Ludvik Vaculik (1926-2015) was a Czechoslovakian writer and political dissent. In June 1968 Vaculik penned the Two Thousand Words Manifesto, which was countersigned by other writers and intellectuals. The manifesto was critical of the Communist Party, while expressing cautious hope for democratic reforms. Its ideas were a prelude to the Prague Spring and the Soviet military response:

“Two Thousand Words that Belong to Workers, Farmers, Officials, Scientists, Artists, and Everybody…

The first threat to our national life was from war. Then came other evil days and events that endangered the nation’s spiritual well being and character. Most of the nation welcomed the socialist program with high hopes. But it fell into the hands of the wrong people. It would not have mattered so much that they lacked adequate experience in affairs of state, factual knowledge or philosophical education, if only they had had enough common prudence and decency to listen to the opinion of others, and agree to being gradually replaced by more able people.

After enjoying great popular confidence after the war, the Communist Party by degrees bartered this confidence away for office – until it had all the offices and nothing else… The leaders’ mistaken policies transformed a political party and an alliance based on ideas into an organisation for exerting power, one that proved attractive to power hungry individuals eager to wield authority, to cowards who took the safe and easy route, and to people with bad conscience. The influx of members such as these affected the character and behaviour of the party, whose internal arrangements made it impossible, short of scandalous incidents, for honest members to gain influence and adapt it continuously to modern conditions. Many communists fought against this decline, but they did not manage to prevent what ensued.

Conditions inside the Communist Party served as both a pattern for and a cause of the identical conditions in the state. The party’s association with the state deprived it of the asset of separation from executive power. No one criticised the activities of the state and of economic organs. Parliament forgot how to hold proper debates; the government forgot how to govern properly; and managers forgot how to manage properly. Elections lost their significance and the law carried no weight. We could not trust our representatives on any committee or, if we could, there was no point in asking them for anything because they were powerless.

Worse still, we could scarcely trust one another. Personal and collective honour decayed. Honestly was a useless virtue, assessment by merit unheard of. Most people accordingly lost interest in public affairs, worrying only about themselves and about money, a further blot on the system being the impossibility today of relying even on the value of money. Personal relations were ruined, there was no more joy in work, and the nation, in short, entered a period that endangered its spiritual well-being and its character…

Since the beginning of this year, we have been experiencing a regenerative process of democratisation. It started inside the Communist Party, that much we must admit – even those communists among us who no longer had hopes that anything good could emerge from that quarter know this. It must also be added, of course, that the process could have started nowhere else. For after 20 years the communists were the only ones able to conduct some sort of political activity. It was only the opposition inside the communist party that had the privilege to voice antagonistic views.

The effort and initiative now displayed by democratically minded communists are only then a partial repayment of the debt owned by the entire party to the non-communists whom it had kept down in an unequal position. Accordingly, thanks are due to the Communist Party, though perhaps it should be granted that the party is making an honest effort at the 11th hour to save its own honour and the nation’s. The regenerative process has introduced nothing particularly new into our lives. It revives ideas and topics, many of which are older than the errors of our socialism, while others, having emerged from below the surface of visible history, should long ago have found expression but were instead repressed…

In this moment of hope – albeit hope still threatened – we appeal to you. It took several months before many of us believed it was safe to speak up; many of us still do not think it is safe. But speak up we did, exposing ourselves to the extent that we have no choice but to complete our plan to humanise the regime. If we did not, the old forces would exact cruel revenge. We appeal about all to those who so far have waited on the sidelines. The time now approaching will decide events for years to come…

There has been great alarm recently over the possibility that foreign forces will intervene in our development. Whatever superior forces may face us, all we can do is stick to our own positions, behave decently and initiate nothing ourselves. We can show our government that we will stand by it, with weapons if need be, if it will do what we give it a mandate to do. And we can assure our allies that we will observe our treaties of alliance, friendship and trade. Irritable reproaches and ill-argued suspicions on our part can only make things harder for our government, and bring no benefit to ourselves…

This spring a great opportunity was given to us once again, as it was after the end of the war. Again we have the chance to take into our own hands our common cause, which for working purposes we call socialism, and give it a form more appropriate to our once good reputation and to be fairly good opinion we used to have ourselves. The spring is over and will never return. By winter we will know all…”