The Prague Spring of 1968: reform, invasion and what followed

On the night of 20 to 21 August 1968, Czechoslovak radio operators broadcast an appeal as foreign troops crossed the borders. Citizens woke to aircraft overhead and tanks in the streets of Prague, and they answered in ways still remembered: removing street signs to confuse the invaders, arguing with young conscripts in Russian, painting slogans on walls. The Prague Spring, a reform movement inside the Communist Party, had lasted about eight months. It ended in a few hours.

The date is taught in every Czech school, and traces of the gunfire can still be seen on the façade of the National Museum. It helps explain why many Czechs distrust grand promises from the state, and why 1968 hung over the events of 1989.

Why reform, and why then

By the mid-1960s the Czechoslovak economy, among the most developed in the Eastern bloc before the war, was in difficulty. Growth was slowing, planning was clumsy and the consumer goods in the shops were poor. Economists inside the party, among them Ota Šik, proposed some market elements. Writers, filmmakers and students, who had enjoyed a limited cultural thaw, pressed for more. The Slovak party also wanted more recognition for Slovakia, a theme that fed into the federalisation of 1969.

In 1967 a Writers' Congress criticised the leadership openly. In October students demonstrated for better conditions, and the police used force. Under pressure, the Central Committee replaced the first secretary, Antonín Novotný, with Alexander Dubček, a Slovak party official, in January 1968. The background to these years is described in Czechoslovakia under communism.

A cultural thaw first

The political spring had a cultural prelude. In the 1960s Czechoslovak cinema, the so-called New Wave, won international attention: The Shop on Main Street won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film in 1966, and Closely Watched Trains, directed by Jiří Menzel, won it two years later, in 1968. Playwrights, poets and magazine editors tested the limits of what could be printed. Many of those artists backed the reformers, and many were silenced or pushed abroad afterwards. The director Miloš Forman, abroad when the invasion came, never returned to live in Czechoslovakia.

What the reformers did

The reforms came quickly. Censorship was relaxed in spring and effectively abolished by a law in June, and newspapers, radio and television started to cover subjects that had been forbidden. Victims of the 1950s trials were rehabilitated. The party's Action Programme, adopted in April, promised a democratisation of the party and society, greater economic autonomy and legal guarantees. Dubček's slogan for this was "socialism with a human face".

The reformers did not intend to abandon socialism or leave the Warsaw Pact. They wanted a different kind of communism, with accountable institutions and more room for civil life. But the speed of public debate alarmed hardliners at home and in neighbouring countries. In June 1968 the writer Ludvík Vaculík published the manifesto Two Thousand Words, which urged citizens to press the reform further and defend it, if necessary, against opposition. Moscow read it as a challenge.

The pressure from outside

Soviet leaders, led by Leonid Brezhnev, worried that reform in Czechoslovakia would spread and weaken the Eastern bloc. They also worried about Czechoslovakia's strategic position. Pressure took the form of military exercises, public letters and meetings. Talks in the Slovak village of Čierna nad Tisou in July and a conference in Bratislava in early August produced statements of unity, but they did not remove Soviet concerns.

On the night of 20 to 21 August, forces from the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria entered the country. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers took part. East German units were prepared but did not cross the border, and Romania refused to participate and condemned the invasion. Czechoslovak forces were ordered not to resist, which avoided a bloodbath but meant the occupation succeeded easily.

Resistance without weapons

The population responded with civil resistance. Crowds argued with soldiers, street signs were removed or turned, and radio stations moved from place to place to keep broadcasting. Dubček and other leaders were detained and flown to Moscow, where they were pressed to sign a protocol accepting the presence of troops. Civilians were killed and injured in the clashes of the first days; counts vary by source. The Czech Radio building in Prague and the National Museum on Wenceslas Square were sites of heavy fighting.

The aftermath: normalisation

In October 1968 a treaty allowed Soviet troops to stay in the country temporarily. In practice they stayed for more than twenty years. The reform leaders were removed step by step. In January 1969 Jan Palach, a student, set himself on fire at the top of Wenceslas Square to protest against resignation and apathy, and died of his injuries. Tens of thousands attended his funeral, and a memorial to him stands near the National Museum. In April 1969 Dubček was replaced by Gustáv Husák, who led the process of reversing the reforms.

One reform survived in altered form. From 1 January 1969 Czechoslovakia became a federation of the Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic, which gave Slovakia a measure of the recognition it had demanded. The federation lasted until the end of 1992, a story continued in the Velvet Divorce.

Many party members were expelled in purges, many people left the country, and professionals were forced out of their jobs. The 1970s and 1980s are known as normalisation, and are remembered for conformity and silence.

The meaning of 1968

For Czechs, 1968 means several things at once. It is the moment the regime showed it could not reform from within, ending the hopes of many in the party. It is a lesson in the limits of a small country's autonomy. And it is a story of civic courage that gave the Charter 77 dissidents and the generation of 1989 a reference point. Some of the reformers, such as Dubček, appeared again in 1989, and Dubček was elected chair of the Federal Assembly in December of that year.

In the West 1968 was a year of protest, and the Prague Spring is sometimes lumped in with it. Both involved young people and demands for freedom, but the Czechoslovak movement was led from inside a ruling party, in a very different political context.

For residents

Every August there are public commemorations in Prague. Many Czechs of the generation that lived through it will tell you where they were on 21 August.

Frequently asked questions

What was the Prague Spring?

A period of political liberalisation in Czechoslovakia from January to August 1968 under Alexander Dubček, summed up as socialism with a human face.

Who invaded in 1968?

Forces of the Warsaw Pact, mainly the Soviet Union, with Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria. Romania refused to take part.

Who was Jan Palach?

A student who set himself on fire in Wenceslas Square on 16 January 1969 to protest against the aftermath of the invasion. He died three days later.

When did Soviet troops leave?

The last Soviet troops left Czechoslovakia in 1991.