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Current AffairsMPs agree on compensation for victims of 1968 Soviet-led invasion

Victims of the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of the former Czechoslovakia may finally win compensation. The lower house of the Czech parliament has approved a bill, now awaiting Senate approval, which would provide compensation to relatives of those killed during the invasion, as well as to those killed, raped or injured by Soviet or Warsaw Pact troops who occupied the country until 1991. More

Current AffairsTwice under enemy fire, Czech Radio building named a cultural landmark

It's official: one year shy of six decades since the Czech national radio headquarters in Prague came under fire from occupying Nazi forces, - and three and a half decades since the Soviets trained their guns on Ceskoslovensky Rozhlas - the rather uninspiring, functionalist-style building on Vinohradska Street has been named a cultural landmark.  More

Current AffairsDeath of journalist Alan Levy

One of the most highly respected foreign journalists in Prague, Alan Levy, passed away at the age of 72 on Friday after a short but brave battle with cancer. Mr. Levy was editor in chief of the Prague Post, a popular English language weekly which he helped to establish in 1991. His column, "Prague Profile," introducing personalities from all walks of life was one of the weekly's most popular features. In the course of his career, Mr. Levy interviewed personalities such as the former Czech President Vaclav Havel, Fidel Castro, the Beatles, Sophia Loren, Ezra Pound, Vladimir Nabokov, Graham Greene and W.H. Auden.  More

NewsCommemorating US editor and columnist Alan Levy

WitnessFranta Kocourek - courage in the face of occupation in March 1939

We don't usually use archive recordings for Witness, but today we'll make an exception. This year is the 65th anniversary of the tragic day in March 1939, when German troops marched into Prague, beginning six years of Nazi occupation. At the time, Franta Kocourek was one of Czechoslovak Radio's star reporters. Four days after Bohemia and Moravia had been declared a "Protectorate of the German Reich", he reported live on the huge military parade that the Germans had organized on Prague's Wenceslas Square. He made no attempt to conceal his sense of horror at this show of Nazi military might. This was the first of many acts of defiance that soon led to Franta Kocourek being arrested. He died in Auschwitz in 1942, at the age of forty. Part of his live report from the balcony of the Hotel Sroubek on Wenceslas Square, on the 19th March 1939, survives to this day, and has become legendary in the history of Czech broadcasting.  More

WitnessMargita Kollarova - Dubcek's address to the nation and a silence that spoke more than words

For this week's Witness we return again to the events of August 1968. As Soviet troops crushed the Prague Spring on the 21st August, the entire Czechoslovak leadership was spirited away to Moscow for what were euphemistically described as talks. Five days later, exactly 35 years ago, they returned, broken and bullied into signing a document that effectively legitimized the occupation of the country. The Communist Party First Secretary and leading force of the reforms, Alexander Dubcek, gave a radio address to the nation on the 27th August, immediately after his return from Moscow. He appealed for calm and understanding, but as the speech went on - in one of the most chilling moments of the entire period of August '68 - Dubcek gradually broke down. The speech was interrupted by long silences. This extraordinary and unnerving address was being recorded by Czechoslovak Radio's parliamentary correspondent of the time, Margita Kollarova. Here she remembers the moment.  More

Czechs in HistoryThe Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia and the crushing of the Prague Spring

It has been thirty-five years since Soviet troops began entering Czechoslovakia late on August 20th and early August 21st in a carefully orchestrated invasion designed to crush the period of political and economic reforms known as the Prague Spring, reforms led by the country's new First Secretary of the Communist party Alexander Dubcek. A movement viewed by Leonid Brezhnev and other Soviet hard-liners in Moscow as a serious threat to the Soviet Union's hold on the Socialist satellite states, they decided to act. In the first hours on the 21st Soviet planes began to land unexpectedly at Prague's Ruzyne airport, and shortly Soviet tanks would roll through Prague's narrow streets. Within hours foreign troops would take up strategic positions throughout the city, including surrounding the building of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, taking hold of Wenceslas Square, and eventually taking over Czechoslovak radio and television. The occupation of '68 had begun.  More

Current AffairsDubcek and Brezhnev: the last conversation

35 years ago just before midnight on 20th August 1968 Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia, bringing the brief reforms of the Prague Spring to an abrupt and violent end, shattering the dreams of the reformist leader Alexander Dubcek and millions of Czechs and Slovaks. Dubcek had grown up in the Soviet Union, believed passionately in the ideals of communism, and was sincere in his dream of "socialism with a human face". But Dubcek was also naïve. He never dreamed that his beloved Soviet Union would resort to invading his homeland, to halt the process of reform. A week before that nightmare became a reality the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev phoned Dubcek from Yalta in the Crimea. The two spoke together in Russian, their last conversation before the occupation.  More

Current Affairs10th anniversary of Dubcek's car accident commemorated

On Tuesday morning a memorial ceremony was held on the D 1 motorway between Prague and Brno to remember the 10th anniversary of the car crash which resulted in the death of Alexander Dubcek, one of the most important figures of Czechoslovak post-war history. Alena Skodova has more:  More

WitnessJana Rejskova remembers the "human face" of Alexander Dubcek

Alexander Dubcek is one of the myths in the post-war history of Czechoslovakia. Some see his attempt in 1968 to introduce "socialism with a human face" as a brave experiment, others as naive folly, but on one thing there is consensus. As a man, Dubcek was warm and likable. In the light of the Soviet invasion that followed, there is an almost unbearable poignancy to the broad smile that we so often see in television footage of Dubcek from the time of the Prague Spring. The following story gives some insight into Alexander Dubcek as a person. The professional interpreter Jana Rejskova remembers interpreting for him at an event a couple of years after the fall of communism, not long before his death, when Dubcek was once more in public office, but didn't seem to relish all the trappings.  More