Spring of Prague

For the festival of the same name, to see Festival of the Spring of Prague.

---- The Printemps of Prague (in Czech “ Pražské jaro ”) is one period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia which began the January 5th 1968, to finish the August 20th this same year when the the USSR and its allies of the Warsaw Pact (except the Romania) invaded the country.

Genesis

To the beginning of the year 1968, a political crisis was added to the economic crisis: a movement, come from the interior of the Communist party, started to dispute the direction and, especially, its First Secretary, Antonín Novotný. This one required initially the support of the Soviets who did not intervene. Hoping to keep the control of the situation, Novotný proposed to replace it with the head of the Party, Alexandre Dubček, First Secretary of the Slovak PC. 47 years old, wire of a Communist militant who had emigrated in the USSR in the Thirties, it presented all the guarantees. However, Novotný wanted to keep the Presidency of the Republic. Demonstrations turning to the riot also obliged it to give up this station.

Once places from there, Dubček was pushed by a very strong trend of public opinion to liberalize the mode: abolition of the censure, rehabilitation of the former leaders wrongfully condemned at the time of the Lawsuit of Prague in the Fifties, religious tolerance, réémergence of the old absorptive social democrat party of force by the PC in 1948, etc. To reassure the Soviets, it made elect as President of the Republic, Ludvík Svoboda, former minister for Defense and one of the authors of the Coup of Prague in February 1948.

The crisis with the Soviet Union

The Czechs and Slovak showed many signs of independence under the mandate of Alexander Dubček. The political reforms of Dubček, which aimed at founding the “ Socialisme with human face ”, certainly, did not represent, with the eyes of the Czechs, a complete inversion of the old mode, as it was the case in Hungary in 1956 (Insurrection of Budapest). But, those were seen by the Soviet leaders as a threat against their hegemony on the Europe of the East. Also, the Soviet leaders made more and more pressure on the direction of the PCT to slow down, to even reverse the course of the events. Dubček, supported by all the public opinion, did not want it.

To the eyes of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, the policy of Dubček called into question the nature even of the socialist mode: a reforming economist, Ota Sik was promoted at the station of Deputy Prime Minister and member of the Central committee of the PC. He drew a picture overpowering of the situation on the delay of Czech industry, formerly one of the first of Europe. This report/ratio, known of all, showed obviously that the socialist mode was the person in charge of this failure. For the Soviet Politburo, there was more serious: the Czechoslovakian experiment would not fail to contaminate the Poland, catholic with 90%, which would have fact of jumping the GDR, master trump of the USSR in Europe.

Operation “the Danube”

The political period of liberalization ended between the 18 and on August 20th, when 200.000 soldiers and 5.000 tanks of the Warsaw Pact invaded the country. It was the Opération the Danube .

Whereas imposing armor-mechanized forces crossed the border and that héliportés raids were carried out against objectives at a shallow depth, the parachutists of the Red Army accepted like main mission of investing Prague.

To seize the Capital , an operational jump was not necessary: the August 18th 1968 at 8 p.m. 30, of the parachutists as a civilian discreetly unloaded flight of the Aeroflot on the Aéroport Ruzine of Prague and took control quickly of it.

A few hours later, the first Antonov Year-12 landed to unload troops and heavy material. The men of the 103e airborne division of the guard (DAG) then started to make movement towards the center of Prague, investing in way the presidential palace with the Château of Prague and virtually putting the president Svoboda in a state of arrest.

Ten hours were going to be enough so that the city falls to the hands from the Soviet parachutists . The junction with the terrestrial forces was carried out on August 19th at the evening.

The Soviet tanks entered in force Prague the August 20th and repressed in blood agitations of a hope of Détente in Eastern Europe. That put a term at the Spring of Prague.

The physical occupation of Czechoslovakia was thus carried out in less than twenty-four hours and the return to strict Soviet obedience, the “Normalization”, was carried out quickly. Indeed, since the battle of the White Mountain, in 1620, the Czechs were never defended militarily against the invasions.

Czechoslovakian reaction to the invasion

According to the Czech historian Oldřich Tůma, the Czechoslovakian soldiers were ready to fight and awaited in vain a political decision in this direction. Certain soldiers even drew in blue on charts the positions of the Soviet armies. Blue was then the color to designate the enemy. An officer was expelled of the Army because of that.

The Czechoslovakian generals were related to the Soviets. They had studied in the Soviet schools. They considered the Soviets, like their " supérieurs". Moscow thus had accurate informations on the Czechoslovakian Army. In this direction, it belonged to the Soviet Army.

The historian Oldřich Tůma adds that the high command was certainly with the current of the preparations of this invasion. There were people with the ministry for defense to help them. It was impossible that a massive regrouping men at the borders of Czechoslovakia, during several months before the intervention, passed unperceived from the Czechoslovakian military high command.

On the other hand, the officers moreover low level wished to intervene. In the absence of political decision, they opposed a passive resistance, while refusing for example to return their weapons in Sovétiques. In Hungary, the soldiers had returned their weapons in 1956 at the time of the Insurrection of Budapest and the Army had collapsed. The Army knew then a great purging of the soldiers pro-Dubček

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