It is interesting to note that popular dissatisfaction with the economic situation in Czechoslovakia was greater in the more recent period, when living standards were much higher, than in the period immediately after the war when the masses believed that austerity was in the service of revolutionary ideas and socialist construction. By replacing revolutionary ideals with the promises of a consumer society, the bureaucrats only create trouble for themselves. On the other hand, it should be stated that an economic crisis itself is not sufficient to bring about a change in the situation since bureaucratic regimes have reserves with which to prevent an explosion caused by purely economic factors.

Yes, I think it would have happened and it was already happening even before 1968, as a reaction against the egalitarian system introduced in 1955. Under the latter, everybody in Czechoslovakia was within a narrow range of salaries. This means that there were no material rewards for responsible jobs, whether for intellectual work or for important posts in the factories. From the ideological point of view, you may say that this was progress. But in the transitional period of development of a socialist society, I think it is necessary to use both moral and material incentives. Precisely because a socialist society should favour technical and scientific development more than capitalist society does, its technical and scientific personnel should be paid accordingly. Of course, even in this period, inequalities did exist, in the sense that even if people had identical salaries, some of them—party leaders for instance—had many other facilities.