Abstract
People lost faith in the possibility of reform said Mikhail Gorbatchev during a conversation analyzing the Prague Spring and its consequences. Eastern European socialist countries experienced three attempts aat reform, at two different times. The first wave was a consequence of the de-Stalinization process. In 1956, after Khrushchev's secret speech, Gomulka came to power in Poland and led a communist reform movement. However the reform movement led during the Polish October was not considered 'dangerous' by the Soviet Union. In Hungary, that same year, things did not go as well, as the popular movement turned into a popular revolution. As a result, Soviet troops invaded Hungary to protect their own interest and ostensibly, the interest of the socialist bloc. The second wave of reform arose in 1968, in Czechoslovakia, and here again, Soviet troops invaded the country. Can we then conclude that the main lesson from 1968 was that communism was unable to reform itself? Communism thus has many different definitions depending on what focus is desired from it.
