ABSTRACT
Rudolf Bahro's The Alternative is the most significant, stimulating contributions of the last decade to the discussion on the nature of the system in Eastern European countries and on the potential prospects for development of what is called "real socialism". This chapter explores the evaluation of the consequences of the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in August 1968. It seems that Bahro underestimates the negative consequences of this intervention, not only in Czechoslovakia but also in the other countries. For the people of Eastern Europe, communism is too closely linked with Stalinism and the hegemony of the Soviet Union for it again to be positively received in any form, even after a renaissance. The concrete steps Bahro proposes for internationalizing the struggle of the socialist opposition in the East would sooner be realized by the noncommunist left, which is not bound by the rules in force within the international communist movement and especially as regards the relationship to the Soviet Union.
