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On This Day: Soviet troops invade Czechoslovakia to crush Prague Spring

AUGUST 20, 1968: Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia in a bid to crush the Prague Spring democratic reforms that had been introduced by the local Communist party on this day in 1968.

Around 200,000 soldiers from the Red Army and forces from three other Warsaw Pact countries crossed the border at 11pm and sent columns of tanks into cities.

Local communist boss Alexander Dubček, whose liberalising policies the Soviets feared would lead to the break-up of the Eastern Bloc, urged his people not to resist.

But 108 Czechs and Slovaks were killed, and hundreds of others were wounded, as the number of invading troops eventually reached half a million.

A British Pathé newsreel shows some of the 6,300 Warsaw Pact tanks on fire after being attacked by angry patriots.

Other citizens carried out numerous acts of nonviolent resistance to the second Soviet invasion of a communist ally after it crushed Hungarian reformists in 1956.

The soldiers were met by public arguments and placards denouncing Soviet leaders and collaborators.

The soldiers were met by public placards denouncing Soviet leaders and collaborators (Getty)
The soldiers were met by public placards denouncing Soviet leaders and collaborators (Getty)


People also gave wrong directions to soldiers and even removed street signs, except for those giving the direction back to Moscow.

Pictures of Dubček, whose popular reforms had included the ending of censorship and secret police surveillance, were put up all over the country.

However, the man himself, whose Prague Spring reforms had also given his citizens the freedom to travel outside the communist bloc, was arrested and taken to Moscow.

But the Kremlin, fearing protesters would resort to violence, eventually allowed him to return and remain First Secretary of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party.

 

[On This Day: Soviet forces enter Berlin, 1945]

 

Czech President Ludvik Svoboda, who had flown to Moscow to confront Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, had also refused demands to appoint a ‘peasant-workers’ government’ to bolster false claims that local hardliners had requested the invasion.

The war hero and victim of Stalinist purges even threatened to shoot himself in the head in front of Brezhnev unless Dubček and the other reformists were released.

However, they were forced to sign the Moscow Protocol, demanding the suppression of opposition groups and full reinstatement of censorship, before they could leave.

Students in West Berlin gather in protest to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia (Getty)
Students in West Berlin gather in protest to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia (Getty)


Dubček, who had only been elected communist boss in January 1968, was soon afterwards ousted and replaced by hardliner Gustav Husak.

He precided over a period called ‘normalisation’ that re-established central control of the economy while increasing restrictions on the media, speech and

But, despite increased repression, the new hard-line authorities failed to wipe out all traces of resistance.

Notably, student Jan Palach, 21, set himself on fire in Prague’s Wenceslas Square January 1969 to inspire Czechoslovaks to not give up the hope of a freer country.

 

[On This Day: Hungarian Uprising against Soviet domination begins]

 

Burns specialist Jaraslava Moserova, who treated him while he spent three days dying in hospital, said he feared ‘that people were not only giving up, but giving in’.

Half a million people defied both the rain and the Soviet occupiers to watch his funeral procession.

The local communist party, which had been second largest in the world and seized power with Soviet support after the German occupation, took steps to rub both his and that of how the Prague Spring was crushed.

But Czechoslovaks, whose country had been the most democratic and prosperous in Eastern Europe until the 1939 Nazi invasion, never forgot.

Soviet troops marching through the centre of Prague during the Prague Spring (Getty)
Soviet troops marching through the centre of Prague during the Prague Spring (Getty)


In January 1989 – on the 20th anniversary of his death – opposition groups launched Palach Week with a series of demonstrations, which prompted a brutal crackdown.

It became a catalyst for change and protesters were further emboldened by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s vow not to send troops to Eastern Bloc nations.

He also admitted that the 1968 invasion, which Romania, Albania and – with hours to spare – East Germany had refused to back, had been a ‘mistake’.

Czechoslovakia’s communists were overthrown during the November 1989 ‘Velvet Revolution’ following the fall of the Berlin Wall in neighbouring East Germany.

 

[On This Day: World's first nuclear-powered passenger ship sets sail]

 

It was the first of many relatively peaceful anti-communist revolts that swept through Eastern Europe that year.

In the aftermath, the new democratic Czechoslovakia was dissolved into two states – the Czech Republic and Slovakia - during the Velvet Divorce.

Dubcek, who emerged from exile to be cheered by thousands in Wenceslas Square during the revolution, led Slovakia’s Social Democratic Party before dying in 1992.

And Palach, whose body had been secretly disinterred and cremated in 1973, had his ashes reburied in Olsany Cemetery, Prague’s traditional resting place of heroes.