ABSTRACT
1. It is quite clear that the Czechoslovak Party leadership has been incapable of avoiding the error of giving too little too late and too grudgingly. There is no doubt, however, that it was perfectly well aware what the public wanted. It calculated that by conceding a little across the spectrum of public expectations the situation could be kept from boiling over. It is highly likely that some people, such as the Federal Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec, realised that this would not be enough and pressed for more. The hard-line element was too strongly entrenched at all levels of the Party, however. The first pre-requisite for the Party to have any hope of recapturing even a part of the ground it has lost is a thorough purge of its leading positions, from the top right down to district and local levels. The Party missed a good opportunity when Husak stepped down in December 1987. Had a fresh new leadership taken over with a more imaginative presentation of a more radical form of the policy which Jakes was in fact pursuing, they might have been less vulnerable to the increased pressures which the fall of Honecker (and the manner of his going) generated.
