The 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia was a military operation which occurred on the 20th and 21st of August 1968 in response to the Prague Spring, a period of liberalization of Czechoslovakia’s politics and communist system. The invasion was led by the USSR or Soviet Union, but it also included forces from the Warsaw Pact alliance countries, specifically Poland, Bulgaria and Hungary, with some logistical support from East Germany. Romania refused to contribute to the invasion and this signaled its departure from the Warsaw Pact and a decisive shift away from Moscow’s control. The invasion involved quarter of a million military personnel and swiftly brought about an end to the Prague Spring. The government in the Czechoslovak capital was overhauled by the Russians and more reliable communist loyalists were installed to run affairs in Prague going forward. It was the last act of major resistance to communist rule and Moscow’s dominance over the country until the Velvet Revolution of November 1989 near the end of the Cold War. The 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia led to the immediate flight of 70,000 Czechs and Slovaks from the country and tens of thousands more left in the months that followed. They headed west and south into neighboring Austria and from there onwards to countries like West Germany, France, the Netherlands, Britain, Canada and the United States. Hence, the 1968 invasion contributed to the growth of the Czech and Slovak diasporas worldwide.[1]
1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia chronology of events1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia chronology of events
There was no Czechoslovak nation prior to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of the First World War in 1918. Instead there had been a Kingdom of Bohemia in late medieval times corresponding with modern-day Czechia, while what we now know as Slovakia was typically known as Moravia historically. Because both regions were populated by West Slavic groups, the Czechs and Slovaks, who were closely ethnically and linguistically related, the two groups came together to form an independent Czechoslovakia after the First World War ended. It was dismembered and broadly absorbed into the Nazi German Reich in March 1939 before the Second World War even began.[2] Liberated in late 1944 and early 1945, Czechoslovakia became a communist satellite state of the USSR after the war and was a founding member of the Warsaw Pact of Russian-dominated states in Eastern and Central Europe when it was set up in 1955.[3]
The Czechoslovak Soviet Socialist Republic began to take a different path early in 1968 when Alexander Dubcek became the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. He was a reformer who ushered in a period of pronounced liberalization of Czechoslovakia’s political system, referring to the system which he wanted to implement as ‘socialism with a human face’.[4] In effect Dubcek was determined to strip away the vestiges of Stalinist and Soviet repression from the Czechoslovak system as it had been established in the aftermath of the Second World War. The media was liberalized and wide-ranging changes were made to the political and economic system in Czechoslovakia in the spring and summer of 1968 under Dubcek’s leadership.[5]
As the Prague Spring intensified in the first half of the 1968, in Moscow the Soviet government under the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev looked on with concern. Communist Yugoslavia had long since decided to go its own way in the post-war communist world, while Romania under its new dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, was also adopting a more independent line from Moscow. Czechoslovakia could not be allowed to also step away from Russian control. Thus, on the 20th of August a Soviet army, along with contingents of troops from Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria, and with East German logistical support, invaded Czechoslovakia. The invasion involved well over 200,000 troops initially, with hundreds of thousands more in reserve support as an excessive show of strength.[6]
Unlike with the suppression of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 led to a quick and complete routing of the revolutionaries. The sheer display of military power ensured that Prague quickly fell to the invading Soviet army and the Prague Spring was over by the 21st of August. 137 civilians were killed in the fighting and hundreds were wounded, but overall it was a comparatively bloodless takeover. Dubcek remained in place as First Secretary until April 1969 as the Soviets tried to make it appear that they were listening to Czechoslovak grievances. However, by the end of the 1960s communist rule in Czechoslovakia had become even more repressive than it had been prior to the Prague Spring. It would remain so until the end of the Cold War and the Velvet Revolution of 1989.[7]
Extent of migration caused by the 1968 invasion of CzechoslovakiaExtent of migration caused by the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia
The invasion of Czechoslovakia by the armies of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact in August 1968 led to an immediate flight of approximately 70,000 people from Czechoslovakia.[8] These were people who had been in favor of the Prague Spring and wanted an opportunity to live under a more liberal government system in the west. During the invasion and immediately after it the border restrictions that characterized the Iron Curtain across Central Europe during the Cold War were weaker, providing a brief window in which people could immigrate over the border into Austria. This initial 70,000 were joined by a trickle of around another 30,000 in the months that followed, bringing the total number of refugees pursuant from the invasion up to around 100,000. In the months and years that followed many of these Czechs and Slovaks travelled onwards to third countries like West Germany, France, Britain, the United States and Canada, where they settled.[9]
The suppression of the Prague Spring through the Warsaw Pact invasion also created long-lasting resentments within Czechoslovakia and as late as the 1970s and 1980s prominent Czechs like the tennis players, Ivan Lendl and Martina Navratilova, cited the political situation at home in Czechoslovakia as their reasons for defecting to the United States.[10] The impact of this on professional tennis, in particular, has been strangely enduring. Belinda Bencic, a gold medal winner at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 2021, won the medal playing under the flag of Switzerland, a country to which her parents emigrated as a result of the 1968 invasion of their homeland, Czechoslovakia.[11]
Demographic impact of the 1968 invasion of CzechoslovakiaDemographic impact of the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia
The demographic impact of the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 was actually relatively modest when viewed in the context of the wider Czech and Slovak diasporas. There are, for instance, an estimated one and a quarter million Czech Americans. Only a small proportion of these are people who ended up in the United States because of the exodus in 1968, or are their descendants. The same could be said of the Czech diaspora and the Slovak diaspora in the other countries involved like Austria, West Germany, France, Britain and Canada. This is especially the case with the Prague Spring and its aftermath, as many of those who fled from Czechoslovakia in the late 1960s returned two decades later after the Velvet Revolution of 1989 and the end of communist rule. Hence, while there are undoubtedly thousands of people living in countries like Austria, the US and Canada to this day who owe their presence there to a parent or grandparent fleeing from Czechoslovakia in the autumn of 1968, the demographic impact of the Warsaw Pact invasion was relatively modest in the long run.[12]
See alsoSee also
Explore more about the 1968 invasion of CzechoslovakiaExplore more about the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia
- Czechia Newspapers from OldNews.com records collection on MyHeritage
- Slovakia Newspapers from OldNews.com records collection on MyHeritage
- Austria Newspapers from OldNews.com records collection on MyHeritage
- Soviet Union, Award Records, 1939-1991 records collection on MyHeritage
- Beginning Slovak Genealogy Research at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Czechia, Church Books, 1552-1948 records collection on MyHeritage
- Austria-Hungary, Roman Catholic Indexes, 1612-1966 records collection on MyHeritage
- Austria, Vienna, Catholic Church Records records collection on MyHeritage
References
- ↑ https://www.history.com/news/prague-spring-czechoslovakia-soviet-union
- ↑ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17220572
- ↑ https://history.state.gov/milestones/1953-1960/warsaw-treaty
- ↑ Anna J. Stoneman, ‘Socialism With a Human Face: The Leadership and Legacy of the Prague Spring’, in The History Teacher, Vol. 49, No. 1 (November, 2015), pp. 103–125.
- ↑ https://www.history.com/news/prague-spring-czechoslovakia-soviet-union
- ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/world/from-the-archive-blog/2018/aug/10/russia-crushes-prague-spring-czechoslovakia-1968
- ↑ https://www.rferl.org/a/crushing-of-prague-spring-1968/29420107.html
- ↑ https://english.radio.cz/1968-invasion-when-hope-was-crushed-soviet-tanks-8153143
- ↑ https://pier21.ca/research/immigration-history/prague-spring-refugees
- ↑ https://www.tennis-academies.com/europe/czech-republic
- ↑ https://www.essentiallysports.com/wta-tennis-news-who-are-belinda-bencic-s-parents-ivan-and-dana-everything-to-know-about-this-swiss-talents-family/
- ↑ https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records-of-czechoslovakian-refugees-to-the-uk-from-1939-to-1975/