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From the ArchivesShared destinies: Kissinger and Dienstbier meet in 1964
The early 1960s saw dramatic developments in the Cold War, with the
building of the Berlin Wall and then the brinkmanship of the Cuban Missile
Crisis. But there were also signs of a greater pragmatism in East-West
relations. One channel for dialogue was a series of international
gatherings, where scholars and public figures discussed how to reduce the
risk of armed conflict. These were known as the Pugwash Conferences, named
after the town in Canada where the idea was first launched back in 1957. In
September 1964, one such conference was held in the Czech spa town of
Karlovy Vary. 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
Current AffairsFirst post-communist Czechoslovak foreign minister Jiří Dienstbier dies
Czech Senator Jiří Dienstbier, a leading figure of the Czech dissident
movement and the country’s first post-communist foreign minister died
over the weekend at the age of 73. A former dissident and journalist, Mr.
Dienstbier served on many committees and worked as a UN rapporteur on human
rights in the former Yugoslavia, but in people’s minds he will always be
remembered as the man who stood next to the former West German foreign
minister Hans Dietrich Genscher and cut through the barbed wire of the Iron
Curtain. More
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