Related articles
From the ArchivesThe abnormality of normalization
On the airwaves, 1968 ended very much as it had begun. For New Year’s
Eve, Czechoslovak Radio chose the same format as the year before, with the
light-hearted musical cabaret of the Semafor Theatre. But behind the
scenes, the Soviet-led occupation in August had changed everything. The
Soviets were only too pleased for the radio to give the impression of
normality. A gradual, almost imperceptible drift back to hard-line
communism was beginning. The process came to be known cynically as
“normalization”, a word that was first used by Alexander Dubček
himself on August 27 1968. He had just returned from his forced five-day
stay in Moscow, where he had been bullied into accepting the presence of
foreign troops. More
From the ArchivesPlaying cat-and-mouse with the Soviets to keep on air
In the days immediately after the Soviet invasion in August 1968, staff at
Czechoslovak Radio played a cat-and-mouse game with the occupying forces.
For the first couple of days, they managed to continue broadcasting
directly from the radio headquarters, despite the presence of tanks
outside. More
From the ArchivesAlexander Dubček: hope and despair in 1968
The political reforms of the 1960s accelerated dramatically when on January
5 1968 Alexander Dubček became First Secretary of the Communist Party, the
most powerful position in the country. Dubček immediately set
Czechoslovakia on a course of economic and political reform, to create what
was described as “socialism with a human face”. Today we are going to
hear two recordings of Dubček from 1968 that show both the hopes with
which the year started and the despair which followed the Soviet invasion
in August. More
Czech HistoryPresident Gustáv Husák, the face of Czechoslovakia’s “normalisation”
The last communist president of Czechoslovakia Gustáv Husák became the
symbol of the spineless regime that ruled the country after the Soviet-led
invasion of Czechoslovakia. Himself a political prisoner in the 1950s, he
oversaw the persecution of opposition activists in the 1970s and 80s – an
intellectual who supported the reforms of the Prague Spring turned into the
Soviet Union’s lackey. We look at the life of Gustáv Husák on the 99th
anniversary of his birth. More
From the ArchivesJiří Dienstbier remembers a fateful day
Because August 21 is the fortieth anniversary of the Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the radio played such a central role in the
events of those dramatic days, in this edition of From the Archives we
shall be hearing the memories of one of the key journalists involved in
those dramatic events. Jiří Dienstbier was one of Czechoslovak Radio’s
star reporters at the time. Later he was to become one of the best-known
dissidents of the ‘70s and ‘80s, and after the Velvet Revolution he was
the country’s first post-communist foreign minister. On the morning of
August 21 1968, he was one of several radio journalists, playing a
cat-and-mouse game with the Soviet occupiers, as the Soviets tried to
silence the radio station. In some of the recordings that survive, you can
hear quite distinctly tanks and machine-gun fire in the background. More
From the ArchivesJakeš stands alone like a fencepost
The expression “jako kůl v plotě” – “like a fencepost” -
entered Czech folklore in the summer of 1989. The date was July 17 and
Czechoslovakia’s Communist Party chief Miloš Jakeš was meeting local
party activists in the small West Bohemian town of Červený Hrádek. The
authority of the party was being increasingly challenged, and thousands
had
signed Charter 77's appeal for greater recognition of human rights,
"Několik vět"
(a few sentences). Not realizing that he was being recorded, Jakeš
complained bitterly that he felt he was standing on his own and
unsupported
“like a fencepost”. Soon the recording had circulated around the
country and abroad, and Jakeš, who was already famous for his
malapropisms
– he once mixed up the words “boiler” and “broiler” - found his
authority shaken still more. More
From the ArchivesThe abnormality of normalization
On the airwaves, 1968 ended very much as it had begun. For New Year’s
Eve, Czechoslovak Radio chose the same format as the year before, with the
light-hearted musical cabaret of the Semafor Theatre. But behind the
scenes, the Soviet-led occupation in August had changed everything. The
Soviets were only too pleased for the radio to give the impression of
normality. A gradual, almost imperceptible drift back to hard-line
communism was beginning. The process came to be known cynically as
“normalization”, a word that was first used by Alexander Dubček
himself on August 27 1968. He had just returned from his forced five-day
stay in Moscow, where he had been bullied into accepting the presence of
foreign troops.
More
From the ArchivesPlaying cat-and-mouse with the Soviets to keep on air
In the days immediately after the Soviet invasion in August 1968, staff at
Czechoslovak Radio played a cat-and-mouse game with the occupying forces.
For the first couple of days, they managed to continue broadcasting
directly from the radio headquarters, despite the presence of tanks
outside.
More
From the ArchivesAlexander Dubček: hope and despair in 1968
The political reforms of the 1960s accelerated dramatically when on January
5 1968 Alexander Dubček became First Secretary of the Communist Party, the
most powerful position in the country. Dubček immediately set
Czechoslovakia on a course of economic and political reform, to create what
was described as “socialism with a human face”. Today we are going to
hear two recordings of Dubček from 1968 that show both the hopes with
which the year started and the despair which followed the Soviet invasion
in August.
More
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