Preparation and Adoption of the Constitutional Law on the Czechoslovak Federation of 1968

The article highlights the process of preparation and adoption of the Constitutional Law on the Czechoslovak Federation of October 27, 1968, and provides an analysis of its content. This Law was the result of the process of federalization of Czechoslovakia, which began during the "Prague Spring" of 1968 and was intended to rebuild Czech-Slovak relations according to the principle of "equal to equal" and in this way to solve the Slovak question in the state. The lower chronological limit of the article (September 1968) is dictated by the beginning of the "normalization" policy, which, except for the federalization process, was characterized by the gradual collapse of democratic transformations in Czechoslovakia in the first half of 1968. The upper chronological limit is determined by the adoption of the Constitutional Law by the National Assembly on October 27, 1968, on the Czechoslovak Federation. The methodological basis of the proposed article is the principles of historicism and objectivity. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the analysis of the Constitutional Law of 1968 through the prism of the Slovak question in Czechoslovakia, which was formed after the refusal of the Prague authorities from the Košice government program of 1945. The Constitutional Law of 1968 was the result of a compromise reached by representatives of the Czech and Slovak peoples. According to the law, the basis of the federation was a voluntary union of equal national states of Czechs and Slovaks based on the right of self-determination. The development of the Czechoslovak Federation was influenced by internal and external factors. The author attributes the removal of democratically-minded communists from power in Czechoslovakia, the lack of reforms in the Communist Party of Ukraine, and the gradual restoration of totalitarian methods of control and management of society to the internal factors of influence. The external factor was the preservation of the influence of the USSR on internal political processes in Czechoslovakia. As a result, federalization without true democratization remained an empty form without any content in Czechoslovakia. Certain provisions of the Constitutional Law of 1968 were never implemented until the victory of the "Velvet Revolution" in 1989. This gives grounds for asserting that the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic did not acquire the characteristics of a federation, and the Slovak Republic acquired the attributes of a subject of a socialist federation. In the opinion of the author, the Constitutional Law on the Federation of 1968 did not solve the Slovak question in Czechoslovakia, but only for some time removed the acuteness of this problem in the state. According to the natural right of self-determination, the Slovaks retained the right to create their own national state.