Publication Details

Abstract

The article examines claims that Dominik Tatarka’s concept of the “community of God” (obec božia), developed during the Prague and Slovak Spring of 1968, was utopian. Tatarka saw it as a form of communion (obcovanie) – a space for free and responsible interaction among citizens, independent of communist ideological control. This idea arose in response to two decades of negative socialist experience in Czechoslovakia and was halted by the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968. The author argues that Tatarka’s vision was not a utopia but a realistic ideal of the common good, which continued in the “revolution with a human face” at the turn of 1989 – 1990. It reflected values of humanity, human dignity, the moral right to a free life, its growth, development, and cultivation, as well as the values of justice, responsibility, tolerance, and duty to oneself and others. Its humanistic message remains relevant.