I don't know whether Jiří Bělohlávek had anything like that in mind, though he was a young man of 22 in that first of many springs that turn to frosty winter in Prague of 1968. Musicians are not notoriously political.
True, the first movement was taken more quietly, more gently, perhaps, than one might expect; and seemingly on the slow side, though the emphasis there should be on the adverb. But only compilers of comparison lists listen to one movement of a symphony at a time, instead of following it through as a whole, and by the time Bělohlávek came to the Andante forty minutes or so later, it should have dawned that was the softness of the soft shoe shuffle of the secret police. As threatening as anything more pointed.
If the Allegretto (the supposed 'portrait of Stalin' if you believe Volkov, and I've never been too eager to) was less brutal and fierce than other examples, it made the point that you can be a villain, but a smiling one. In oppressive states, under tyrannies, it is usually safer to pay attention to the second and pretend not to note the first.
And in that mood, nor was the Allegro so abandoned. Stalin may have been in the grave, or under a Kremlin wall, or wherever he is, for more than half a century, but it would be over-confident to be too sure the 'ism' though it might have been lying low, is lying forever dead. And that I think, was what this thoughtful, carefully paced and un-flamboyant performance was about. Threats like that, as the last movement of this performance should have insinuated into the audience's minds by then, are not so easily dissipated with a roaring climax.
However much I'd like to believe that too. And will stick for the future with a recording, shall we say, with a brasher certainty about it?
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