Abstract
In this chapter, we argue that contested narratives of 'fraternal Yugoslavia' helped in significant ways to shape the political and social reality of Czechoslovak normalisation. The image of an alternative, 'better' socialism persisted in society, while the extremely hostile position adopted by ultra-conservatives against Titoist 'revisionism' gradually transformed during the 1970s into a more open, though still suspicious, attitude.
By the late 1970s, ever broader segments of Czechoslovak society were able to utilise the regime's ambivalence towards the Yugoslav system to develop rich and varied contacts with that country. From the mid-1980s, elements in the Czechoslovak party leadership even began drawing on the Yugoslav political and economic model when formulating their own plans for 'reconstruction' as a Czechoslovak variant of perestroika.
In the end, however, the regime collapsed before it had time to put any of these ideas into practice.