Prague Summer: 1968 Invasion of Czechoslovakia in a Historical Detail

Abstract

The invasion of Czechoslovakia was an extraordinary event in the history of the Warsaw Pact but not because it was not a repetition of sorts of the 1956 crackdown of the Hungarian Revolution of 1953 Berlin strikes and riots. It chanced the history of the ex-Communist countries: it was a technical “success” of the Soviet army, the other members of the Pact had played just a marginal role. The real victor was the generation of on the 1960’s that dismantled the central planning and the only party dictatorial regime and dismissed the Warsaw Pact.