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Current AffairsGovernment rejects compensation call for victims of 1968 invasion
The cabinet decided on Wednesday to reject an opposition proposal calling
for victims of the 1968 Soviet-led invasion to receive compensation from
the state. The proposal, put forward by the main opposition Civic Democrat
party, said victims and their immediate families should be compensated for
the deaths and injuries that accompanied the 1968 invasion.
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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.
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Press ReviewPress Review
All kinds of different stories make the headlines today: shows an
uncompromising Kofi Annan, the U.N. Secretary General, responding strongly
to Tuesday apparent suicide attack in Baghdad that killed at least
twenty-four and injured over a hundred. Meanwhile,
highlights the return of weather-worn German tourists, kidnapped and held
for five months by Islamic fundamentalists in Algeria. Reportedly 4.6
million euros were paid out to ensure their safe release.
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Current AffairsCzech Radio marks 35th anniversary of battle for radio station
A military band played outside the Czech Radio building on Thursday
morning, as politicians lined up to lay wreaths at the plaque to those who
lost their lives defending the station in August 1968. It's thirty-five
years to the day since the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, a day of
reflection and remembrance for the Czech people. Czechoslovak Radio played
a particularly important role in the hours that followed the invasion, as
besieged reporters broadcast desperate appeals for help to the outside
world.
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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.
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WitnessMilan Kazda - a brush with death in August 1968
Milan Kazda is a documentary film-maker. In August 1968, when Soviet tanks
rolled into Czechoslovakia, he was chief producer at a regional film
studio in his home town of Plzen. Along with colleagues he decided to
capture on film the traumatic experience of Soviet tanks rolling into the
city, courageously going out into the streets to film. The film that
resulted remains one of the most powerful documents of the tragedy of
1968. Not surprisingly Milan Kazda was afterwards banned from working in
film for over twenty years, and only after 1989 did he start making films
again. Here he remembers one of the most frightening moments from that
time, 35 years ago this week.
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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.
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Press ReviewPress Review
All the dailies lead with the court case of the former communist official
Karel Hoffman who was sentenced to four years in prison by a Prague court
yesterday for his part in crushing the 1968 reform movement in
Czechoslovakia by the armies of the Warsaw Pact. LIDOVE NOVINY, MLADA
FRONTA DNES and HOSPODARSKE NOVINY are using an almost identical headline:
"First person sentenced for August 1968".
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Current AffairsCzech Radio History Part V - The Prague Spring
In this week's edition of our weekly special on the history of Czech Radio
- marking the station's 80th anniversary - Martin Hrobsky looks at the
role radio played during the Prague Spring. It was 1968 in Czechoslovakia
and optimism was in the air: students, workers, and intellectuals alike
were calling for change in a political and economic system that was no
longer meeting the needs of the people. The Communist Party of
Czechoslovakia knew this, and once a number of innocent reforms were
carried out, the winds of change could not be stopped.
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WitnessAngela Spindler-Brown and the joy of hassle-free travel
Angela Spindler-Brown is one of the hundreds of thousands of people who
left Czechoslovakia in 1968, as Soviet tanks rolled into the country. She
had been a student at Prague's Charles University, editing the main
student magazine. In exile in London she remained a journalist, writing
and working in television. She is married to an Englishman, hence her
rather un-Czech sounding name, and currently edits the bi-monthly magazine
of the British Czech and Slovak Association. Here she talks about one
change that has affected her life enormously since the fall of communism.
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