The Tragic Failure of the Prague Spring »
Posted By berkeley 1 year, 6 months ago in NewsBut Czechoslovakia's experiment became its tragedy on the night of August 21, 1968, when the armies of fellow Warsaw Pact countries invaded. Students in Prague graffitied on a building wall, "Lenin, wake up, they've gone mad."
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berkeley
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. Of all the enemies to public ...
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berkeley1 year, 6 months ago
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related:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,15...
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gamahuche1 year, 6 months ago
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This is an excellent, excellent account.
Nothing is unfamiliar to me, nor do I disagree with much and I commend, especially,the very interesting analysis of how the failure of the Prague Spring in 1968 in fact also undermined the results of the Velvet Revolution of 1989.
The morale - and the morals - of people here would have been completely different and the benefit to Europe would have been much greater.
How the politics have unfolded since then has been a huge disappointment to most people and the result has been a hideous eruption of greed and corruption and a loss of the humanist values which were so embedded in the national psyche.
Havel was a fine figurehead of a President, perhaps overly loved and respected, but his political power was insufficient to counterbalance the greed of the nouveau riche who found ways to steal almost everything that wasn't nailed down.
*******
I hope to return to this story later but have a big work schedule
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gamahuche1 year, 6 months ago
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A very important secondary result was also the separation of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia as independent states which took place on 1st January 1983 and had NOTHING to do with the wishes of the people in either country and everything to do with the overarching ambition and ego of the dominant politicians of the day, Czech Vaclav Klaus and Slovak Vladimir Meciar and their unwillingness to share the limelight.
The people absolutely did NOT want this. I was on Slovakia at the time the Slovak parliament voted for it and watched on TV the glummest collection of browbeaten hacks who were forced to stand up individually and say yes or no.
Yuk yuk yuk.
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CHAM1 year, 6 months ago
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Intresting. A good post. And yes the consequences may be "unintended", but the lesson is that people suffer when powerful financial and political interests conflict.
I remember the rolling of tanks into the Czech Republic and remember thinking that if the world wasn't careful, world war was sure to break out. It certainly looked like it might.
Emile Zatopek was the sports hero of that time and must have been one of the best Czechoslovakian icons of all time. I used to marvel at his ability. No one in the world could touch him.
But that area of the world became the punch/counterpunch battleground of Communism vs Capitalism and as they say the rest is history. The hardships imposed on people in this game are not important, just the aims of the agenda groups, and the people suffer, but not the agenda groups who finish second best at worst. Sometimes we can just be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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gamahuche1 year, 6 months ago
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Emil Zatopek was amazing!!!
In the Helsinki Olympics he walked away wuth the 5,000 and 10,000m AND right after that in his very first marathon run EVER, won that too.
I saw him live once at White City in London and he walked away from his field again. I believe that included Gordon Pirie and Vladimir Kuts.
His wife was also an Olympic athlete and she is still alive. I've been trying to pluck up the courage to ring her doorbell.
I'm looking for an amazing picture..
Still looking..
But here he is winning the 52 Olympic Marathon:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=oFl829WefFQ
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CRYMTYPHON1 year, 6 months ago
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Wow.
All I know of that event comes from Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
I am impressed when people have serious knowledge of other times and places. It implies they probably have a sound grasp on what they are saying about here and now.
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Candida1 year, 6 months ago
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A woman I know, who was a young girl then, was woken by her boyfriend on August 21, 1068 with the words: "We have invaded Czechoslovakia." Still sleepy, she said: "What do you mean? I haven't invaded them, and neither have you." "No," he said impatiently, "the Warsaw Pact countries." "Why?" came her next question. "There is a revolution there," he answered. So they listened to the news, and there was not a single word about it. It had been announced at 6:00 a.m., and then it wasn't mentioned again until noon or so. By then it was pretty well over.
I've often wondered why the Soviets needed the Warsaw Pact countries. They could deal with the Hungarian revolution in 1956 quite easily by themselves. I guess they didn't have occupying forces in Czechoslovakia before 1968, and the other countries gave some legitimacy to their invasion. The big powers play, and the people of the small countries pay.
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Radiofreeeuropa1 year, 6 months ago
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Berkeley, thanks for submitting this, it's real analysis, a relative rarity. My two bits on the subject:
In terms of a system of government it appears the Spanish Anarchists had the closest thing to an arrangement that actually worked. The flaw of capitalism that no one seems to acknowledge is that unrestrained, all the capital ends up in very few hands. This is clearly demonstrated in numerous societies. The Czech's have hit so many high notes in their struggle, and I feel will prevail, as they have in the face of remarkable challenges through history, in this new era where an equilibrium of sorts needs to be found. In many senses, Prague Spring was not really a failure, but a bridge, a work of architectural beauty that threatened powerful concerns. The bridge was destroyed by those concerns. But it was rebuilt stronger and larger in the Velvet Revolution.
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Radiofreeeuropa1 year, 6 months ago
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Personal freedom is not exclusive of community, and even a system devised by the best and brightest is gamed by the corrupt and deplorable. It is undermined by the incompetent and the exceedingly greedy.
This can be easily observed in the United States as well, the U.S. Constitution was devised by the best and brightest of that time. They had the foresight to design a system that
built upon the best efforts of the past and relied on checks and balances regarding power distribution.
Yet we suffer the same ills as all machinations of governments, the greed of the few outweighs the needs of the many. There are those who are constantly misrepresenting and manipulating for personal gain. These things seem to come in peaks and trows, waves of favor and disfavor. The bigger the wave, the higher the peak, but unfortunately the lower the trow as well.
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gamahuche1 year, 6 months ago
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We'll need to get you over here some time soon RFE and sort out a few things - painlessly over a few beers of course..
For now lets just deal with the books...
Klima - yes, worth reading. Wrote "Love and Garbage"..
"The Unbearable Lightness of Being" was Milan Kundera and was a pretty great book. Unfortunately he now lives in exile and only writes in French.
MUCH juicier is anything by Bohumil Hrabal, e.g. Closely Watched [sometimes Observed] Trains - also a great film; Too Loud a Solitude; Cutting it Short - also a fabulous film; I Served the King of England [not one of my favourites].
Czech films of Milos Forman include The Fireman's Ball,Loves of a Blonde. Jiri Menzel's films: Larks on a String, Closely Watched Trains, My Sweet Little Village..
Then to understand Czech humour Jaroslav Hasek's "The Good Soldier Schwejk" is crucial.
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