An invading army’s tanks on the streets of Prague, that jewel of European capital cities. A peaceful political reform movement crushed. A nation’s leaders flown under duress to Moscow and forced to repudiate their humane ideals. Fifty years ago in Czechoslovakia, August was anything but a quiet summer month.
On the night of August 20 1968, almost half a million Warsaw Pact troops over-ran Czechoslovakia to suppress the Prague Spring— an attempt by its reform-minded communist leaders, led by Alexander Dubcek, to bring liberal change to their country. Some troops were from Bulgaria, East Germany, Hungary and Poland. But most were from the Soviet Union.
The Kremlin line was that the invaders were rendering “fraternal assistance” to an ally in the “socialist camp” at risk of succumbing to counter-revolution. But as young Russian soldiers seized control of Prague and Bratislava, they were stunned to hear jeers and cries of protest from ordinary Czechs and Slovaks chanting, “Ivan, go home”.