On the warm night of 21st August 1968 Soviet tanks rolled in Prague and destroyed everything built in previous few months.
Today is held one sad anniversary for Czechs all around the world. It is exactly 41 years since Soviet army and other “comrade” armies attacked Czechoslovakia with over 2000 tanks and 200 000 troops.
1, Reforming fractions in Czechoslovakian communist party
By 1967, president Antonín Novotný was losing support. First Secretary of the regional Communist Party of Slovakia, Alexander Dubček, and economist Ota Šik challenged him at a meeting of the Central Committee, and Dubček invited Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev to Prague that December. Brezhnev was surprised at the extent of the opposition to Novotný and supported his removal as Czechoslovakia’s leader. Dubček thus replaced Novotný as First Secretary on 5 January 1968. On 22 March 1968, Novotný resigned his presidency and was replaced by Ludvík Svoboda, who later gave consent to the reforms.
2, Prague Spring
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II. It began on 5 January 1968, when reformist Slovak communist Alexander Dubček came to power, and continued until 21 August. He granted additional rights to the citizens in an act of partial decentralization of the economy and democratization. The freedoms granted included a loosening of restrictions on the media, speech and travel. Dubček also federalized the country into two separate republics.
This was a VERY dangerous situation for two subjects. One of them was Czechoslovakian communist party – suddenly there was a new group of communists, which was open to discussion and it leaded the party! Then there was the whole Soviet block. If one brick (Czechoslovakia) would fail, the whole structure would follow subsequently – as we could see later on in 1989. The KSČ leadership was divided between vigorous reformers (Josef Smrkovský, Oldřich Černík, and František Kriegel) who supported Dubček, and conservatives (Vasil Biľak, Drahomír Kolder, and Oldřich Švestka) who adopted an anti-reformist stance.
3, Soviet invasion
The Soviet Union’s policy of compelling the socialist governments of its satellite states to subordinate their national interests to those of the “Eastern Bloc” (through military force if needed) became known as the Brezhnev Doctrine. On the night of 20-21 August 1968, Eastern Bloc armies from four Warsaw Pact countries — the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Poland and Hungary—invaded the ČSSR.
That night, 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 2,000 tanks entered the country. The troops first occupied the Ruzyně International Airport, where air deployment of more troops was arranged. The Czechoslovak forces were confined to their own barracks and were surrounded until the threat of a counter-attack was assuaged. By the morning of 21 August Czechoslovakia was occupied.
During the attack of the Warsaw Pact armies, 72 Czechs and Slovaks were killed (19 of those in Slovakia), 266 severely wounded and another 436 were lightly injured. Alexander Dubček called upon his people not to resist. Nevertheless, there was scattered resistance in the streets. Road signs in towns were removed or painted over—except for those indicating the way to Moscow. Many small villages renamed themselves “Dubcek” or “Svoboda”; without navigational equipment, the invaders were often confused.
The Soviets attributed the invasion to the “Brezhnev Doctrine” which stated that the U.S.S.R. had the right to intervene whenever a country in the Eastern Bloc appeared to be making a shift towards capitalism.
(which Czechs apparently did).
There is still some uncertainty, however, as to what provocation, if any, occurred to make the Warsaw Pact armies invade. The days leading up to the invasion was a quite calm period without ANY major events taking place in Czechoslovakia. We do know already, that some of the non-reformists in communist party sent an invitation letter in which they asked immediate support from Brezhnev in accordance of stabilizing communist influence in Czechoslovakia. That could make a very good excuse for a following invasion.
4, Normalization
What is now called “Normalization” was actually worst years of Czech history. When Gustáv Husák became the leader of the KSČ instead of Alexander Dubček in April 1969 after the military intervention of Warsaw Pact armies, his regime acted quickly to “normalize” the country’s political situation. The chief objectives of Husák’s normalization were the restoration of firm party rule and the reestablishment of Czechoslovakia’s status as a committed member of the socialist bloc. The normalization process involved five interrelated steps:
- consolidate the Husák leadership and remove reformers from leadership positions
- revoke or modify the laws enacted by the reform movement;
- reestablish centralized control over the economy;
- reinstate the power of police authorities;
- expand Czechoslovakia’s ties with other socialist nations; and
- to set again cenzorship on press and culture.
5, Today
The impact on Czechs and Slovaks was huge. 40 years of communism destroyed their social connections (you don’t know who your neighbor really is, who your relatives are). The values like national pride, self-esteem, self-confidence are treated like vices. People praise politicians, who promise them more money from public sector. Most of citizens do not understand capitalism and do not believe, that it is possible to earn money by respectable way. Czechs envy to each other and are full of anger (because for most of them, personal freedom doesn’t mean anything anymore).
Nonetheless I am optimistic, there is always two generations of people to bring on any changes. Nowadays we have 15% of Czechs who vote for communist party! Ten years ago it was 20%. The communist are slowly dying and we can only hope it is gonna be sooner than later when we try to build new values upon what remained of our personal and national pride.
Pavel Duchac 21.7.2009 with use of materials from www.wikipedia.com