The large, framed photograph of Mikhail Gorbachev that he had hung above his office desk along with pictures of Lenin and Czechoslovak president Gustav Husák, no longer seemed appropriate. Gorbachev was introducing unwelcome reforms in the name of his perestroika that were starting to make some of the hard-line communists uncomfortable. But how to get rid of Gorbachev's photo quietly?

Zajíček's dilemma is just one insider story in a new book that reconsiders the era between the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution through the eyes of the political figures who rose within the communist party and then watched it crumble around them.

The period is often called Normalization, which set in after the failure of the Prague Spring and lasted throughout the 1970s and '80s. The book, titled Mocní? A bezmocní? (The Powerful? And the Powerless?), tells the story of communism's downfall here through the officials that lived it, and along the way offers some insights that call in question some popular myths of the period.

Researchers at the Institute of Contemporary History (ÚSD), which published the book this month, wanted to set the record straight.

"We wanted to take a look at the era from as many different viewpoints as possible," says Miroslav Vaněk, director of the Oral History Center at ÚSD, who led the project. "Our aim was a plurality of interpretations."

Havel no threat

Based on lengthy interviews with former high-ranking communist officials, the book yields some interesting surprises.

For instance, most communist officials say today that they didn't consider Václav Havel — or indeed the dissident movement in general — a major threat to the regime. One inside account reveals that Havel was even tapped to be culture minister.

A far greater danger, according to former officials, was Gorbachev — widely considered the biggest traitor of the communist regime.

"It was interesting to see that most of the communists had a surprisingly [similar] view of the causes behind the downfall of the regime," Vaněk says. "They tend to blame Gorbachev. They also realize that the communist party fell apart from the inside."

"By the late 1980s, all the ideology was gone. It was just a power structure," he adds. "Today many people tend to think of the party as this monolithic mass, but it had several fractions that weren't always working together."

With the ascent of Gorbachev and Glasnost, communists here, who had up until then been accustomed to getting very clear instructions from the Soviet Union, felt adrift.

"They had no idea what to do," Vaněk says. "They were getting mixed messages and they weren't used to that."

The former officials interviewed in the book are far less willing to acknowledge the role of Czechoslovak dissidents in chipping away at the regime's stability.

"These communists don't want to admit that powerful dissent could be formed on Czech soil," Vaněk says. "They would much rather blame Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. "They would like to believe that it was a strong, organized effort that toppled their regime. A lot of them continue to believe that socialism will be restored again someday."

Future book planned

Getting so many former communist government officials to agree to talk on record wasn't easy, Vaněk says. About 30 percent of those the researchers approached refused to take part in the project. One changed his mind. But the results were worth it, the historians say.

"The normalization period still hasn't been studied very much," ÚSD director Oldřich Těma says. "The study has had a very positive response among historians. It's hard to say how interested the general public will be."

But Czechs seem to be hungry to learn more about their recent history. Vaněk's team published the earliest results of its research last year in the book Vítězové? Poražení? (Winners? Losers?), which just contained the transcriptions of some of the initial interviews. It sold 4,000 copies, a high number for an academic work.

Meanwhile, the ÚSD team is writing another book that looks more closely at how everyday Czechs perceived life during Normalization.

Many myths exist about the period, not least of all that Czechs simply resigned themselves to the reality of the regime and concerned themselves less with widespread resistance and more with their own family life.