August 1968 was only the half-way point in Dubček's sixteen months at the helm of the CPCS. The second half of that tenure, though not graced by the optimism and exuberance of the spring and summer, saw the beginning of true free play among social groups, and confronted politicians with the gritty reality of ruling. As Prečan notes, the period from the invasion to Dubček's resignation in April 1969 marked the greatest liberty experienced in Czechoslovakia between 1948 and 1989. It was also a period absolutely essential for breaking resistance to the loss of that liberty.

Dubček's strategy in many ways resembled that of Gomulka on his return to power in October 1956, in that the party, having acquired (thanks to the invasion) the new authority that the reforms were intended to build, used its moral capital to lower expectations, trade off some gains on promise of future rewards, and persuade the majority to demobilize. This chapter will show how liberalizers, in the belief that they were salvaging the reform course, unintentionally facilitated the restoration of authoritarian rule by providing powerful incentives for public self-restraint. Citizens were asked not to exercise the very freedoms that liberalization had extended, and without which liberalization was meaningless. At all times, it was stressed that this suspension was purely temporary, until foreign soldiers had departed.