EN
According to the author of this article, Jiří Hoppe’s Opozice ’68: Sociální demokracie, KAN a K 231 v období Pražského jara (Prague: Prostor, 2009) is a substantial contribution to our knowledge of a small but important part of what set Czechoslovak society in motion in 1968. One will also be considerably surprised to read genuine claims by Reform Communists which reveal their intentions to prevent the establishment of other political groupings at the time. The author of the article, however, questions Hoppe’s defi nition of political opposition in 1968, because the nascent Social Democratic Party, the Club of Engagé Non-Party Members ( Klub angažovaných nestraníků ), and Club 231, which constitute the topic of Hoppe’s interpretation, were part of a broad-based social movement demanding change; nor can all Communists be pigeon-holed in a single category. Searching for the opposition in the events of 1968 is, according to the author, misleading and ultimately tends to obscure, rather than to clarify, the ultimate meaning of the Prague Spring of 1968. That meaning, according to the author of the article, consists in its having been a truly national movement with unambiguously positive aims, however foggy their articulation.