Abstract

Social events have a way of profoundly shaking the cultural life of a nation -particularly when what is involved is nothing less than a revolution. In terms of classical Marxist categories, events at the base are subsequently reproduced in the superstructure. But the relationship between the two is not mechanical, rather, it is dialectical. In other words, although determining, the base is itself conditioned by the superstructure. Thus, in the case of the recent upheaval in Czechoslovakia, the causes of the rise and fall of the “New Course” were decidedly economic in character: the structuring of the advanced Czech economy in terms of the broader requirements of the USSR, the subsequent introduction of rigid and infllexible bureaucratic guidelines, etc.