PREVIEW: Czechs, Slovaks recall Russia's bloody 1968 crackdown

Aug 20, 2008, 15:42 GMT

Prague - Czechs and Slovaks on Thursday commemorate 40 years since Soviet tanks rolled in to end the Prague Spring, a short-lived movement to reform communism that challenged Moscow's domination of eastern Europe.

New studies say 108 people died in fighting that followed the Warsaw Pact's invasion of then Czechoslavkia on August 21, 1968, which helped communism survive for another 20 years.

To mark the anniversary, Prague's National Museum was opening an exhibit with mementos and recollections from ordinary citizens that revives the pain and emotion of the Czechs' defeat.

In an invasion flashback, the display includes a Soviet T-54 tank in front of the stately building, still scarred by shrapnel from 1968.

Also in the show are stories and personal items from Jan Palach, a Prague student who set himself on fire in January 1969 to protest the invasion. He died a few days later, making him a martyr in the eyes of Western anti-communists.

In the anniversary run-up, Russia's invasion of Georgia led top Czech politicians and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to draw parallels to the crushing of the Prague Spring, a sign that the legacy still packs emotional power.

However, a recent poll found that 70 per cent of Czechs younger than 20 have 'no opinion' on the events of 1968.

Thursday's commemorations were designed to focus attention on the heroes and victims at least for a day.

Among the expected guests were former dissidents from Russia, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary and East Germany who protested the invasion in their home countries.

One of them, Natalya Gorbanevskaya, now 72, was among eight Russians who demonstrated in Moscow's Red Square on August 25, 1968. She was punished with internment in a psychiatric hospital.

Czech and Slovak government leaders - the two parts of the country split peacefully in 1993 - planned to mark the anniversary at events in both capitals, Prague and Bratislava.

Czechoslovakia's ferment began in early 1968 as a new generation of Communist leaders led by party chief Alexander Dubcek, a Slovak, pushed to reform a declining economy and loosen the party's choking grip on civil life.

The Warsaw Pact invasion shocked the West but, in keeping with Cold War logic, there was no military response.

Afterwards, the Soviets installed a loyal regime that purged the reformists over the next few years.

It took another two decades before communism fell and democracy came to Czechoslovakia in the 1989 Velvet Revolution. The last Soviet soldier left in 1991 and Dubcek lived to see the overthrow of communism, dying in 1992 at age 70.

In a 2006 visit to the Czech capital, then-president Vladimir Putin expressed Russia's 'moral responsibility' for crushing the Prague Spring.