ABSTRACT
Some have argued that the Czechoslovak leaders could have proceeded much more quickly from the action programme to the holding of the party congress: a quick and complete change of personnel, followed up with the fast passage of moderate reforms, might have forestalled and reassured the Russians. Russia intended to deal with Czechoslovakia without even neutral interference. The fifteenth congress offered to consider the read-mission to the party of any who had not been 'active representatives' of the deviations of 1968 and who would wholeheartedly support the sound policies of 1976. If, therefore, the 1974 treaty lasts-and a further agreement was signed in January 1975-it will mark the end of a vast theme in Czechoslovak history. The present praesidium itself can have no immunity from divisions of opinion or personal splits; and it may have to face another movement of opinion within the party as a whole not dissimilar from the one that started the last great upheaval.
