Editing Socialism with a human face (section)

==Publications and media==
Dubček's relaxation of censorship ushered in a brief period of freedom of speech and the press.<ref>Williams, Tieren. ''The Prague Spring and Its Aftermath: Czechoslovak Politics, 1968–1970.'' Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 67.</ref> The first tangible manifestation of this new policy of openness was the production of the previously hard-line communist weekly ''Literární noviny'', renamed ''Literární listy''.<ref name="Williams, p. 68">Williams, p. 68</ref><ref name="Bren, p. 23">{{cite book|last=Bren|first=Paulina|author-link=Paulina Bren|title=The Greengrocer and His TV: The Culture of Communism after the 1968 Prague Spring|location=Ithaca, NY|publisher=[[Cornell University Press]]|year=2010|isbn=978-0-8014-4767-9|url={{Google books|id=o2LT7c_Kw80C|page=23|plainurl=yes}}|pages=23ff}}</ref>

Freedom of the press also opened the door for the first honest look at Czechoslovakia's past by Czechoslovakia's people. Many of the investigations centered on the country's history under communism, especially in the instance of the [[Joseph Stalin]]-period.<ref name="Williams, p. 68"/> In another television appearance, Goldstücker presented both doctored and undoctored photographs of former communist leaders who had been purged, imprisoned, or executed and thus erased from communist history.<ref name="Bren, p. 23"/> The Writers' Union also formed a committee in April 1968, headed by the poet [[Jaroslav Seifert]], to investigate the persecution of writers after the [[Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948|Communist takeover in February 1948]] and rehabilitate the literary figures into the Union, bookstores and libraries, and the literary world.<ref>Golan, Galia. ''Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies. Reform Rule in Czechoslovakia: The Dubček Era, 1968–1969''. Vol. 11. Cambridge, UK: CUP Archive, 1973, p. 10</ref><ref name="Holy, p. 119">Holy, p. 119</ref> Discussions on the current state of communism and abstract ideas such as freedom and identity were also becoming more common; soon, non-party publications began appearing, such as the trade union daily ''Prace'' (Labour). This was also helped by the Journalists' Union, which by March 1968 had already persuaded the Central Publication Board, the government censor, to allow editors to receive uncensored subscriptions to foreign papers, allowing for a more international dialogue around the news.<ref>Golan, p. 112</ref>

The press, the radio, and the television also contributed to these discussions by hosting meetings where students and young workers could ask questions of writers such as Goldstücker, [[Pavel Kohout]], and Jan Prochazka and political victims such as [[Josef Smrkovský]], Zdenek Hejzlar, and [[Gustáv Husák]].<ref name="Williams, p. 69">Williams, p. 69</ref> Television also broadcast meetings between former political prisoners and the communist leaders from the secret police or prisons where they were held.<ref name="Bren, p. 23"/> Most importantly, this new freedom of the press and the introduction of television into the lives of everyday Czechoslovak citizens moved the political dialogue from the intellectual to the popular sphere.

During [[Mikhail Gorbachev|Gorbachev]]'s visit to Prague in 1987, his spokesman [[Gennadi Gerasimov|Gennady Gerasimov]] was asked what was the difference between the Prague Spring and [[perestroika]], and he replied: ''"Nineteen years."'' <ref>Jacques Levesque, The Enigma of 1989: The USSR and the Liberation of Eastern Europe (Berkeley-London: Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997), p. 62.</ref>