IV.

Invasion and Resistance

On the night of August 20, 1968, Warsaw Pact troops under Soviet leadership invaded Czechoslovakia. Dubček and other government leaders were taken to Moscow, where they were forced to sign a treaty allowing for Soviet troops to be stationed in Czechoslovakia indefinitely. Resistance to the invasion and occupation among Czech and Slovak citizens was largely non-violent. Citizens changed street signs to confuse the troops, and workers at the Czechoslovak state radio station began broadcasting secretly after the station was shut down. On August 27, supporters of the reform movement held the Extraordinary 14th Party Congress in secret at a factory in Prague. Among other actions, the congress rejected the intervention as an illegal act, called on Communist parties throughout the world to support the Czechoslovak reform movement, and elected a new government consisting only of pro-reform Communists and headed again by Dubček.

Dubček returned to Czechoslovakia at the end of the month and vowed to continue the reforms. His pledges were echoed by supporters outside the party leadership, and sporadic protests continued against the Soviet occupation. Although the country remained officially one of the USSR’s most loyal allies, the invasion and the stationing of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia turned many citizens against the Soviet Union. In January 1969 a Czech student named Jan Palach burned himself to death to protest against the invasion. In February, riots broke out after a Soviet-Czechoslovak ice hockey game, providing further evidence of anti-Soviet feeling.

In April 1969, Dubček was replaced as leader of the Communist Party by Gustav Husák, another Slovak. Many of Dubček’s supporters in the government and in cultural and educational institutions also lost their positions. The personnel purge took place throughout 1969 and involved about 400,000 people. It was more severe in the Czech lands, where most people who supported the reforms were interested in democratization, than in Slovakia, where supporters were mostly concerned with Slovak national issues. Husák also initiated so-called normalization, an effort to reverse all of the policies begun by the Dubček government. The federalization of the country, adopted in October 1968 and put into effect in January 1969, was one of the few reforms that survived.

Czechoslovakia stagnated culturally and politically after the Soviet-led invasion. Under Husák’s leadership, the country became once again a tightly controlled Communist state. The legacy of the Prague Spring prevented serious discussion of reform, as political leaders feared that any step towards change would lead to a repetition of the events of 1968. Czech and Slovak citizens staged early protests but then largely withdrew from politics, demonstrating little opposition to the new regime.

In the 1970s an opposition movement began to develop. In 1977 Czech and Slovak intellectuals founded the human rights movement known as Charter 77, which became one of Central and Eastern Europe’s most important opposition groups. In the 1980s, reforms implemented by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, combined with the weakening of Communism in some other Central and Eastern European countries, led to increased calls for change in Czechoslovakia. In late 1989 Czechs and Slovaks mounted mass demonstrations against the Communist government. Less than one month later the government resigned, and non-Communists, led by Dubček and Václav Havel took control of Czechoslovakia in what became known as the Velvet Revolution.