Jiri Valenta Quotes

4 Sourced Quotes

There is an anecdote making the rounds in Prague these days. According to the story, a Czechoslovak government minister recently quoted the opening words of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto: "A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of communism." Then he added: "But today it is the other way around. A specter is haunting communism - the specter of Europe!"

Jiri Valenta

Some analysts view Eurocommunism as a "new look" or sudden shift in the tactics of West European communist parties, designed primarily to reinforce domestic positions; others see it as the product of profound changes in several European communist parties, but principally as a historic reversal in the basic flow of influence, from an East-West to a West-East direction.

Jiri Valenta

The Prague Spring of 1968 was a product not only of the process of destalinization in Czechoslovakia but also of various reformist trends in European communism (both East and West).

Jiri Valenta

Simply put, the Prague Spring can be considered the forerunner of Eurocommunism, and the Czechoslovak reformers can be considered its forefathers in their attempt to create a model of socialism that, rooted in the Western tradition, differs from that of the USSR.

Jiri Valenta