ABSTRACT
In 1958 and 1959, the Czechoslovak leadership introduced a program of systemic adjustment that was quite similar to the one implemented at the same time in Poland. Around 1963, Czechoslovakia went through the deepest recession of the Eastern European countries, a recession that followed the "second wave of industrialization," which was linked to Nikita Khrushchev's Seventh Five Year Plan and the Chinese Great Leap Forward. The reformist ideas that set the stage for 1968 in Czechoslovakia should be interpreted in the context of this humanist and anti-Stalinist Marxism that was developed in the 1960s. In 1965 the reform principles prepared by the economists were formally adopted, and in 1966 the Thirteenth Congress of the Czechoslovak Communist Party opted for their "accelerated implementation." The financial market could be created by issuing a series of state, public, bank, and enterprise bonds, which would also contribute to a rational functioning of the economic system."
