CONTEXTS - The Rough Guide to Prague - page 360

appearedinthepressand,mostfamouslyofall,thewriterandlifelongPartymemberLudvík
Vaculík published his personal manifesto entitled “ Two Thousand Words ”, calling for rad-
ical de-Stalinization within the Party. Dubček and the moderates denounced the manifesto
and reaffirmed the country's support for the Warsaw Pact military alliance.
Soviet-led invasion
Meanwhile, the Soviets and their hardline allies - Gomulka in Poland and Ulbricht in the
GDR - viewed the Czechoslovak developments on their doorstep gravely, and began to call
for the suppression of “counter-revolutionary elements” and the re-imposition of censorship.
As the summer wore on, it became clear that the Soviets were planning military intervention.
Warsaw Pact manoeuvres were held in Czechoslovakia in late June, a Warsaw Pact confer-
ence (without Czechoslovak participation) was convened in mid-July and, at the beginning
of August, the Soviets and the KSČ leadership met for emergency bilateral talks at Čierná
nad Tisou on the Czechoslovak-Soviet border. Brezhnev's hardline deputy, Alexei Kosygin,
made his less than subtle threat that “your border is our border”, but did agree to withdraw
Soviet troops (stationed in the country since the June manoeuvres) and gave the go-ahead to
the KSČ's special Party Congress scheduled for September 9.
In the early hours of August 21, fearing a defeat for the hardliners at the forthcoming KSČ
Congress, and claiming to have been invited to provide “fraternal assistance”, the Soviets
gave the order for the invasion of Czechoslovakia to be carried out by all the Warsaw Pact
forces(onlyRomaniarefusedtotakepart).DubčekandtheKSČreformistsimmediatelycon-
demned the invasion before being arrested and flown to Moscow for “negotiations”. Presid-
entSvobodarefusedtocondonetheformationofanewgovernmentunderthehardlinerAlois
Indra, and the people took to the streets in protest, employing every form of non-violent res-
istance in the topic. Individual acts of martyrdom, with the self-immolation of Jan Palach
on Prague's Wenceslas Square, hit the headlines, but casualties were light compared with the
Hungarian uprising of 1956 - the cost over the following twenty years was much greater.
Normalization
In April 1969, StB (secret police) agents provoked anti-Soviet riots during the celebrations
of the country's double ice hockey victory over the USSR. On this pretext, another Slovak,
Gustáv Husák , replaced the broken Dubček as First Secretary, and instigated his infamous
policy of “ normalization ”. More than 150,000 fled the country before the borders closed,
around 500,000 were expelled from the Party, and an estimated one million people lost their
jobs or were demoted. Inexorably, the KSČ reasserted its absolute control over the state and
society. The only part of the reform package to survive the invasion was federalization ,
which gave the Slovaks greater freedom from Prague (on paper at least), though even this
was severely watered down in 1971. Dubček, like countless others, was forced to give up his
job, working for the next twenty years as a minor official in the Slovak forestry commission.