Prague Spring and Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia tried to build socialism with a human face in 1968 and five Warsaw Pact armies invaded in August. Alexander Dubček became first secretary in January after the leadership fell out over economic stagnation and Slovak grievances, and the reform programme adopted in April was written by party intellectuals rather than dissidents. It proposed to abolish censorship, permit freedom of assembly and travel, rehabilitate the victims of the 1950s trials, federalise the state, and allow debate inside the party — while remaining a one-party state in the Warsaw Pact. Censorship ended in practice in March, and the press did what a suddenly free press does. The pressure from outside was continuous through the summer: meetings at Dresden, Warsaw, Čierna nad Tisou and Bratislava, and a letter of invitation from hardliners in the Czechoslovak leadership asking Moscow for help. Some 250,000 troops crossed on the night of 20 August, met no military resistance on orders from Prague, and encountered an entire population removing street signs, arguing with the crews of tanks and painting swastikas on them. Dubček and his colleagues were flown to Moscow and made to sign a protocol. Jan Palach burned himself to death in January 1969, and Dubček was removed in April. What followed was called normalisation: half a million people expelled from the party, professors driving trams, twenty years of quiet. The invasion also ended the loyalty of most western communist parties to Moscow. Dubček was expelled from the party in 1970 and worked for the forestry service in Slovakia for nineteen years. He appeared on a balcony in Prague beside Havel in November 1989 to enormous crowds and became speaker of parliament.
- Year: 1968 CE
- Category: Military
