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In January 1968, Alexander
Dubcek succeeded Stalinist tyrant Antonin Novotny as secretary of the
Czech Communist Party. With full central-committee support, he began to
institute political and economic reforms unprecedented in a Communist-bloc
country: a free press, an independent legal system and religious tolerance.
The Prague Spring represented the fullest flowering of democracy behind
the Iron Curtain. But Dubcek’s "socialism with a face" died
the same year the same way a similar experiment had died twelve years
earlier: under brutal Soviet repression.
Inspired by the liberal
atmosphere in Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia, a group of intellectuals
issued the "Two Thousand Words" manifesto in June, calling for
the full implementation of democracy. With that, the vigilant Soviet Union
decided it had seen enough and issued an order together with Poland and
East Germany: Cease and desist all counter-revolutionary activities. In
late July, unimpressed with Dubcek’s assurances, Leonid Brezhnev, the
Soviet Party chairman, called him to the USSR for an official rebuke.
A hero’s welcome greeted Ducek’s return to Prague: he had stood up to
the Soviet boss and lived to tell about it. An optimistic mood swept the
nation – until the troops arrived: 650,000 Warsaw Pact troops invaded
Czechoslovakia on August 20.
But the country remained
idealistic, even in the face of a impending political winter. The entire
Czech Communist Party and Czech President Ludvik Svoboda supported Dubcek.
The Kremlin could find nobody to take Dubcek’s place and Brezhnev solved
the problem by allowing him to remain in office. However real power now
lay with the tanks and troops ever present in Prague. The revolution ended
and Gustav Husak, a Soviet puppet, came forward in April 1969 to take
Dubcek’s place.
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