The Prague Spring was not a one-stop reform project, but was shaped by very different expectations. In 1968 it was equally about renewing the communist utopia, catching up with the West and drawing lessons from the Stalinist past. The Prague Spring had a time problem: Alexander Dubcek and the leading politicians in his circle acted from January 1968 until the invasion in August under steadily increasing time stress. At the same time, the reform program of the Prague Spring was shaped by very different time orders, its most important actors from politics, science and culture lived in parallel worlds, so to speak: The group around the philosopher and sociologist Radovan Richta was concerned with a humanistic renewal of communist ideology, while the economic reformers around the economist Ota Šik strove to catch up with the development lagging behind the West. In the area of ​​legal reforms, the focus was on coming to terms with the past, especially the Stalinist show trials of the 1950s, in order to learn lessons for the future. The Prague Spring drew its program from these different and sometimes contradicting approaches.