak SSR was reflected in the demand for the federalization of the Czechoslovak SSR. The federalization process in the spring of 1968 was complicated by existing differences between the Czech and Slovak sides in their views on the future federation. However, this did not prevent them from reaching an agreement at the beginning of August 1968 and formulating a project to create a federal Czechoslovakia as part of two equal national states - the Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic. Unfortunately, the further process of federalization of the Czechoslovak SSR was stopped by the military intervention of the troops of the member states of the Soviet Union.