• Hungarian uprising crushed by Nikita
Khrushchev
• Clearly showed that the USSR would NOT
TOLERATE countries in Eastern Europe breaking from the Warsaw Pact or from
Moscow.

• Process of de-Stalinisation began in Czechoslovakia in the late 1950s and into the
1960s
• Proclaimed the completion of socialism and the constitution.
• Adopted the name
Czechoslovak Socialist
Republic

• As the strict regime eased its rules, the cautiously began to air discontent, and in the union's gazette, , members suggested that literature should be independent of
Party doctrine.

• Underwent an economic downturn
• The Soviet model of industrialization applied poorly to Czechoslovakia
• Czechoslovakia was already quite industrialised before World War II and the Soviet model mainly took into account less developed economies
• Novotný's attempt at restructuring the economy, the 1965 New Economic Model, spurred increased demand for political reform as well.

• By 1967, president
Antonín Novotný was losing support
• Soviet premier Leonid
Brezhnev replaced
Novotny with First
Secretary of the regional
Communist Party of
Slovakia, Alexander
Dubček.
You have lost control,
YOUR FIRED

• Dubček thus replaced
Novotný as First
Secretary on January 5,
1968
• On March 22, 1968,
Novotný resigned his presidency and was replaced by Ludvík
Svoboda, who later gave consent to the reforms

• In April 1968, Dubcek's government announced an Action Plan for what it called a new model of socialism

• These changes would make
Czechoslovakia very different to the other
Communist nations.
– What do you think Leonid Brezhnev and the
USSR were thinking?

• Allow freedom for the people
• Politics openly discussed
• People called it the “Prague Spring”
• Nation Reborn

• The Czech people supported the reforms
As did
• Romania
• Yugoslavia

• Czechoslovakia leaves the Warsaw Pact
• Feared it may weaken the communist bloc
• Similar to Hungarian revolution
• Growing criticism with the Czech Media

• Aware of what happened during the
Hungarian Uprising Dubcek announced that Czechoslovakia had no intention of changing its foreign policy.
• On several occasions he made speeches where he stated that Czechoslovakia would not leave the Warsaw Pact or end its alliance with the Soviet Union.

• The Soviet leadership tried to stop or limit the changes in the ČSSR through a series of negotiations. The Soviet Union agreed to bilateral talks with Czechoslovakia in July at
Čierna nad Tisou, near the Slovak-Soviet border
• Dubček defended the program of the reformist wing of the KSČ while pledging commitment to the Warsaw Pact and Comecon

• Split between
• Reformers who supported Dubcek
• Conservatives who adopted an antireformist stance

• The KSČ delegates reaffirmed their loyalty to the
Warsaw Pact and promised to curb "anti-socialist" tendencies, prevent the revival of the Czechoslovak
Social Democratic Party, and control the press more effectively
• Bratislava Declaration- declared an implacable struggle against "bourgeois" ideology and all "anti-socialist" forces
• The Soviet Union expressed its intention to intervene in a Warsaw Pact country if a "bourgeois" system —a pluralist system of several political parties representing different factions of the capitalist class —was ever established

• After the Bratislava conference, Soviet troops left Czechoslovak territory but remained along its borders

• Yugoslavia was an eastern European country not in the Warsaw Pact and when its leader President Tito was given an enthusiastic reception in Czechoslovakia it looked like Dubcek was steering the country down its own independent road

“ THE WHOLE COMMUNIST SYSTEM IN THE
EASTERN BLOC COULD CRUMBLE BECAUSE
OF WHAT IS HAPPENING IN PRAGUE!!!”

• 20 th August 1968
• That night Soviet Paratroopers seized control of Prague Airport

• Over the next few hours , 500,000 Warsaw
Pact troops crossed the border into
Czechoslovakia
• The Government told the Czech and
Slovak people to stay calm and not resist.
• There were however small pockets of resistance

• Soviet tanks moved against unarmed civilians
• Demonstrated how little the USSR was to allow change or national independence within the Warsaw Pact.
• The West spoke out but could NOT intervene without risking Nuclear
Confrontation.

• Dubcek and the other leaders were arrested, taken to
Moscow, and forced to accept the end of Czech moves to democracy.
• Over the next year hard-line Czechoslovak officials replaced their reformist predecessors at all levels.
• Gustav Husak, obedient to central authority replaced
Dubcek as party secretary in April 1969 and the following year Dubcek was expelled from the Party.
• The Soviet invasion ended for decades a possible third way in East Europe, and the possiblility of liberal reform within the Communist bloc.