The Brezhnev Doctrine was a Soviet foreign policy that proclaimed that any threat to "socialist rule" in any state of the Soviet Bloc in Central and Eastern Europe was a threat to all of them, and therefore, it justified the intervention of fellow socialist states. It was proclaimed in order to justify the Soviet-led occupation of Czechoslovakia earlier in 1968, with the overthrow of the reformist government there. The references to "socialism" meant control by the communist parties which were loyal to the Kremlin. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev repudiated the doctrine in the late 1980s, as the Kremlin accepted the peaceful overthrow of Soviet rule in all its satellite countries in Eastern Europe.
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization and mass protest in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It began on 5 January 1968, when reformist Alexander Dubček was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), and continued until 21 August 1968, when the Soviet Union and most Warsaw Pact members invaded the country to suppress the reforms.
Alexander Dubček was a Slovak statesman who served as the First Secretary of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) from January 1968 to April 1969 and as Chairman of the Federal Assembly from 1989 to 1992 following the Velvet Revolution. He oversaw significant reforms to the communist system during a period that became known as the Prague Spring, but his reforms were reversed and he was eventually sidelined following the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968.
From the Communist coup d'état in February 1948 to the Velvet Revolution in 1989, Czechoslovakia was ruled by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. The country belonged to the Eastern Bloc and was a member of the Warsaw Pact and of Comecon. During the era of Communist Party rule, thousands of Czechoslovaks faced political persecution for various offences, such as trying to emigrate across the Iron Curtain.
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was a communist and Marxist–Leninist political party in Czechoslovakia that existed between 1921 and 1992. It was a member of the Comintern. Between 1929 and 1953, it was led by Klement Gottwald. The KSČ was the sole governing party in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic though it was a leading party along with the Slovak branch and four other legally permitted non-communist parties. After its election victory in 1946, it seized power in the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état and established a one-party state allied with the Soviet Union. Nationalization of virtually all private enterprises followed, and a command economy was implemented.
In the history of Czechoslovakia, normalization is a name commonly given to the period following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 and up to the glasnost era of liberalization that began in the Soviet Union and its neighboring nations in 1987. It was characterized by the restoration of the conditions prevailing before the Prague Spring reform period led by the First Secretary Alexander Dubček of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) earlier in 1968 and the subsequent preservation of the new status quo. Some historians date the period from the signing of the Moscow Protocol by Dubček and the other jailed Czechoslovak leaders on 26 August 1968, while others date it from the replacement of Dubček by Gustáv Husák on 17 April 1969, followed by the official normalization policies referred to as Husakism. The policy ended either with Husák's removal as leader of the Party on 17 December 1987, or with the beginning of the Velvet Revolution on 17 November 1989, which would see the resignation of the entire Communist Party leadership within a week and an end to Communist rule in Czechoslovakia.
Although political control of Communist Czechoslovakia was largely monopolized by the authoritarian Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), the party technically shared political power with other parties of the National Front. The leader of the KSČ was de facto the most powerful person in the country during this period. Czechoslovakia's foreign policy was openly influenced by the foreign policy of the Soviet Union.
With the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy at the end of World War I, the independent country of Czechoslovakia was formed as a result of the critical intervention of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, among others.
Gustáv Husák was a Czechoslovak politician who served as the long-time First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia from 1969 to 1987 and the President of Czechoslovakia from 1975 to 1989.
Socialism with a human face is a slogan referring to the reformist and democratic socialist programme of Alexander Dubček and his colleagues, agreed at the Presidium of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in April 1968, after he became chairman of the KSČ in January 1968.
RSDr. Vasiľ Biľak was a Slovak Communist politician and leader of Rusyn origin.
Otto Šling was a Czechoslovak politician. He was born into a Jewish family in Nová Cerekev, a market town in south Bohemia, then part of the Austrian Empire. After World War II, Šling became the Communist Party's Regional Secretary of Brno in Czechoslovakia.
"The Two Thousand Words" is a manifesto written by Czech reformist writer Ludvík Vaculík. It was signed by intellectuals and artists on June 17, 1968, in the midst of the Prague Spring, a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia that began in January 1968 with the election of Alexander Dubček and ended with the Soviet invasion in August, followed by the Czechoslovak Normalization.
On 20–21 August 1968, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was jointly invaded by four Warsaw Pact countries: the Soviet Union, the Polish People's Republic, the People's Republic of Bulgaria and the Hungarian People's Republic. The invasion stopped Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring liberalisation reforms and strengthened the authoritarian wing of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ).
František Kriegel was a Czechoslovak politician, physician, and a member of the Communist Party reform wing of the Prague Spring (1968). He was the only one of the political leaders who, during the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, declined to sign the Moscow Protocol.
Josef Smrkovský was a Czechoslovak politician and a member of the Communist Party reform wing during the 1968 Prague Spring.
Josef Špaček was a Czechoslovak communist politician who was an important member of the government during the 1968 reformist period known as the Prague Spring. He was appointed to the Central Committee of the communist party of Czechoslovakia after communist party leader Antonín Novotný was replaced by Slovak politician Alexander Dubček. Along with Dubček and other Central Committee members, Špaček was arrested by the Soviets during the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. In the years following the collapse of the Dubček government, Špaček was relegated to low-level, non-political positions, including working as a forestry official. Following the restoration of democracy in 1989, he was again politically active and in 1990 was elected to the national parliament.
Čestmír Císař was a Czech and Czechoslovak politician and diplomat. He served as the first Chairman of the Czech National Council from 1968 to 1969 when the Czech Republic was part of Czechoslovakia during the Communist era. A leading advocate for reforms of the Communist Party, Císař introduced a series of liberal reforms to Communist Czechoslovakia, becoming a major figure in the Prague Spring as a result. He sought to create a new form of socialism with a "human face." His reforms were repealed following the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. He was removed from office and expelled from the Communist Party until the Velvet Revolution of 1989.
The following events occurred in June 1968:
The following events occurred in July 1968:
