Fifty years ago this week, on 21 August 1968, the citizens of Prague awoke to find tanks on their streets. For some it came as no surprise. Student activist Pavel Kamenicky was sleeping. “At first I thought it was the university bus trying to find the right gear,” he says. “But I realised it was way too loud. I jumped up thinking, ‘they’ve come’.” Czechoslovakia had dominated news bulletins throughout the summer after its premier, First Secretary Alexander Dubcek, had begun reforming his communist government’s structures earlier that year. But now, what had become known as the Prague Spring, or Dubcek’s “socialism with a human face”, was lying crushed beneath the tank tracks in Wenceslas Square. The Soviet Union feared its grip on the satellite states of eastern Europe was loosening and its patience had finally run out. Czechoslovakia and Dubcek had fallen foul of USSR leader Leonid Brezhnev’s eponymous doctrine, espoused retroactively in justification the month after Warsaw Pact troops took to Prague’s streets: “When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries,” Brezhnev said Recommended 6 things to do on a city break to Prague Soviet forces, alongside those of Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria, crossed the Czechoslovakian border at 11pm on the evening of 20 August. East Germany withdrew at the last minute when it was realised that, just over two decades after the end of the Second World War, the presence of German troops on Czech and Slovak soil could lead to unintended repercussions. The following morning, the foreign soldiers were in the capital, offering fraternal support to loyal comrades in Czechoslovakia. Soviet tanks had intervened in post-war eastern Europe before. Towards the end of October in 1956, Hungarians revolted against their Marxist-Leninist government and declared a new administration, withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact and disbanding the communist-run state security apparatus. But barely two and half weeks later the western world watched aghast, but impotent, as Soviet forces entered Budapest to restore one-party rule. Yet there had been real hope that Czechoslovakia could be different. 1968 was, of course, a year of revolution and political protest across the planet. But the Czechoslovak version was in many ways a rather gentler form of dissent. Dubcek had never set out to overthrow communism, merely to reform it. The nation’s planned economy had been in decline throughout the 1960s. Dubcek had replaced previous first secretary, Antonín Novotný, in January 1968 and had attempted to liberalise communist party rule by tolerating political institutions and organisations not directly controlled by the party. Even multi-party government was mooted. More repressive laws were loosened, travel was made easier and freedom of expression, especially in media, accepted. Leonid Brezhnev shares a joke with US president Richard Nixon in 1973 (AP) Unwittingly though, Dubcek had created either a vicious or a virtuous circle, depending on one’s political viewpoint. Reform emboldened progressives and led to demand for further liberalisation. Dissidents, especially students, but also the wider population in numerous Soviet satellite nations, began to push for similar freedoms. Conversely, communist hardliners in Czechoslovakia and other Soviet client states feared a loss of power and urged Dubcek to pause. Brezhnev and the Soviet politburo were starting to take notice. Yet in meetings with Soviet leaders Dubcek believed he had convinced them of his loyalty to the communist cause and that his domestic reforms were not challenging the hegemony. He was wrong: 2,000 tanks and a 250,000-strong Soviet-led force of men invaded on Brezhnev’s orders; 137 Czechoslovak civilians were killed resisting; and, pleading with his citizens not to fight back, Dubcek was flown to Moscow. Some citizens used the power of argument to voice their opposition, engaging troops in discussion to make their point – until photographs were used in Soviet propaganda to suggest the locals were making friends with the invaders. Dubcek returned as little more than a puppet of the Soviet regime and was replaced early in 1969. Half a million of his supporters were expelled from the Communist Party. Leaders of communist countries meeting in Poland in 1955 to sign the mutual defence treaty commonly known as the Warsaw Pact (AFP/Getty) (AFP/Getty Images) The members of Nato, especially the United States – already involved in conflict in Vietnam and aiming to broker a disarmament agreement with the Soviet Union – condemned the invasion but had no intention of intervening. In the aftermath, 300,000 Czechoslovaks, many highly qualified, emigrated to the west, although the authorities soon clamped down on their ability to leave. The period between 1969 and 1971 is known in Czechoslovak history as the era of “normalisation”. The country returned to the Soviet fold; opposition both within and without the country faded; and the Communist Party returned to the hardline position it had held before the onset of the Prague Spring. So, 50 years later, what does the anniversary offer today’s Europeans still struggling with political upheaval and, certainly in the east of the continent, getting to grips with increasingly nationalistic, repressive governments? Apart from the sense of betrayal felt by Czechs and Slovaks, both towards their own government and their supposed allies, and the reminder that totalitarianism brooks no dissent, are there lessons to be learned from the Prague Spring; and what became of Dubcek, its architect? Unsurprisingly the legacy is complex – as legacies are wont to be. Recommended Thousands of Czechs take to the streets after President attacks media Perhaps the key to understanding Czechoslovakia in 1968 is that, unlike similar uprisings against the establishment, both in communist Europe but also elsewhere around the world – witness the Arab Spring of 2010 and 2011 – the Prague Spring was not a movement of only liberals, students (among other young people) and political intellectuals fighting a conservative establishment. It had wider cross-generational support drawing on the strong traditions of democracy that had developed in Czechoslovakia between the two world wars, after its formation in 1918. Czech-born writer Milan Kundera, author of the Unbearable Lightness of Being, who lived in exile in France from 1975, argued that it was a movement falling back on the “best traditions” of Czechoslovakia’s brief history: a “higher quality of democracy not based on the ills associated with capitalism”. By contrast, the later revolutions that would finally overthrow communism in Europe at the end of the 1980s were driven as much by the “victory” of Reaganism, free-market economics and monetarism as they were by the right to vote freely and express opinions openly. It has become fashionable, with hindsight, to blame the suppression of the Prague Spring on “communism”. But let it not be forgotten that it was fervent communists who were carrying out Czechoslovakia’s reforms. Whether the Prague Spring was a “purer” revolution than those that followed is probably an argument for political ideologues alone, but a glance across the border towards Viktor Orban’s Hungary shows that the spoils of the “freedom” won in 1989 might not always manifest themselves with good intent. Two decades after Dubcek’s attempt to reform communism from within, the then premier of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, issued an apology on behalf of all Warsaw Pact nations, stating that the invasion of Czechoslovakia was a mistake, and that the USSR should never have interfered in the internal affairs of another sovereign state. (It should be noted that both Romania and Albania had refused to participate in the 1968 intervention; and Albania ultimately withdrew from the Warsaw Pact in the aftermath.) It was the culmination of a number of apologies from Warsaw Pact nations throughout 1989 and it seems reasonable to argue that there was a direct link between these acknowledgements and the overthrow of communist governments in East Germany, Poland, Romania and, most poignantly, Czechoslovakia, that same year. Protesters realised that their actions would no longer lead to Red Army interference, and the Soviet bloc of eastern European nations had replaced their communist rulers within months of one another. Vaclav Havel, in 1989, was elected first president of Czechoslovakia as communist crumbled across Eastern Europe (Getty) (GETTY IMAGES) Perhaps 1968 showed us, if 1956 had not already, that the post-war façade of communist interdependence, internationalism and fraternal allegiance was broken, if indeed it had ever been more than a charade at all. The alliance was built on flimsy foundations and maintained by suppression. Czech historical novelist and writer Ivan Klíma has said that – for good or ill – the most important legacy of the Prague Spring was the delayed but ultimate destruction of the international communist movement. But warnings must still be heeded. In a world where a nationalistically invigorated Russia under Vladimir Putin increasingly looks beyond its borders for a bulwark against Nato and the EU, the demise of communism and the Warsaw Pact does not mean a concurrent diminishing of militarism: the annexation of Crimea by Russia has shown us that very clearly. And – even putting aside the Brexit debate – illiberal governments in Slovakia, Poland and Hungary threaten to overturn the European Union’s free-market liberal consensus. The threat, while changed in ideology, still lurks. And what of Dubcek? After he was ousted as first secretary he worked for the forestry service near Bratislava, in his native Slovakia. And after the final overthrow of communist rule in Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution of 1989 he briefly returned to political prominence as chairman of the Czechoslovak Federal Assembly, and later as leader of the Slovak Social Democrats. He divides those of his compatriots who thought he was a decent man wronged and those who think he was naïve. Pavel Kamenicky, now 70, says: “We were idealistic. But Dubcek should have realised what was going to happen. Did he really think Brezhnev would shrug and say ‘carry on’?” On the other hand, Dubcek’s son Pavol has defended his father’s position, once saying: “I don’t know if people really understand what it meant to have your fate in Brezhnev’s hands.” For right or wrong, however, Dubcek had in truth become more or less a political irrelevance by the time of the Velvet Revolution. Václav Havel, the poet and statesman who played a prominent role in the events of 1989 and became Czechoslovakia’s first post-Soviet era president, said: “Dubcek is a symbol of our nice memories, but nobody thinks he can influence the situation now.” Dubcek himself rarely spoke of 1968. Although a Slovak, Dubcek was opposed to the 1993 split between the Czech Republic and Slovakia and maintained his belief in the idea of a single, united nation. He was killed in a car crash in 1992, declared in an official investigation to be an accident. Conspiracy theories abound and even today 50 per cent of those Slovaks who know of him believe his death was almost certainly not an accident. The crushing of the Prague Spring continues to echo down the ages, its eventual legacy yet to be determined.<doc-sep>A few times a day, an elderly Czech person will pay a visit to the photography exhibition in Prague’s Old Town Hall, which chronicles the crushing of the Prague Spring by Moscow in 1968, and complain as they leave. “‘The Russians are here again,’ they grumble to me,” said the curator, Dana Kyndrová, describing locals’ views on the thousands of Russian tourists who visit Prague each week and the 30,000 Russians who have residency permits in the Czech Republic. Tuesday marks the 50th anniversary of Moscow sending half a million troops from the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries to crush the reformist government in Czechoslovakia led by Alexander Dubček, which had been attempting to implement “socialism with a human face”. A debate is raging about whether Russia poses a strategic threat to the country today or whether relations should be improved with Moscow in spite of EU sanctions. Most politicians in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia see Russia as a threat, but the Czech president, Miloš Zeman, is an outspoken admirer of Vladimir Putin, while Slovakia was one of a handful of EU countries not to expel any Russian diplomats in response to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in March, after disagreement among the ruling coalition. For some of the older generation, the anger at the Soviet Union from 1968 carries over on to modern Russia and Russians. Kamila Moučková, a television newscaster who was arrested during a live broadcast in August 1968, has said in interviews with the Czech media that even now she finds it hard to be civil towards Russians. A sign at Andel metro station – formerly Moscow station – in Prague. Photograph: Martin Divisek/EPA Moučková was one of the first Czechoslovakian news anchors and became known for her critical broadcasts in 1968. She was later fired by the broadcaster and went to work in a plastic bag factory, returning to the screen only after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. “After everything the Russians did here, I am not interested in getting to know that country,” she said. “Perhaps I am too old ... to change my view. Until this day, when we play hockey with Russia I do not view it as a sport but as a political matter. I even have to persuade myself internally to behave politely to Russians when they stop me on a street to ask for directions.” After the Velvet Revolution, when Czechoslovakia finally made the transition out of communism, there was a tendency to look at the Prague Spring as merely a spat between different groups of communists. But many of the photographs on display at Kyndrová’s exhibition show how much of a national element there was in the protests. There were signs and graffiti demanding “Russians go home”, and on the Bratislava war memorial someone had drawn a logo equating the Soviet star with the swastika. Kyndrová was 13 at the time; her mother was a photographer who took some of the photographs on display. “My father took me out on to the streets and said: ‘Look at this and remember it forever.’” Later she studied foreign languages, learning French and Russian – much to the irritation of her grandfather, who after 1968 did not want anyone in the family to speak Russian. She ended up travelling to Russia frequently from 1976 onwards, and has released a photography collection about Russia. “The events of 1968 still play a part in the way I think about Russia. Russians always are very friendly when they find out you’re Czech, but it’s better not to talk about history,” she said. In contemporary Russia there is still a denial about what Moscow’s troops did in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, with all the focus instead on the heroics of the second world war victory. Kyndrová said she had an exhibit planned in Moscow in 2005 called “1945-1968-1989”, exploring the different episodes of Soviet military involvement in Czechoslovakia. “But at the last minute we got a phone call and they asked to rename the exhibit ‘Russian-Czech dialogue’ and take out some of the pictures. I refused.” In Slovakia and the Czech Republic there are those on both the far left and the far right who favour improved relations with Russia and dismiss the historical grievances as irrelevant. “Think of our history with the Germans, and now we are friends,” said Jaroslav Doubrava, 70, a senator and one of the most enthusiastic supporters of modern Russia among Czech politicians. Doubrava had recently returned from a trip to Crimea, organised despite heated protests from the Ukrainian embassy in Prague. He praised Russia for “performing miracles” in the territory. Peter Marček, an independent Slovak MP who had recently made a separate trip to Crimea, said: “To me, August 1968 was the aggression of the communist Soviet Union, not a hostile act of the Russian nation.” Unlike Poland or the Baltic states, the two countries do not have a centuries-long complicated history with Russia. For many ordinary Czechs, Russia is of minimal importance. It may not be deep-seated distrust of Russia rooted in 1968 that is behind the anti-Russian political mood, but recent actions by the Kremlin. “During the Velvet Revolution there was almost a total absence of anti-Russian rhetoric. When [Václav] Havel was elected we went to Washington first and went straight to Moscow and met with [Mikhail] Gorbachev,” said Michael Žantovský, a former Czech ambassador to Britain and the US and an adviser to Havel, the dissident writer who became president in 1989. “Havel had a good relationship with both Gorbachev and [Boris] Yeltsin, but distrusted Putin from the beginning. It was only after the invasion of Crimea that the largest part of Czech politicians condemned Russia,” he said.<doc-sep>
An outpouring of sympathy and remembrances was expected to flow into the Czech Republic and Slovakia from far and wide to mark the 50th anniversary of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops to crush the Prague Spring uprising. Except from one place -- Prague Castle. Czech President Milos Zeman, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's strongest allies within the European Union, will not deliver a speech or attend any commemorative events on August 21. The decision has highlighted one of the most contentious elements of the 73-year-old Zeman's five-year tenure as head of state, including criticism of senior advisers' apparent ties to Russia and his own repeated calls for a rollback of Western sanctions and improved relations with Russia. In his place for the occasion, Czech Television announced it would take the rare step of airing a speech by the president of neighboring Slovakia, Andrej Kiska. "Zeman is a disgrace," Jan Navratil, a 48-year-old Prague social worker told RFE/RL at an August 20 demonstration outside the Russian Embassy to register unhappiness with Moscow over events in 1968 and, more recently, its invasion of Ukraine. "Here we have one of the darkest days in our country's history, and the president cannot make a statement or lay a wreath anywhere to mark the day?" Navratil said. "What kind of leader is that?" WATCH: Fifty years ago, Soviet-led forces rolled into Czechoslovakia, ending reform efforts to create "socialism with a human face." Late on August 20, 1968, about 250,000 troops from the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries and some 2,000 tanks entered the country to crush Czechoslovakia's reformist government, led by Alexander Dubcek, which during the "Prague Spring" of 1968 had embarked on a set of reforms that attempted to implement "socialism with a human face." With tanks rolling through city streets, Czechs and Slovaks awoke on August 21 to a new reality. The number of invading troops eventually swelled to about half a million. Protests and clashes with the occupying forces left 137 dead and more than 500 injured. Zeman, who joined the Czechoslovak Communist Party in 1968 during the Prague Spring, was kicked out of the party two years later -- reportedly over his criticism of the invasion and occupation. Jiri Ovcacek, the president's spokesman, said that was a "courageous" statement that says more than enough, even 50 years later. "He was ousted from his job at the Economic University for this statement. Such a statement is more valuable than the thousands of purely formal and unfaithful speeches that will be certainly be delivered on August 21," Ovcacek said in a tweet. But Jiri Pehe, a former adviser to President Vaclav Havel and a frequent Zeman critic, said he was stunned by the president's decision. He said that what happened to Zeman was the same thing that happened to hundreds of thousands of other Czechs and Slovaks, while many others fled the country, never to see their families again. "Such a justification for the president's decision is remarkable," said Pehe, a former RFE/RL analyst who is now the director of the Prague campus of New York University. "Although this is not embedded in the constitution, the president has a job description...to speak on such an important anniversary." Antipathy Or Sympathy? The 50th anniversary of the invasion, which despite considerable evidence to the contrary the Kremlin has steadfastly claimed followed a request by Czechoslovak politicians, comes at a time when the country's relationship with Russia is divisive. Some fear Moscow still poses a strategic threat even though the Czechs are now part of the European Union and NATO. Others, Zeman among them, say relations should be improved. Critics point to Putin's 2014 annexation of Crimea as evidence that five decades later, Moscow hasn't changed its bullying ways. Some Czech politicians have sought to draw a clear line between the Soviet Union and modern Russia, but polls consistently show a "distinct preponderance of antipathy over sympathy" toward Russia among the Czech public. WATCH: One was a Soviet soldier during the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the other was imprisoned for protesting it. Here's how they met in Prague. The anniversary also comes with the Czech Communist Party -- the former Eastern Bloc's only unreformed Communists -- closer to regaining a seat at the government table than at any time since the fall of communism in November 1989.