WHAT'S ON BRITSKÉ LISTY

A witness account

15. 7. 2010 / Jan Čulík

In relation to Karel Dolejší's piece (We are in 2010, not 1968), I would like to add two witnessing accounts from someone who was alive and part of that era. During the Prague Sping of 1968 (mostly) nothing was written about the possibility of an invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet forces not because that would be the consequence of some kind of censorship (at the time anarchy ruled, there was no censorship going on, everybody printed whatever they wished), but because in that widespread euphoria with the renewed freedoms, that thought simply didn't come to our minds.

A Czech version of this article is in CLICK HERE

That happened probably as a consequence of a series of factors. At the top of the reforming government in 1968 were reformist communists -- idealists -- and the majority of them believed that the regime in the Soviet Union was also idealistic.

Czechoslovak communists -- very arrogantly -- judged that Soviet communism is bad and that they -- messianically -- would show their Soviet comrades how socialism should in actuality be like. From March that year those politicians constantly participated in public discussions and it didn't come to their mind at all that the Soviet leadership could want to solve the "Czechoslovak situation" using force.

Not even the population was expecting an invasion and this was a subject not discussed even in private. People mostly had sympathy towards the Soviet Union. We even bragged about how "we are building here a better socialism model than in the Soviet Union". Exactly because of those circumstances the invasion of August 21st 1968 was such a shock to everybody.

And another point: it is not true that "the communist leadership brought the so-called Normalization period" to the nation, considering that at the time the communist leadership had already been changed.

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Obsah vydání | Pondělí 2.8. 2010