The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968

The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968
Author: Günter Bischof
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 534
Release: 2010
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780739143049

On August 20, 1968, tens of thousands of Soviet and East European ground and air forces moved into Czechoslovakia and occupied the country in an attempt to end the "Prague Spring" reforms and restore an orthodox Communist regime. The leader of the Soviet Communist Party, Leonid Brezhnev, was initially reluctant to use military force and tired to pressure his counterpart in Czechoslovakia, Alexander Dubccaron;ek, to crack down. But during the summer of 1968, after several months of careful deliberations, the Soviet Politburo finally decided that military force was the only option left. A large invading force of Soviet, Polish, Hungarian and Bulgarian troops received final orders to move into Czechoslovakia; within twenty-four hours they had established complete military control of Czechoslovakia, bringing and end to hopes for "socialism with a human face."

The Prague Spring 1968

The Prague Spring 1968
Author: Jarom¡r Navr til
Publisher: Central European University Press
Total Pages: 656
Release: 1998-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9789639116153

"In addition to revealing the events surrounding the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, this is the first book to document a Cold War crisis from both sides of the Iron Curtain. It is based on unprecedented access to the previously closed archives of each member of the Warsaw Pact, as well as once highly classified American documents from the National Security Council, CIA, and other intelligence agencies." "Presented in a highly readable volume, the book offers top-level documents from Kremlin Politburo meetings, multilateral sessions of the Warsaw Pact leading up to the decision to invade, transcripts of KGB-recorded telephone conversations between Leonid Brezhnev and Alexander Dubcek." "To provide a historical and political context, the editors have prepared essays to introduce each section of the volume. A chronology, glossary and bibliography offer further background information for the reader." "The editors have a unique perspective to offer to foreign audiences since they are members of the commission appointed by Vaclav Havel to investigate the events of 1967-1970."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The Czech and Slovak Republics

The Czech and Slovak Republics
Author: M. Mark Stolarik
Publisher: Central European University Press
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2017-01-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 9633861535

The essays in the book compare the Czech Republic and Slovakia since the breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1993. The papers deal with the causes of the divorce and discuss the political, economic and social developments in the new countries. This is the only English-language volume that presents the synoptic findings of leading Czech, Slovak, and North American scholars in the field. The authors include two former Prime Ministers of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, eight leading scholars (four Czechs and four Slovaks), and eight knowledgeable commentators from North America. The most significant new insight is that in spite of predictions by various pundits in the Western World that Czechia would flourish after the breakup and Slovakia would languish, the opposite has happened. While the Czech Republic did well in its early years, it is now languishing while Slovakia, which had a rough start, is now doing very well. Anyone interested in the history of the Czech and Slovak Republics over the last twenty years will find gratification in reading this book.

Operation Danube

Operation Danube
Author: David Francois
Publisher: Europe@war
Total Pages:
Release: 2020-10-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781913336295

On 20 August 1968, hundreds of thousands of soldiers, dozens of thousands of tanks and armored vehicles, and hundreds of military aircraft of the Warsaw Pact armed forces invaded Czechoslovakia in an operation code-named Danube. It was the largest military undertaking in Europe since 1945. Starting with a description of the history of Czechoslovakia, especially after the communist takeover of power in 1948, this volume describes the birth and development of the Prague Spring in 1968 and an attempt to reform the communist system from within. It recounts the hostility this process encountered on the part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR/Soviet Union), and its allies within the Warsaw Pact, and provoked a split in the Kremlin about solutions for the resulting 'Czechoslovak problem'. The crisis that developed throughout the spring and summer of 1968 led to the military intervention. While paying special attention to the military and strategic aspects of the Czechoslovak crisis, this volume also provides a blow-by-blow account of its impacts upon the Czechoslovak armed forces and the Warsaw Pact. The subsequent military operation - codenamed Operation Danube - is described in all of its components, including the airborne and ground aspects, and the political operation that supported it. Within only 24 hours, the Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces secured the entire territory of Czechoslovakia, de-facto overrunning the local armed forces in the process. The Czechoslovak population organized non-violent resistance, thus highlighting the political aspects of the intervention. However, it was hopelessly out of condition to prevent the ultimate downfall of the so-called 'Prague Spring', and the related hopes. Nevertheless, the application of military power against a popularly-supported political reform marked a turning point in the Cold War, and forever changed the balance of power in Central Europe. Guiding the reader meticulously through the details of the forces involved, their organisation and equipment, Operation Danube offers a uniquely in-depth account of the invasion of Czechoslovakia and is profusely illustrated with more than 100 photos, maps, and exclusive colour artworks.

Prague Spring, Prague Fall

Prague Spring, Prague Fall
Author: Miklós Kun
Publisher: Akademiai Kiads
Total Pages: 284
Release: 1999
Genre: History
ISBN:

Mikls Kun spent nearly a decade researching the blank spots of the Prague Spring of 1968. The interviewees, who were on opposite sides of the barricade, reveal many secrets. Their stories are indispensable to the reconstruction process of what actually happened in Czechoslovakia in 1968. In the introduction of each interview, Kun confronts the results of historical research with the personal accounts of the interviews.

Czech Political Prisoners

Czech Political Prisoners
Author: Jana Kopelentova Rehak
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2013
Genre: History
ISBN: 073917634X

Czech Political Prisoners: Recovering Face is the story of men and women who survived Czechoslovakian concentration camps under the Communist regime. Men and women disappeared, were arrested, imprisoned, interrogated, tortured, put on trial, convicted, and sentenced to forced labor camps. In 1948 in Czechoslovakia, political others became political prisoners. New forms of political practices developed under the institution of the totalitarian Czechoslovakian communist state. This new regime of totalitarian political power produced culturally specific forms of organized political violence. Between 1948 and 1989 some citizens recognized by the state as political others were subjected to such ritualized political violence. The link between ritualized violence and state subjects' political passage laid the groundwork for the formation of new social identities. In the post-totalitarian state, the political other from the socialist era remains other through distinct desires and acts of coming to terms with the experience of organized violence. Like other members of the Czech and Slovak states, former prisoners are now facing the post-totalitarian remaking of life. In contrast to society at large, the political prisoners' recovery from the totalitarian past has proven that the ethics of political life--individual and communal coming to terms with the past--is closely related and crucial to their efforts toward reconciliation. Today, in the Czech Republic, as well as in other post-socialist countries, the desire to reconcile is not limited to survivors of camps, prisoners, and dissidents. People from the youngest generation are asking questions about crimes, punishment, and forgiveness related to the Communist regime in central and eastern Europe. The purpose of this story is to expose individual and communal experience, subjectivity, and consciousness hidden in the ruins of memory of Socialism in Czechoslovakia.

Cleansing the Czechoslovak Borderlands

Cleansing the Czechoslovak Borderlands
Author: Eagle Glassheim
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2017-01-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822981947

In this innovative study of the aftermath of ethnic cleansing, Eagle Glassheim examines the transformation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland from the end of the Second World War, through the Cold War, and into the twenty-first century. Prior to their expulsion in 1945, ethnic Germans had inhabited the Sudeten borderlands for hundreds of years, with deeply rooted local cultures and close, if sometimes tense, ties with Bohemia's Czech majority. Cynically, if largely willingly, harnessed by Hitler in 1938 to his pursuit of a Greater Germany, the Sudetenland's three million Germans became the focus of Czech authorities in their retributive efforts to remove an alien ethnic element from the body politic—and claim the spoils of this coal-rich, industrialized area. Yet, as Glassheim reveals, socialist efforts to create a modern utopia in the newly resettled "frontier" territories proved exceedingly difficult. Many borderland regions remained sparsely populated, peppered with dilapidated and abandoned houses, and hobbled by decaying infrastructure. In the more densely populated northern districts, coalmines, chemical works, and power plants scarred the land and spewed toxic gases into the air. What once was a diverse religious, cultural, economic, and linguistic "contact zone," became, according to many observers, a scarred wasteland, both physically and psychologically. Glassheim offers new perspectives on the struggles of reclaiming ethnically cleansed lands in light of utopian dreams and dystopian realities—brought on by the uprooting of cultures, the loss of communities, and the industrial degradation of a once-thriving region. To Glassheim, the lessons drawn from the Sudetenland speak to the deep social traumas and environmental pathologies wrought by both ethnic cleansing and state-sponsored modernization processes that accelerated across Europe as a result of the great wars of the twentieth century.

The Six Day War

The Six Day War
Author: Guy Laron
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 484
Release: 2017-02-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300226322

The author of Origins of the Suez Crisis “mak[es] us look afresh at the events that led to conflict between Israel and its neighbors” (Financial Times). One fateful week in June 1967 redrew the map of the Middle East. Many scholars have documented how the Six-Day War unfolded, but little has been done to explain why the conflict happened at all. Now, historian Guy Laron refutes the widely accepted belief that the war was merely the result of regional friction, revealing the crucial roles played by American and Soviet policies in the face of an encroaching global economic crisis, and restoring Syria’s often overlooked centrality to events leading up to the hostilities. The Six-Day War effectively sowed the seeds for the downfall of Arab nationalism, the growth of Islamic extremism, and the animosity between Jews and Palestinians. In this important new work, Laron’s fresh interdisciplinary perspective and extensive archival research offer a significant reassessment of a conflict—and the trigger-happy generals behind it—that continues to shape the modern world. “Challenging . . . well worth reading.”—Moment “A penetrating study of a conflict that, although brief, helped establish a Middle Eastern template that is operational today . . . The author looks beyond Cold War maneuvering to examine the conflict in other lights . . . Readers with an interest in Middle Eastern geopolitics will find much of value.”—Kirkus Reviews

The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation

The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation
Author: Bradley F. Abrams
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2005
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780742530249

The material effects of World War II, in combination with Eastern Europe's disappointingly undemocratic interwar history, placed radical social change on the postwar agenda across the region and shaped the debates that took place in immediate postwar Czech society. These debates adopted both a cultural form, in struggles over the meaning of the recent past and the nation's position on the East-West continuum, and a directly political form, in battles over the meaning of socialism. The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation examines the most important and politically resonant fields of historical and cultural debate in Czech society immediately after World War II. Bradley Abrams finds that communist public figures were largely successful in controlling debate over the nation's recent past--the interwar First Republic and the experiences of Munich and World War II--and over its location on the East-West continuum. This success preceded and was mirrored in the struggles over the political issue of the times: socialism. The communists engaged their political foes in the democratic socialist and Roman Catholic camps, and, surprisingly, found significant support from a major Protestant church. Abrams's careful reading of major publications re-creates a postwar mood sympathetic to radical social change, questioning the standard view of the communists' rise to power. This book not only contributes to the specific literature on Czech history, but also raises questions about the relationship between war and radical social change, about the communist takeover of the region, and about the role of intellectuals in public life.