Read the full article: January 1968 – fifty years on by Prof Miroslav Kusý.
This article is the first in a special series connected with the Cambridge Central European Conference: Prague Spring and its legacies on Saturday 28 April 2018.
Miroslav Kusý (1931, Bratislava, Slovakia) is Professor Emeritus (Political Science) at Comenius University in Bratislava. He was the President of Comenius University in 1990. His publications include, Politics and Minorities (I.,II.,(2016)), Politics and Institutions (2013), On the Waves of Radio Free Europe (II., 2001), On the Waves of Radio Free Europe (I.1990), Forbidden Writings (1990), Essays (1991), European Experience with the Real Socialism (with Milan Šimečka, Toronto 1984), and Philosophy of Politics (1966). In 1968, he was appointed the Head of the Ideological Department of the Supreme Committee of the Communist Party in Slovakia and involved in the final stage of Prague Spring before normalization period started. Subsequently, he was expelled from the party as well as from the university for next 20 years. During this period, he was employed as a manual worker and detained on several occasions. He was active in Charter ´77 movement, and after the revolution in 1989, he acted as Chancellor of the President Václav Havel for Slovakia.