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Post by kaima on Oct 3, 2020 0:50:38 GMT -7
A Slovak version of the American inaction during the Aug 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact and Poland... historyweb.dennikn.sk/clanky/detail/ako-reagovali-americania-na-invaziu-do-ceskoslovenska-21-augusta-1968How did the Americans react to the invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 21, 1968?Published: 21.08.2020 | Views: 9566| 11 minutes of reading Washington watched the Prague Spring closely, but he was not sure what the Czechs and Slovaks under the leadership of the new first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Alexander Dubcek, actually wanted. How will the geopolitical position of Czechoslovakia change in the event of the success of "socialism with a human face"? Will Prague open more to the West commercially and politically? Will it loosen its ties with Moscow, the Warsaw Pact and the CMEA? Will it turn into a new Yugoslavia, Romania or even a neutral Austria? The Czechoslovak reformers did not want to change the foreign policy orientation of the country. The more Moscow accused Prague of a "creeping counter-revolution" instigated by the West, the more Dubcek (1921-1992, in office 1968-1969) tried - in vain and clumsily - to assure Moscow that it was primarily concerned with internal reforms and that Czechoslovakia would remain loyal to socialist allies. Prudent inactionWashington therefore remained "prudent inactivity." On the one hand, he tried to avoid any steps that would provide ammunition to Soviet propaganda, from the beginning accusing the West of infiltrating Czechoslovakia and inciting a "creeping counter-revolution." US Secretary of State Dean Rusk spoke with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin about this issue and protested against US involvement in this "internal affair of the Soviet bloc." On the other hand, the administration of Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson (1963–1969) had to resist criticism from both domestic Republicans and its Western allies for doing nothing against increasing Soviet interference and threats to Czechoslovakia in the spring and summer of 1968, thus legitimizing the alleged "Yalta division of the world". While this was de facto true, Washington has always vehemently denied it publicly as a "Yalta myth." In his deliberations as to whether to support the Prague Spring, Washington considered a historical lesson from the Hungarian uprising of 1956. At the time, his overly militant rhetoric, spread mainly through the Free Europe and Voice of America radio stations, created exaggerated expectations of possible military aid to insurgents . The discrepancy between promises and reality at the time significantly damaged the American reputation and became a trauma and memento for the American administration. In 1968, therefore, the United States purposefully avoided any concrete and direct military assistance to the people behind the Iron Curtain. As historian Günter Bischof points out, in the event of an invasion of Czechoslovakia, even Washington abandoned the traditional propaganda campaign condemning Soviet imperialism and the oppression of enslaved nations. Not everyone inside the Johnson administration agreed. When the Soviets first tried to intimidate the Czechoslovak leadership in May 1968 with the movements of their troops in the GDR and Poland , on May 10, 1968, Eugene V. Rostow, a lawyer and permanent secretary for political affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, wrote a memorandum to his chief Russia. Among other things, it stated:"I think it would be a serious mistake not to let the Soviets make our concerns about the movement of troops around Czechoslovakia private. In retrospect, our inability to deter the Communists from taking power in Czechoslovakia in 1948 has been one of the biggest mistakes in our foreign policy since World War II. If we had taken a firm diplomatic stance when we had a monopoly on an atomic weapon, we could well have prevented the Cold War. " Rostow continued to urge Russia to respond more forcefully:" The Russians are hesitant. Now is the time to give them an intimidating signal. When they cross the border, it will be too late. ” Rusk wrote a short note on the document, which could also serve as the title of the entire American policy in relation to Czechoslovakia in 1968: "Do nothing." Balls on legs Washington was limited by several factors. In 1956, in response to the Soviet intervention against Hungary, his hands were bound by the corrupt invasion of Suez against Egypt, which, together with Israel, was carried out on their own by the British and the French. In 1968, the much more difficult sphere was the conflict in Vietnam, which absorbed most of America's military, material, mental and diplomatic capabilities. Washington therefore sought and welcomed any means, even if it was a rapprochement with Moscow - including a major ally and arms supplier to Hanoi - to help it get out of the "Vietnamese mud ." Despite the Vietnam conflict, after the heightened period of the Berlin and Caribbean crises of 1961–1962, both superpowers were on the trajectory of the Cold War de-escalation. As a result, little progress has been made on nuclear weapons control. On August 5, 1963, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom signed the Test Ban Treaty in Moscow to partially ban nuclear tests in the atmosphere, space, and underwater . It was followed by the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty of July 1, 1968. In it, the United States, the USSR, and the United Kingdom undertook not to help other countries acquire nuclear weapons. It was a significant diplomatic success for President Johnson and he defended before the US Senate as "the most important international agreement limiting nuclear armaments since the beginning of the nuclear age . " He also wanted to continue with the long-awaited summit, which was to be in Leningrad in October 1968. It was to begin talks on the reduction of strategic weapons and missile defense systems, later known as SALT I. The "third ball" on Johnson's foot was the complicated situation on the domestic scene. As in 1956, a sharp presidential election campaign took place in 1968. The paradox was that Johnson, as president, was not running for office in his first full term, even though he could. The Vietnam conflict broke him and drained him of energy and self-confidence so much that he doubted whether he would have managed the campaign for the second period at all. The first blow was dealt to him in March 1968 by the then indistinct Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy in the primary in New Hampshire, which he almost won with the slogan "no war in Vietnam". The second blow was the subsequent candidacy of Senator and former Justice Secretary Robert Kennedy. Johnson feared Kennedy's "machinery" and assumed that even if he defeated Kennedy in the primaries, it would be at the expense of a split in the Democratic Party and overall success in the November election. But on June 6, 1968, Kennedy was assassinated. As historian Robert Dallek points out, Johnson began to consider the idea that he would nevertheless return to the struggle for democratic nomination. Opinion polls theoretically gave him a better chance of succeeding Republican candidate Richard Nixon than the current Democrat candidate, Johnson's vice president Hubert Humphrey. According to Dallek, the situation was complicated by the fact that Humphrey tried to define Johnson in his Vietnamese strategy. For example, the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam , otherwise known as the Viet Cong, wanted to invite peace talks . When Johnson learned on July 25, 1968, that Humphrey wanted to include the request in his nomination, he became enraged and allegedly threatened Humphrey with his chances of the presidency torpedoing. According to Dallek, Johnson even became convinced that Republicans and Nixon now have a more sensible attitude towards Vietnam. Johnson's distracted reaction to the invasion of Czechoslovakia (which some interpreted as evidence of Johnson's declining mental capacity) can be explained, among other things, by the fact that he was thinking of the party's upcoming congress, which was scheduled to begin on August 26, 1968 in Chicago. Perhaps he had already imagined how he would enter the quarrel "like a savior on a white horse," accept a nomination from "desperate" delegates, and electrify the voter before the autumn fight with Nixon. However, the congress actually ended in chaos and was paralyzed by anti-war protests. In such an atmosphere, Johnson's personal presence was unthinkable. The president's celebration of his 60th birthday, which was to culminate in the congress on August 27, was severely bitter and he definitively gave up the idea of running for office. But you'll invite us, right?And then came August 20, 1968. Let the word Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin in Washington: "Early in the morning of that day surprised me urgent instructions from Moscow, so I met with President Johnson ... I got instructions to schedule an appointment with presidents between 18:00 to 20:00 Washington time, just in time for the tanks to go to Prague ... I remembered that a few years ago the president himself gave me his personal phone number in case 'if necessary'.But I've never used it before ... Without asking about the reason for the meeting, Johnson immediately agreed and suggested that I come around noon. As I had to adhere to the strict timetable set by Moscow, I asked him to accept me only after 6 pm on the pretext that I still had to translate the message that I would be interpreting. Johnson agreed ... I arrived at the White House at 8 p.m. Johnson received me in the boardroom. We sat at a long polished table with his national security adviser, Walt Rostow ... I read a report from Moscow stating that there was a 'conspiracy of an internal and external reaction against the social system in Czechoslovakia'. In the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union and its allies responded to the Prague government's request for help. “Accordingly,” the report continued, 'Soviet troops were ordered to cross the borders of Czechoslovakia.' The report concluded that Moscow assumed that " US-Soviet relations, to which the Soviet government attaches great importance, will not be damaged in any way." President Johnson Dobrynin's reaction surprised:"... he listened intently, but apparently did not immediately appreciate the importance of the report. To my surprise, he didn't react to it at all, he just thanked me for the information ... Then he approached another topic, on which he obviously cared much more. He said he was awaiting our response regarding his intention to announce his visit to the Soviet Union. This announcement was scheduled for 10:00 a.m. the next morning. (Moscow agreed to his visit in principle a few days ago, but now, of course, there was little hope that the visit would take place.) ... The president looked cheerful and said he attached great importance to the upcoming meeting with Soviet leaders. He hoped to discuss a number of key issues, including Vietnam and the Middle East. Johnson pointed out that this time he has 'more freedom to act' and that he expects the meeting to bring some concrete results. " Johnson initially refused to take note of the report. The explanation for this "cognitive dissonance" was simple. On August 19, Dobrynin handed over a report to Johnson, according to which the president was able to publicly announce the holding of a summit between the USA and the USSR at the beginning of October 1968 in Leningrad on August 21. On August 20, Johnson had lunch with his advisers on the success of the upcoming summit, while CIA chief Richard Helms had already warned him that a hastily convened meeting of the CPSU Central Committee in Moscow did not bode well and most likely meant intervention in Czechoslovakia. Johnson therefore thought mainly of the summit and wanted to play the Czechoslovak "inconvenience" in the car. As Dobrynin adds: "He offered me whiskey (I would have drunk anything at that moment!). And he started telling me various funny stories about Texas. Johnson was good at that ... When we said goodbye, Johnson was very friendly and reminded me again that he was looking forward to our response so that he could announce his visit to the Soviet Union. " Dobrynin understood correctly that Rostow and Russia would have the main say before Johnson. Experienced professionals set in motion a crisis management team in the White House and convened an extraordinary meeting of the National Security Committee on 22.15. Johnson must have run out of events. He felt deceived by Kremlin leaders and reluctantly agreed to cancel the October summit. Before midnight, Rusk invited Dobrynin again, this time to the Foreign Ministry, and told him that "the Soviet action is like throwing a dead fish in the president's face." He also ordered Dobrynin to call Moscow immediately and cancel all preparations for the planned summit, saying that the United States did not want to be accomplices to the Soviet "march on Czechoslovakia." That night, Rusk activated a special task force to monitor the Czechoslovak crisis and coordinate the response with NATO and key US allies. Bonn, for example, was asked to monitor its borders with Czechoslovakia and prevent a possible incident. Together with Vienna, he should also have been ready to provide assistance to potential refugees. That was about all Washington could do at this point. Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford agreed with the president that the United States has no obligation to help the Czechs and Slovaks militarily when, unlike the Hungarians in 1956, Washington did not even show a strong will to resist. The head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Earle G. Wheeler, said bluntly that the US military response was out of the question: "We don't have the forces to do that." According to Russia, military intervention would mean world war. At the same time, he expressed frustration that there was often a sign of equality between the Soviet intervention and the American engagement in Vietnam around the world. Crisis part of the daily routineOn Wednesday, August 21, 1968, the Czechoslovak crisis became part of the daily routine for President Johnson. He got up at eight o'clock in the morning, began working on the agenda by telephone and preparing an official statement condemning the invasion. He then went to work and telephoned key members of Congress to brief them on the situation. As Bischof points out, when the White House learned of the ongoing invasion on August 20, 1968, it launched its "routine" crisis management. However, it was already clear in September that the US would limit itself to protests at the UN and to trying to prevent further potential interventions in Romania, Yugoslavia, Austria or West Berlin. As Dobrynin mentioned: “... 28. In August, Rusk urged me urgently ... he learned of the unusually active movement of Soviet troops along the Romanian border ... There was already speculation in the West about the possibility of a Soviet invasion of Romania, which was to be largely justified by Romania's refusal to participate in a joint actions with other members of the Warsaw Pact against Czechoslovakia ... However, Moscow did not consider the invasion of Romania, because it never doubted the stability of the Romanian communist regime ... When I arrived, Rusk had a message ready for the Soviet government. " It turned out to be quite emotional ... " On behalf of humanity, " he said."We ask you not to attack Romania, because the consequences would be unpredictable. We also hope that no action will be taken against West Berlin that could cause a serious international crisis, which we eagerly want to avoid at all costs. All of this would have catastrophic consequences for Soviet-American relations and for the whole world. " According to Dobrynin, immediately after the meeting, he urged Moscow to reassure Washington: "... I soon returned with a response to the Foreign Ministry. I have been instructed to inform you, " I told Russia, " that reports of an impending transfer of Soviet forces to Romania are the product of some circles aimed at establishing a US government and do not reflect reality. The same goes for West Berlin. ” Rusk accepted the report with obvious relief. The Soviet invasion also dealt a blow to the Johnson administration's efforts to "build bridges" toward the countries behind the Iron Curtain. However, as Bischof adds, when the new president, Nixon, took office, he immediately resumed rapprochement with the USSR, which appeared to be interrupted but not stopped by the invasion, and continued Johnson's policy on SALT I. After all, the crisis was good for Washington. Johnson used Czechoslovakia as a deterrent to the need to "discipline" NATO-ridden and to reject Montana Senator Mike Mansfield's efforts from his own Democratic Party to reduce the number of US troops in Europe. The invasion also weakened Charles de Gaulle's French "rebel in NATO" (1959-1969) and his Americans' not quite conventional vision of "Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals."
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Post by pieter on Oct 3, 2020 8:56:05 GMT -7
Ron, first of all, I (Pieter) have seen a lot of civil wars and wars through the lens of exellent war correspondents, foreign correspondents and also local professional and amateure photographers in quality newspapers, magazines, encyclopedia, documentaries and movies. These professional and amateure photographers and cameramen/camerawomen (film/video) with great heroism often took epic images which sometimes in one image, one frame, one photo or one film shoot captured the larger image. The image of the presumably Czech man next to the invading Warsaw Pact tanks says it all. The contrast between the expression on the man's face and the overwhelming power of the row of heavy tanks.I think this is the Wenceslas Square in Prague in August 1968 during the Warsaw Pact invasion of Cechoslovakia by Sovjet, Polish, Bulgarian and Hungarian troops.Kai (Ron),
Thanks your for posting this thread about this so dramatic, sad, terrible and humiliating part of the 20th century history for the Czech and Slovak people. Also your family members in the Czech and Slovak parts of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (Czech and Slovak: Československá socialistická republika, ČSSR) must have sufferend Ron. The American ambivalent and hesitant reaction to the Sovjet invasion of Czechoslovakia was dissapointing to many in Central-, Eastern- and Western-European people. From Helsinki to Budapest and from Amsterdam to Moscow. Maybe Dean Rusk, the United States Secretary of State from 1961 to 1969, and President Lyndon B. Johnson and US generals and US diplomats had their hands full with the Vietnam war and couldn't handle a second European front? Unfortunately the Prague Spring reforms had no chance due to the overwhelming foreign power of the combined Sovjet, Polish, Bulgarian and Hungarian Warsaw Pact forces. The strong attempt by the First Secretary of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), the Slovak Alexander Dubček (1921 – 1992) to grant additional rights to the citizens of Czechoslovakia in an act of partial decentralization of the economy and democratization could not be implemented. The freedoms granted included a loosening of restrictions on the media, speech and travel. Dubček's socialism with a human face, a Humanist Czechoslovakian form of socialism was a beautiful experiment in the middle of the Warsaw pact and Comecon Sovjet sphere. The Czechs and Slovaks were left on their own for the second time in one century. First during the Nazi German annexation of Sudetenland in 1938, continued with the March 1939 invasion of the Czech lands and the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and by the end of 1944 extended to all parts of the former Czechoslovakia. And Secondly by the Sovjet occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968 by the Sovjet Army, the Polish Peoples Army, the Bulgarian 12th and 22nd Infantry Regiments numbering 2,164 people and a T-34 tank battalion with 26 machines and the Hungarian army. In 1968 the Hungarian People's Army joined Soviet troops in invading Czechoslovakia and restoring order in Prague.Photograph of a Soviet tank in Prague during the Warsaw Pact's occupation of Czechoslovakia.Bulgarian Army BTR-60PA during the 1968 Warsaw Pact opression of the Prague SpringThe Hungarian Peoples Army, one of the invaders and occupiers of Czechoslovakia on parade in April 4th 1964 in BudapestWhen the troops of the Warsaw Pact countries invaded the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (ČSSR) in August 1968, around 24,300 Polish soldiers with 750 tanks and 650 armored vehicles took part in addition to soldiers from the Soviet Union, Hungary and Bulgaria remained stationed in the neighboring country for several months.Officers of the Polish Peoples army (Ludowe Wojsko Polskie) 27. tank regiment in Ilniku, Mělník, in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic, during the Prague Spring 1968.Second Polish Army 22.08.1968 7 AM o’clock. Report : Morale amongst the troops on exercise is very good. The men are convinced that they have entered Czechoslovakia in a good cause. An example of this was provided by the troops stationed in the Jaromer (from 24th Tank Regiment) who firmly opposed efforts to get them to disobey orders. These efforts were made by the assistant regimental commander for political affairs of a Czechoslovak People’s Army 101th Regiment chemical protection (MU 9983). In August and September 1968, the 11th Armoured Division of the Ludowe Wojsko Polskie was one of the Polish units that took part in the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. (Source: www.ondrejkovics-sandor.com/?lg=2 / en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11th_Armoured_Cavalry_Division)Polish troops in Czechoslovakia in 1968Bonobo, the Polish moderator from Kraków of the other Proboards Polish Culture Forum wrote: "Polish troops in Czechoslovakia. Poles "heroically defended" a few big towns against Czech patriots: Hradec Kralove, Pardubice, Olomunec, Trutnow."Polish soldiers of the occupying Polish Peoples Army, Ludowe Wojsko Polskie, in Czechoslovakia in 1968Czechoslovak land occupied by the Polish Peoples ArmyPolish tanks on Czechoslovak streets in 1968 during the Warsaw Pact occupation of CzechoslovakiaPolish tanks on Czechoslovak streets in 1968 during the Warsaw Pact occupation of CzechoslovakiaSource: polandsite.proboards.com/thread/5617/poles-helped-suppress-prague-springBonobo further wrote in the thread "Poles helped to suppress 1968 Prague Spring", I quote Bonobo; "The occupation was not too peaceful. Polish soldiers actively suppressed the Czech opposition, by tracking down illegal radio stations or printing houses. They also removed the anti-invasion graffiti on walls. They put pressure on local patriotic authorities which were reluctant to cooperate with true communists who started taking control thanks to the invasion.
Polish soldiers sometimes behaved like real occupants. When they went to local pubs and received unfriendly comments from Czechs, they could get really nasty and it often happened that they ordered a Czech man to drink beer from his shoes.....
The greatest tragedy happened when on 7 September, 1968, a drunk Polish soldier opened fire into the crowd of civilians, killing 2 and wounding 5 people on the spot. The killer was sentenced to death, later changed to life, and finally left prison after 15 years."One of the killed Czechs during the incident of 7 September, 1968, when a drunk Polish soldier opened fire into the crowd of civilians, killing 2 and wounding 5 people on the spot.One of the wounded Czechs after the fire of the Polish soldierFlowers for the 2 killed Czech citizensOne of the killed Czechs, the Czech singer Jaroslav VeselyPoland8 September 1968, Ryszard Siwiec immolates himself in Warsaw during a harvest festival at the 10th-Anniversary StadiumIn the People's Republic of Poland, on 8 September 1968, Ryszard Siwiec immolated himself in Warsaw during a harvest festival at the 10th-Anniversary Stadium in protest against the Warsaw Pact's invasion of Czechoslovakia and the totalitarianism of the Communist regime. Siwiec did not survive. After his death, Soviets and Polish communists attempted to discredit his act by claiming that he was psychologically ill and mentally unstable. Kai (Ron), I (Pieter) heard several older and younger Poles speak about their shame about the Polish involvement in the invasions and occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Despite the fact that the Polish regime, and the Polish generals and officers of the Polish Peoples Army were communists and some of the soldiers as well, they still were ashamed about the invasion of the country of their Czech and Slovak Western slav brothers. Of course the majority of the Polish people didn't support the invasion and occupation. Conscious Poles were deeply ashamed by it. One of them was Ryszard Siwiec.
The Polish authorities, the reactions of the Polish communists
The First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza), the PZPR, Władysław Gomułka’s attitude towards the Prague Spring was negative from the very beginning. He warned Alexander Dubček against dangerous effects of the reforms which were being introduced. He was worried about possible deconstruction of the Soviet Bloc and probably for this reason as the events unfolded he vehemently supported the intervention of the Warsaw Pact forces behind the southern border.
An Anti-Czech propaganda campaign was spread all over Poland. By means of the whole media machine (press, radio, television) the society was being threatened with consequences of Czechoslovakian reforms and, above all, threats from ‘West German revisionists’. Meetings of POPs [pol. podstawowa organizacja partyjna, e.g. basic party unit's] were being organised on a large scale where it was stated that ‘Zionists’ and ‘revisionists’ were responsible for reforms introduced at our southern neighbour’s and their sole aim was to destroy socialism.8 September 1968, Ryszard Siwiec immolates himself in Warsaw during a harvest festival at the 10th-Anniversary StadiumEast GermanyIn the German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik, DDR), the invasion aroused discontent mostly among young people who had hoped that Czechoslovakia would pave the way for a more liberal socialism. However, isolated protests were quickly stopped by the Volkspolizei and Stasi (Staatssicherheitsdienst, SSD).
Volkspolizei officers in East-Germany
The logo of the notorious of the Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS) or State Security Service (Staatssicherheitsdienst, SSD), commonly known as the Stasi, the official state security service of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). The Stasi together with the East German police, the Volkspolizei, oppressed the protest against the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968
The hopes of reform socialism associated with more freedom, which had arisen in the East-German GDR (German Democratic Republic) population with the Prague Spring 1968 despite the renewed climate of repression, were suddenly dashed when parts of the United Armed Forces of the Warsaw Treaty under Soviet leadership subdued the Czechoslovak reform model of KPČ party leader Alexander Dubček by military means. The protests directed against it, mainly by young people in small groups in many cities in Communist East-Germany, were nipped in the bud by the security organs of the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS). In this context, the MfS (=Stasi) established over 2000 “hostile acts” up to November 1968.
Although Mielke's Stasi was superficially granted independence in 1957, until 1990 the KGB continued to maintain liaison officers in all eight main Stasi directorates, each with his own office inside the Stasi's Berlin compound, and in each of the fifteen Stasi district headquarters around East Germany. Collaboration was so close that the KGB invited the Stasi to establish operational bases in Moscow and Leningrad (Saint Petersburg today) to monitor visiting East German tourists and Mielke referred to the Stasi officers as "Chekists of the Soviet Union". In 1978, Mielke formally granted KGB officers in East Germany the same rights and powers that they enjoyed in the Soviet Union.Public reaction to the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968High school students in the Swiss capital, Bern, demonstrate against the Soviet invasion. ( Source: www.swissinfo.ch/eng/50-years-on_why-switzerland-welcomed-prague-spring-refugees/44337278 )Public reaction to the invasion was widespread and divided. Although the majority of the Warsaw Pact supported the invasion along with several other communist parties worldwide, Western nations, along with Albania, Romania, and particularly China condemned the attack, and many other communist parties either lost influence, denounced the USSR, or split up/dissolved due to conflicting opinions. The Dutch communist party, the CPN, for instance, condemned the Soviet intervention against the Prague Spring. Demonstration of the Communist Party of the Netherlands on the First of MaySoviet Union On 25 August, at the Red Square, eight protesters carried banners with anti-invasion slogans. The demonstrators were arrested and later punished, as the protest was dubbed "anti-Soviet".
One unintended consequence of the invasion was that many within the Soviet State security apparatus and Intelligence Services were shocked and outraged at the invasion and several KGB/GRU defectors and spies such as Oleg Gordievsky, Vasili Mitrokhin, and Dmitri Polyakov have pointed out the 1968 invasion as their motivation for cooperating with the Western Intelligence agencies. A demonstration in Helsinki, protesting the Soviet invasion.RomaniaBucharest, August 1968: Nicolae Ceaușescu, the general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, criticizing the Soviet invasionA more pronounced effect took place in the Socialist Republic of Romania, which did not take part in the invasion. Nicolae Ceauşescu, who was already a staunch opponent of Soviet influence and had previously declared himself on Dubček's side, held a public speech in Bucharest on the day of the invasion, depicting Soviet policies in harsh terms. This response consolidated Romania's independent voice in the next two decades, especially after Ceauşescu encouraged the population to take up arms in order to meet any similar manoeuvre in the country: he received an enthusiastic initial response, with many people, who were by no means Communist, willing to enroll in the newly formed paramilitary Patriotic Guards.Nicolae Ceauşescu (right) visiting Czechoslovakia in 1968; here, with Alexander Dubček and Ludvik SvobodaYoung members of the Patriotic Guards in Romania during a training against a possible Sovjet invasion. They were inspired by Yugslavian Peoples Self Defence tactics and strategies in Josip Broz Tito's YugoslaviaPatriotic Guards training. The soldiers were often equipped with World War II weapons, such as this licensed-built Romanian ZB Model 30 (center). The ZB-30 and ZB-30J were Czechoslovakian light machine guns that saw extensive use during World War II. Reactions around the worldThe night of the invasion, Canada, Denmark, France, Paraguay, the United Kingdom, and the United States all requested a session of the United Nations Security Council. That afternoon, the council met to hear the Czechoslovak Ambassador Jan Muzik denounce the invasion. Soviet Ambassador Jacob Malik insisted the Warsaw Pact actions were those of "fraternal assistance" against "antisocial forces". The next day, several countries suggested a resolution condemning the intervention and calling for immediate withdrawal. US Ambassador George Ball, suggested that "the kind of fraternal assistance that the Soviet Union is according to Czechoslovakia is exactly the same kind that Cain gave to Abel".
Soviet Ambassador to the United Nations Jacob Malik
US Ambassador to the UN, George Ball
Ball accused Soviet delegates of filibustering to put off the vote until the occupation was complete. Malik continued to speak, ranging in topics from US exploitation of Latin America's raw materials to statistics on Czech commodity trading. Eventually, a vote was taken. Ten members supported the motion; Algeria, India, and Pakistan abstained; the USSR (with veto power) and Hungary opposed it. Canadian delegates immediately introduced another motion asking for a UN representative to travel to Prague and work for the release of the imprisoned Czechoslovak leaders. Malik accused Western countries of hypocrisy, asking "who drowned the fields, villages, and cities of Vietnam in blood?" By 26 August, another vote had not taken place, but a new Czechoslovak representative requested the whole issue be removed from the Security Council's agenda.
Although the United States insisted at the UN that Warsaw Pact aggression was unjustifiable, its position was weakened by its own actions. Only three years earlier, US delegates to the UN had insisted that the overthrow of the leftist government of the Dominican Republic, as part of Operation Power Pack, was an issue to be worked out by the Organization of American States (OAS) without UN interference. When UN Secretary-General U Thant called for an end to the bombing of Vietnam, the Americans questioned why he didn't similarly intervene on the matter of Czechoslovakia, to which he responded that "if Russians were bombing and napalming the villages of Czechoslovakia" he might have called for an end to the occupation.
The United States government sent Shirley Temple Black, the famous child movie star, who became a diplomat in later life, to Prague in August 1968 to prepare to become the first United States Ambassador to a free Czechoslovakia. Two decades later, when Czechoslovakia became independent in 1989, Temple Black was finally recognized as the first American ambassador to a truly free Czechoslovakia.
US diplomat and later ambassador to Czechoslovakia Shirley Temple Black
In Finland, a neutral country under some Soviet political influence at that time, the occupation caused a major scandal.
The People's Republic of China objected furiously to the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine, which declared the Soviet Union alone had the right to determine what nations were properly Communist and could invade those Communist nations whose communism did not meet the Kremlin's approval. Mao Zedong saw the Brezhnev doctrine as the ideological justification for a would-be Soviet invasion of China, and launched a massive propaganda campaign condemning the invasion of Czechoslovakia, despite his own earlier opposition to the Prague Spring. Speaking at a banquet held at the Romanian Embassy in Beijing on 23 August 1968, the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai denounced the Soviet Union for "fascist politics, great power chauvinism, national egoism and social imperialism", going on to compare the invasion of Czechoslovakia to the American war in Vietnam and more pointedly to the policies of Adolf Hitler towards Czechoslovakia in 1938–39. Zhou ended his speech with a barely veiled call for the people of Czechoslovakia to wage guerrilla war against the Red Army.Demonstration in Kiel, Germany against the invasion of Czechoslovakia and Vietnam War, 23 August 1968Premier Zhou Enlai of the Communist Maoist China of ao ZedongSources: Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, Jstor, Online library and Bonobo's Proboards Polish Culture Forum ( polandsite.proboards.com/thread/5617/poles-helped-suppress-prague-spring )
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Post by pieter on Oct 3, 2020 18:35:07 GMT -7
Kai,
The Prague Spring, the brief period of liberalization in Czechoslovakia under Alexander Dubček in 1968 was a short period of hope for the Czechs and Slovaks. In and outside Czechoslovakia Dubček's liberal policies and reformes gained admiration and support and his direction of Czexhoslovak communism became known as 'Socialism with a human face'. Soon after he became first secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party on January 5, 1968, Dubček granted the press greater freedom of expression; he also rehabilitated victims of political purges during the Joseph Stalin era. In April he promulgated a sweeping reform program that included autonomy for Slovakia, a revised constitution to guarantee civil rights and liberties, and plans for the democratization of the government. Dubček claimed that he was offering “socialism with a human face.” By June many Czechs were calling for more rapid progress toward real democracy. Although Dubček insisted that he could control the country’s transformation, the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries viewed the developments as tantamount to counterrevolution. On the evening of August 20, Soviet armed forces invaded the country and quickly occupied it. As hard-line communists retook positions of power, the reforms were curtailed, and Dubček was deposed the following April.
On June 27, 1968, the Czech dissident reformist writer Ludvík Vaculík published a document signed by a large number of people representing all walks of Czechoslovak life. This document, dubbed the “Two Thousand Words” manifesto, constituted a watershed in the evolution of the Prague Spring: it urged mass action to demand real democracy. Though shocked by the proclamation, Dubček was convinced that he could control the transformation of Czechoslovakia.
"The Two Thousand Words" (full title: 2000 Words to Workers, Farmers, Officials, Scientists, Artists, and Everyone); Czech: Dva tisíce slov, které patří dělníkům, zemědělcům, úředníkům, umělcům a všem) was signed by intellectuals and artists on June 17, 1968, in the midst of the Prague Spring.
In essence, the "Two Thousand Words" was a call for the people of Czechoslovakia to hold their party accountable to standards of openness—not open revolution. Vaculik began with an assessment of how the nation had declined under the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), painting a picture of moral and economic decay in which workers made no decisions for themselves.
"Most people, therefore, lost interest in public affairs; they worried only about themselves and about their money. Moreover, as a result of these bad conditions, now one cannot even rely on money. Relationships between people were harmed, and they didn’t enjoy working anymore. To sum up, the country reached a point where its spiritual health and character were both ruined."
He gave credit to those "democratically-minded" members of the KSČ who had agitated for change in a stagnant era, saying that it had been possible to air antagonistic ideas only from inside the party structure. These ideas, he says, do not gain their power from being new, but rather weak party leaders and widespread inequality and poverty, which allowed a larger slice of society to realize their position.
Rather than overturning the party, Vaculik prescribed that reformers support its progressive wing, which possessed "well-constructed organizations ... experienced officials ... [and] the decisive levers and buttons." In a time of change, he said, the people should demand transparency in economic management and elect "capable and honest people" to be their representatives, as well as use legal and peaceful protests to bring down corrupt officials. He recognized the importance of a free press, and called for newspapers in the thrall of the party to be turned back into a "platform for all the positive forces." Ludvík VaculíkIn June 1968 the Czech gymnast Věra Čáslavská (1942 - 2016) signed the “Two Thousand Words.” After Soviet tanks entered Prague in August of that year, Čáslavská, facing possible arrest for her political stance, fled to the mountain village of Šumperk.The Czech gymnast Věra ČáslavskáThe statement did not significantly instigate local action, and weakened Czech diplomats like the moderate Josef Smrkovský in his efforts to placate the Soviets, who were disturbed by the pace of reform in Czechoslovakia. Ultimately, it was one of the building blocks that led to the invasion of Czechoslovakia in mid-August.
Back to the Prague Spring before the Warsaw Pact invasion. By April the old apparat had crumbled, and the reformers held sway. Several diehards attempted suicide, but on the whole the transfer of power was peaceful. Oldřich Černík became prime minister, and Šik and Husák became vice premiers in charge of reforms in the economy and Slovakia, respectively. From March 30, Czechoslovakia also had a new president, Ludvík Svoboda, who had been minister of defense in the first postwar government. He had aided the communists during the 1948 coup but was himself purged in the 1950s and had lived in retirement since then. The interior ministry came under the control of another purge victim, Josef Pavel. The newly elected Presidium, the policy-making body of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, consisted largely of newcomers.
The crown achievement of the new reformist government was the Action Program, adopted by the party’s Central Committee in April 1968. The program embodied reform ideas of the several preceding years; it encompassed not only economic reforms but also the democratization of Czechoslovak political life. Among its most important points were the promotion of Slovakia to full parity within a new Czechoslovak federation, long overdue industrial and agricultural reforms, a revised constitution that would guarantee civil rights and liberties, and complete rehabilitation of all citizens whose rights had been infringed in the past. The program also envisaged a strict division of powers: the National Assembly, not the Communist Party, would be in control of the government, which in turn would become a real executive body and not a party branch; courts were to become independent and act as arbiters between the legislative and executive branches. Political pluralism was not recommended, but the Communist Party would have to justify its leading role by competing freely for supremacy with other organizations in the process of formation. International opinion saw Dubček as offering “socialism with a human face.”
The effect of the liberalization movement—which became known as the Prague Spring—on the Czechoslovak public was unprecedented and quite unexpected. Alternative forms of political organization quickly emerged. Former political prisoners founded K 231, a group named after the article of the criminal code under which they had been sentenced; a number of prominent intellectuals formed KAN, a club for committed non-Communist Party members; and there even were efforts to reestablish the Social Democratic Party, forcibly fused with the Communist Party in 1948. With the collapse of the official communist youth movement, youth clubs and the Boy Scouts were resurrected. Christian churches, national minority associations, human rights groups, and other long-forgotten societies became active as well.
The Soviet Union and the other Warsaw Pact allies were far more alarmed. After Dubček declined to participate in a special meeting of the Warsaw Pact powers, they sent him a letter on July 15 saying that his country was on the verge of counterrevolution and that they considered it their duty to protect it. Nevertheless, Dubček remained confident that he could talk himself out of any difficulties with his fellow communist leaders. He accepted an invitation by Brezhnev to a conference at Čierná-nad-Tisou (a small town on the Soviet border with Slovakia), where the Soviet Politburo and the Czechoslovak leaders tried to resolve their problems. On August 3, representatives of the Soviet, East German, Polish, Bulgarian, Hungarian, and Czechoslovak Communist parties met again at Bratislava; the communiqué issued after that meeting gave the impression that pressure would be eased on Czechoslovakia in return for somewhat tighter control over the press.
However, on the evening of Aug. 20, 1968, Soviet-led armed forces invaded the country. The Soviet authorities seized Dubček, Černík, and several other leaders and secretly took them to Moscow. Meanwhile, the population spontaneously reacted against the invasion through acts of passive resistance and improvisation (e.g., road signs were removed so that the invading troops would get lost). Although communications were disrupted and supplies were held up, the people went on with life at the local level. Even the scheduled 14th Communist Party Congress took place on August 22; it elected a pro-Dubček Central Committee and Presidium—the very things the invasion had been timed to prevent. The National Assembly, declaring its loyalty to Dubček, continued its plenary sessions. On August 23 President Svoboda, accompanied by Husák, left for Moscow to negotiate an end to the occupation. But by August 27 the Czechoslovaks had been compelled to yield to the Soviets’ demands in an agreement known as the Moscow Protocol. Svoboda, bringing with him Dubček and the other leaders, returned to Prague to tell the population what price they would have to pay for their “socialism with a human face”: Soviet troops were going to stay in Czechoslovakia for the time being, and the leaders had agreed to tighter controls over political and cultural activities.
The continued presence of Soviet troops helped the communist hard-liners, who were joined by Husák, to defeat Dubček and the reformers. First of all, the 14th Party Congress was declared invalid, as required by the Moscow Protocol; hard-liners were thus able to occupy positions of power. Czechoslovakia was proclaimed a federal republic, with two autonomous units—the Czech Lands (Bohemia and Moravia) forming the Czech Socialist Republic and Slovakia the Slovak Socialist Republic, respectively—each with national parliaments and governments. A federal arrangement was the one concession the hard-liners were ready to make, and, indeed, many citizens (particularly the Slovaks) had desired it. Nonetheless, protests against the curtailing of reforms—such as the dramatic suicide of Jan Palach, a student who on Jan. 16, 1969, set himself on fire—were what held the country’s attention.Alexander Dubček, April 28, 1969.Gradually, Dubček either dismissed his friends and allies or forced them to resign, and on April 17, 1969, Husák replaced him as first secretary. Dubček continued for a while as chairman (speaker) of the parliament and then became ambassador to Turkey. After his recall in 1970 he was stripped of his party membership. The victorious Husák declared the Dubček experiment to be finished and promptly initiated a process of “normalization.”“Normalization” and political dissidenceLeonid Ilyich Brezhnev and Gustav Husak in Prague in May 1970As first secretary, Husák patiently tried to persuade Soviet leaders that Czechoslovakia was a loyal member of the Warsaw Pact. He had the constitution amended to embody the newly proclaimed Brezhnev Doctrine, which asserted the right of the Soviet Union to intervene militarily if it perceived socialism anywhere to be under threat, and in 1971 he repudiated the Prague Spring—declaring that “in 1968 socialism was in danger in Czechoslovakia, and the armed intervention helped to save it.” In 1970 Oldřich Černík was finally forced to resign the premiership; he was succeeded by Husák’s Czech rival, Lubomír Štrougal. In 1975, when President Svoboda retired because of ill health, Husák once again fused the two most important offices in Czechoslovakia and became, with full Soviet approval, president himself.
Having purged the reformists during 1969–71, Husák concentrated almost exclusively on the economy. In the short term, Czechoslovakia did not suffer significantly, even from the disruption caused by the military occupation in 1968. The country undertook important infrastructure improvement projects, notably the construction of the Prague metro and a major motorway connecting Prague with Bratislava in Slovakia. Husák, however, did not permit the industrial and agricultural reforms from the Action Program to be applied and so failed to cure the country’s long-term economic problems. The achievements of the mid- to late 1970s were modest, and by the early 1980s Czechoslovakia was experiencing a serious economic downturn, caused by a decline in markets for its products, burdensome terms of trade with several of its supplier countries, and a surplus of outdated machinery and technology.
Although Husák had avoided the bloodletting of his predecessors, his party purges had damaged Czechoslovak cultural and scientific life, since positions in these two areas depended on membership in the party. Numerous writers, composers, journalists, historians, and scientists found themselves unemployed and forced to accept menial jobs to earn a living. Many of these disappointed intellectuals tried to continue the struggle against the regime, but they were indicted for committing criminal acts in pursuance of political objectives. Though these trials could not be compared to the Stalinist show trials, they kept discontent among the intellectuals simmering, even if the mass of the population was indifferent. Intellectual discontent gathered strength in January 1977, when a group of intellectuals signed a petition, known as Charter 77, in which they urged the government to observe human rights as outlined in the Helsinki Accords of 1975. Many intellectuals and activists who signed the petition subsequently were arrested and detained, but their efforts continued throughout the following decade. Among the victims of the crackdown was the philosopher Jan Patocka, who died on March 13, 1977, after a number of police interrogations.
Several mass demonstrations took place in the country during the 1980s. The largest protest gathering in Slovakia since the Prague Spring occurred on March 25, 1988: during this so-called “Candle Demonstration” in Bratislava, thousands of Slovaks quietly held burning candles to show their support for religious freedom and human rights. Police dispersed the demonstration with water cannons and made numerous arrestsThe Prague Spring, the Warsaw Pact invasion and the US reactionAn August 22, 1968, a U.S. Democratic Platform hearing is interrupted when Chairman Hale Boggs is handed a bulletin announcing the Soviets' invasion of Czechoslovakia. Rep. Boggs reads the news and Secretary of State Dean Rusk makes a hasty departure to find out what's going on. Dean Rusk, then Secretary of State, declared some years after the event that developments within the Warsaw Pact area were ‘never an issue of war and peace between us and the Soviet Union – however ignoble this sounds’.www.jstor.org/stable/24916056?seq=1Lyndon Johnson was jubilant on August 20, 1968. The next morning, the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union planned to announce the opening of arms limitation talks, which would include a likely presidential journey to Moscow in October. For LBJ, it was to be one of the highest points of his presidency. Over a celebratory drink that afternoon, he told his advisers that this might be “the greatest accomplishment of my administration.”1 A few years earlier, the president had started a program of “bridge building,” an attempt to reach out to the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies through a series of small steps that lacked dramatic impact but together might lay the groundwork for more significant breakthroughs in the future. Bridge building, explained Secretary of State Dean Rusk, would simply “reduce tensions by trying to find points on which agreements could be made." By mid 1968, the effort seemed to be paying dividends. A Consular Covention was radified in June, and the following month saw the start of direct Moscow-New York air service and the signing of the Nuclear-Non-Profilation Treaty. Arms talks and a major summit where now on the immediate horizon. Now, while protesters across the USA called him a warmonger, LBJ was on the brink of establishing a legacy as a figure of peace and statemanship. He was, Secretary of Defence Clarke Clifford recalled, "Just about as exited about it as anybody I ever saw."
Unfortunately for Johnson, his dreams would not come to fruition. Just after 7:00 PM that evening, National Security Advisor Walt Rostow informed him that Sovjet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin had an urgent message to present from Moscow. An hour later, three men met at the White House, where Dobrynin read from a prepared text. Citing a threat to the government and the social order of Czechoslovakia, he announced that Warsaw Pact military foreces had invaded Czechoslovakia. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-7709.2007.00668.xGeneral objectives guide the activities and relationships of one state in its interactions with other states. The development of foreign policy is influenced by domestic considerations, the policies or behaviour of other states, or plans to advance specific geopolitical designs. Leopold von Ranke emphasized the primacy of geography and external threats in shaping foreign policy, but later writers emphasized domestic factors. Diplomacy is the tool of foreign policy, and war, alliances, and international trade may all be manifestations of it.
The Czechoslovak reformers did not want to change the foreign policy orientation of the country. The more Moscow accused Prague of a "creeping counter-revolution" instigated by the West, the more Dubcek (1921-1992, in office 1968-1969) tried - in vain and clumsily - to assure Moscow that it was primarily concerned with internal reforms and that Czechoslovakia would remain loyal to socialist allies.
The administration of Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson (1963–1969) had to resist criticism from both domestic Republicans and its Western allies for doing nothing against increasing Soviet interference and threats to Czechoslovakia in the spring and summer of 1968, thus legitimizing the alleged "Yalta division of the world". While this was de facto true, Washington has always vehemently denied it publicly as a "Yalta myth."
After the agreements reached at Yalta were made public in 1946, they were harshly criticized in the United States. This was because, as events turned out, Stalin failed to keep his promise that free elections would be held in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. Instead, communist governments were established in all those countries, noncommunist political parties were suppressed, and genuinely democratic elections were never held. At the time of the Yalta Conference, both Roosevelt and Churchill had trusted Stalin and believed that he would keep his word. Neither leader had suspected that Stalin intended that all the popular front governments in Europe would be taken over by communists. Roosevelt and Churchill were further inclined to assent to the Yalta agreements because they assumed, mistakenly as it turned out, that Soviet assistance would be sorely needed to defeat the Japanese in the Pacific and Manchuria. In any case, the Soviet Union was the military occupier of eastern Europe at the war’s end, and so there was little the Western democracies could do to enforce the promises made by Stalin at Yalta.
Kai, it is interesting to read that Washington considered the Hungarian uprising of 1956 a historical lesson. That the Free Europe and Voice of America radio stations, created exaggerated expectations of possible military aid to insurgents. This lead President Lyndon B. Johnson Secretary of State Dean Rusk and National Security Advisor Walt Whitman Rostow to be cautious, holding back and disrustful of the Prague Spring. They didn't know which direction Czechoslovakia would go in the near future. The government of Czechoslovakia under Marxism–Leninism was in theory a dictatorship of the proletariat. In practice, it was a one-party dictatorship run by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, the KSC. The Americans were unsure which direction Czechoslovakia would go with the reform communists Alexander Dubček, Ludvík Svoboda and Josef Smrkovský (26 February 1911 – 15 January 1974) a Czechoslovak politician and a member of the Communist Party reform wing during the 1968 Prague Spring. Therefore, the United States purposefully avoided any concrete and direct military assistance to the people behind the Iron Curtain. The Austrian-American historian Günter Bischof is right when he states that "Washington abandoned the traditional propaganda campaign condemning Soviet imperialism and the oppression of enslaved nations, in the event of the invasion of Czechoslovakia."
Eugene V. Rostow, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under President Lyndon B. Johnson:"I think it would be a serious mistake not to let the Soviets make our concerns about the movement of troops around Czechoslovakia private. In retrospect, our inability to deter the Communists from taking power in Czechoslovakia in 1948 has been one of the biggest mistakes in our foreign policy since World War II. If we had taken a firm diplomatic stance when we had a monopoly on an atomic weapon, we could well have prevented the Cold War." "Now is the time to give them an intimidating signal. When they cross the border, it will be too late.”
In 1968, the conflict in Vietnam, absorbed most of America's military, material, mental and diplomatic capabilities. Washington therefore sought and welcomed any means, even if it was a rapprochement with Moscow - including a major ally and arms supplier to Hanoi - to help it get out of the "Vietnamese mud ." The Vietnam conflict broke President Johnson and drained him of energy and self-confidence so much that he doubted whether he would have managed the campaign for the second period at all.
Johnson's distracted reaction to the invasion of Czechoslovakia can be explained, by the fact that he was thinking of the party's upcoming congress, which was scheduled to begin on August 26, 1968 in Chicago.
On August 20, 1968 Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin in Washington read a report from Moscow to president Johnson stating that there was a 'conspiracy of an internal and external reaction against the social system in Czechoslovakia'. 'Soviet troops were ordered to cross the borders of Czechoslovakia.' It is grotesk and amazing that Moscow assumed that "US-Soviet relations, to which the Soviet government attaches great importance, will not be damaged in any way" after the blunt and brutal Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Sovjet, Polish, Hungarian and Bulgarian armed forces. The opression of the Czechs and Slovaks seemed not to dare the American Democratic President.
President Johnson did obviously not immediately appreciate the importance of the Sovjet report about the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. He didn't react to it at all, he just thanked the Sovjet ambassador Dobrynin for the information. A possible visit of the American president to the Soviet Union seemed to be more important to him. Johnson hoped to discuss a number of key issues, including Vietnam and the Middle East.
On August 19, Sovjet ambassador to the USA Anatoly Dobrynin handed over a report to President Johnson, according to which the president was able to publicly announce the holding of a summit between the USA and the USSR at the beginning of October 1968 in Leningrad on August 21. CIA chief Richard Helms had already warned president Johnson that a hastily convened meeting of the CPSU Central Committee in Moscow did not bode well and most likely meant intervention in Czechoslovakia.
Johnson therefore thought mainly of the summit and wanted to play the Czechoslovak "inconvenience" to the Sovjets. Johnson was looking forward to the Sovjet response so that he could announce his visit to the Soviet Union. "
Experienced professionals set in motion a crisis management team in the White House and convened an extraordinary meeting of the National Security Committee on 22.15. Johnson felt deceived by Kremlin leaders and reluctantly agreed to cancel the October summit.
Rusk activated a special task force to monitor the Czechoslovak crisis and coordinate the response with NATO and key US allies.
The United States did not want to help the Czechs and Slovaks militarily when, Washington did not even show a strong will to resist. The head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Earle G. Wheeler, said bluntly that the US military response was out of the question: "We don't have the forces to do that."
When the White House learned of the ongoing invasion on August 20, 1968, it launched its "routine" crisis management. However, it was already clear in September that the US would limit itself to protests at the UN and to trying to prevent further potential interventions in Romania, Yugoslavia, Austria or West Berlin.
The Czechoslovak crisis became part of the daily routine for President Johnson. He prepared an official statement condemning the invasion. He then went to work and telephoned key members of Congress to brief them on the situation.
Moscow did not consider the invasion of Romania, because it never doubted the stability of the Romanian communist regime. This would have catastrophic consequences for Soviet-American relations and for the whole world. "
The Soviet invasion also dealt a blow to the Johnson administration's efforts to "build bridges" toward the countries behind the Iron Curtain. However, as Bischof adds, when the new president, Nixon, took office, he immediately resumed rapprochement with the USSR, which appeared to be interrupted but not stopped by the invasion, and continued Johnson's policy on SALT I.
The diplomatic and private contacts between Sovjet Ambassador Dobrynin, President Johnson, and United States Secretary of State Dean Rusk (1909 – 1994) are weird. The inaction, passive attitude towards the SovjetUnion and thus lack of response and action by the USA is strange, disturbing and opportunistic. President Lyndon B. Johnson played a bad role during the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. He abandoned the Czech and Slovak for political (American elections), Geopolitical and anxiety reasons. I understand that a large armed conflict in Central-Europe in the Middle of the Cold War was dangerous, but the Americans could have played a tougher diplomatic role, put military pressure on the SovjetUnion and used the means of Economical sanctions.
Johnson used Czechoslovakia as a deterrent to the need to "discipline" NATO-ridden and to reject Montana Senator Mike Mansfield's efforts from his own Democratic Party to reduce the number of US troops in Europe. The invasion also weakened Charles de Gaulle's French "rebel in NATO" (1959-1969) and his Americans' not quite conventional vision of "Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals."
Cheers, PieterSources: Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, Jstor and Online library
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Post by pieter on Oct 3, 2020 20:27:13 GMT -7
Prayer for Marta (Modlitba pro Martu)The Czexh singer Marta Kubišová who sang the Czech song Modlitba pro Martu during the Prague SpringThe Prayer for Marta is a Czech song from 1968 sung by Marta Kubišová, which after the military occupation on August 21 became a symbol of the Czech nation's resistance to the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops into communist Czechoslovakia. At the time of normalization, its broadcasting on radio and television was completely banned.
The song with the original name Prayer was created in 1968 for the popular television series Song for Rudolf III. The music was composed by Jindřich Brabec, the text based on motifs by Jan Amos Komenský was written by Petr Rada. Two days after the occupation, Marta Kubišová sang it in the Czechoslovak recording studio. television, on tape, was subsequently imported to Czechoslovak Radio and for the first time reached the audience. In the autumn of 1968, the Prayer for Marta was broadcast in the series A Song for Rudolf III. and later, for example, in the Gramohit 68 program.
The song became fatal for Petr Radu in a way - after years of bans and pressure, he emigrated to Australia and did not return permanently until 1990. The prayer for Marta was performed during demonstrations during the Velvet Revolution on Wenceslas Square by Marta Kubišová. GenesisThe authors of the winning song of the Bratislava Lyre 1968 festival, Jindřich Brabec and Petr Rada (she won the song Cesta performed by Marta Kubišová), were to compose a song for the next, autumn part of the television series Píseň pro Rudolfa III.
The prayer was improvised for the first time on August 23, 1968, and Marta Kubišová was accompanied on the piano by Angelo Michajlov and on drums by Karel Černoch.
It was released in 1968 on a single and later in 1969, in another version, on the album Songy a ballady. In a later censored edition from 1970, it was no longer allowed.
The first recording from August 1968 was released for the first time on the LP records of Písničky roku 1968, released in the 1970s in Switzerland.
The song became one of the symbols of the Prague Spring of 1968 and later of the Velvet Revolution of 1989 after Marta Kubišová sang it on November 21 from the balcony of Melantrich for the fully packed Wenceslas Square in Prague.
Two music videos were made for the song, one of them directly for the TV series.
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Post by pieter on Oct 3, 2020 20:28:16 GMT -7
Marta Kubišová (born 1 November 1942 in České Budějovice) is a Czech singer. By the time of the Prague Spring of 1968, with her song "Modlitba pro Martu" ("A prayer for Marta"), she was one of the most popular female singers in Czechoslovakia.
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Post by kaima on Oct 4, 2020 9:20:45 GMT -7
Marta Kubišová (born 1 November 1942 in České Budějovice) is a Czech singer. By the time of the Prague Spring of 1968, with her song "Modlitba pro Martu" ("A prayer for Marta"), she was one of the most popular female singers in Czechoslovakia. Thanks for the posting, Pieter. I had to look up this translation to delve deeper into depth of the meaning of the song. As a side note, the fashion of the day shown as the singer walked on stage caught my eye. I found it attractive then and still do today. Perhaps I could do without the 'big hair' styles of back then, but the way women presented themselves was wonderful. English translation:
A prayer of Marta Let peace still remain with this country!
Let hatred, envy, grudge, fear, and strife cease! Let them cease! Now your formerly lost rule over your things returns back to you, people, it returns back to you!
Clouds flow slowly away from sky and everybody reaps what he has sown, let my prayer speak to hearts not burnt by the time of wrath, like flowers burnt by frost, like frost. Let peace still remain with this country!
Let hatred, envy, grudge, fear, and strife cease! Let them cease!
Now your formerly lost rule over your things returns back to you, people, it returns back to you! lyricstranslate.com <modified slightly from the original translation>
and the Czech lyrics: Modlitba pro MartuAť mír dál zůstává s touto krajinou. Zloba, závist, zášt, strach a svár, ty at pominou, ať už pominou. Teď když tvá ztracená vláda věcí tvých zpět se k tobě navrátí, lide, navrátí. Z oblohy mrak zvolna odplouvá a kazdý sklízí setbu svou. Modlitba má ta ať promlouvá k srdcím, která zloby čas nespálil jak květy mráz, jak mráz. Ať mír dál zůstává s touto krajinou. Zloba, závist, zášt, strach a svár, ty at pominou, ať už pominou. Teď když tvá ztracená vláda věcí tvých zpět se k tobě navrátí, lide, navrátí. [/font
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Post by karl on Oct 5, 2020 10:41:55 GMT -7
This situation of the then invasion of Czechoslovakia of that year 1968. My self was in attendance of University in Bonn and was then concerned with a possible war with the Communist War Pact of that time. For was then the concern of a recall back in to military service to mess up my studies. This never occured thank goodness. For then we had the DDR at our back door and the Russians in the mix, we did not need any military conflict at that time, or for that matter, at any time.
The photo of the Volkpolizei was impressive, my self always admired their uniforms.
For as my own personal opinion, it was very fortunate for us the US did not involve them selves in this situation, for it was a situation of cool heads in the light of events. For this was a European situation and the US was/is not the world Police.
Karl
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Post by pieter on Oct 5, 2020 15:59:56 GMT -7
Jan PalachJan PalachThe Czech student of history and political economy at Charles University in Prague Jan Palach (11 August 1948 – 19 January 1969) self-immolated himself as a political protest against the end of the Prague Spring resulting from the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact armies.
In August 1968, the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the liberalising reforms of Alexander Dubček's government during what was known as the Prague Spring. On 16 January 1969, the Prague philosophy student Jan Palach set himself on fire in Wenceslas Square to protest against the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. He died three days later. He was 21 years old. His actions aroused worldwide attention. 600,000 people attended his funeral on 25 January, coming from all over the country. Palach's tragic gesture could be inspired by Thích Quảng Đùc, the first Vietnamese monk to sacrifice himself in Saigon square in 1963. The Prague student must have seen the world-famous photo by Malcolm Browne depicting the imperturbable Buddhist monk in flames.
Palach's tragic gesture could be inspired by Thích Quảng Đùc, the first Vietnamese monk to sacrifice himself in Saigon square in 1963.
According to a letter he sent to several public figures, an entire clandestine resistance organization had been established with the purpose of practicing self-immolation until their demands were met; however, it seems that such a group never existed. The demands declared in the letter were the abolition of censorship and a halt to the distribution of Zprávy, the official newspaper of the Soviet occupying forces. In addition, the letter called for the Czech and the Slovak peoples to go on a general strike in support of these demands. An earlier draft of the letter that Palach wrote also called for the resignation of a number of pro-Soviet politicians, but that demand did not make it into the final version, which included the remark that "our demands are not extreme, on the contrary". Palach died from his burns several days after his act, at the hospital. On his deathbed, he was visited by a female acquaintance from his college and by a student leader, to whom he had addressed one of the copies of his letter. It was reported that he had pleaded for others not to do what he had done but instead to continue the struggle by other means, although it has been doubted whether he really said that.
According to Jaroslava Moserová, a burns specialist who was the first to provide care to Palach at the Charles University Faculty Hospital, Palach did not set himself on fire to protest against the Soviet occupation, but did so to protest against the "demoralization" of Czechoslovak citizens caused by the occupation. It was not so much in opposition to the Soviet occupation, but the demoralization which was setting in, that people were not only giving up, but giving in. And he wanted to stop that demoralization. I think the people in the street, the multitude of people in the street, silent, with sad eyes, serious faces, which when you looked at those people you understood that everyone understands, that all the decent people were on the verge of making compromises.Funeral of PalachThe Funeral of Palach turned out to be a mass protest against the new regimeThe funeral of Palach turned into a major protest against the occupation. A month later (on 25 February), another student, Jan Zajíc, burned himself to death in the same place. This was followed in April of the same year by Evžen Plocek in Jihlava, and by others. People in other Warsaw Pact countries also emulated his example, such as the Hungarian Sándor Bauer on 20 January 1969 and another Hungarian, Márton Moyses on 13 February 1970.
Palach's self-immolation was the second act of that kind after that of the Pole Ryszard Siwiec, which was successfully suppressed by the authorities and was mostly forgotten until the fall of communism. Palach was not aware of Siwiec's protest. Palach's grieving mother, Libuse Palachova, is supported by her son Jiri during Jan's funeral in Prague.At least 200,000 protesters turned out for Palach's funeral 51 years agoPosthumous recognitionThe memorial to Jan Palach and Jan Zajíc in front of the National Museum on Wenceslas Square by the Czech artist Barbora VeseláPalach was initially interred in Olšany Cemetery. As his gravesite was growing into a national shrine, the Czechoslovak secret police (StB) set out to destroy any memory of Palach's deed and exhumed his remains on the night of 25 October 1973. His body was then cremated and sent to his mother in Palach's native town of Všetaty while an anonymous old woman from a rest home was laid in the grave. Palach's mother was not allowed to deposit the urn in the local cemetery until 1974. On 25 October 1990 the urn was officially returned to its initial site in Prague.
On the 20th anniversary of Palach's death, protests ostensibly in memory of Palach (but intended as criticism of the regime) escalated into what would be called "Palach Week". The series of anticommunist demonstrations in Prague between 15 and 21 January 1989 were suppressed by the police, who beat demonstrators and used water cannons, often catching passers-by in the fray. Palach Week is considered one of the catalyst demonstrations which preceded the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia 10 months later.
After the Velvet Revolution, Palach (along with Zajíc) was commemorated in Prague by a bronze cross embedded at the spot where he fell outside the National Museum, as well as a square named in his honour. The Czech astronomer Luboš Kohoutek, who left Czechoslovakia the following year, named an asteroid which had been discovered on 22 August 1969, after Jan Palach (1834 Palach). There are several other memorials to Palach in cities throughout Europe, including a small memorial inside the glacier tunnels beneath the Jungfraujoch in Switzerland.
Memorial in Jan Palach Square (Czech: Náměstí Jana Palacha) (Faculty of Arts) a town square in the Old Town of Prague. It is located on right bank of the Vltava River next to the former Jewish Quarter.
Several later incidents of self-immolation may have been influenced by the example of Palach and his media popularity. In the spring of 2003, a total of six young Czechs burned themselves to death, notably Zdeněk Adamec, a 19-year-old student from Humpolec who burned himself on 6 March 2003 on almost the same spot in front of the National Museum where Palach burnt himself, leaving a suicide note explicitly referring to Palach and the others who killed themselves in the 1969 Prague Spring.
Just walking distance from the site of Palach's self-immolation, a statuary in Prague's Old Town Square honours iconic Bohemian religious thinker Jan Hus, who was burned at the stake for his beliefs in 1415. Himself celebrated as a national hero for many centuries, some commentary has linked Palach's self-immolation to the execution of Hus.
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Post by pieter on Oct 5, 2020 17:10:42 GMT -7
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Post by pieter on Oct 5, 2020 17:24:58 GMT -7
Trailer without selfimolation scene
Inclusive selfimolation scene
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Post by pieter on Oct 5, 2020 17:28:30 GMT -7
Polish singer Jacek Kaczmarski wrote a song about Palach's suicide, called "Pochodnie" ("Torches").
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Post by pieter on Oct 5, 2020 17:30:37 GMT -7
Italian songwriter Francesco Guccini wrote a song "La Primavera di Praga" in dedication to Jan Palach, compared to religious scholar Jan Hus: "Once again Jan Hus is burning alive".
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Post by pieter on Oct 5, 2020 17:33:17 GMT -7
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Post by pieter on Oct 5, 2020 17:36:00 GMT -7
In their 1983 song "Nuuj Helde" the Janse Bagge Bend (from the Netherlands) asks whether people know why Jan Palach burned. This song was meant to make the general public aware of heroes.
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Post by pieter on Oct 5, 2020 17:43:24 GMT -7
Norwegian songwriter and singer Åge Aleksandersen mentioned Palach's name in his 1984 song "Va det du Jesus".
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