Prague is reminiscent of the suppression of the Prague spring in 1968. The Soviet leadership repressed at the time, the Reform Communists in Czechoslovakia with a line of loyal Comrades. Frank Hofmann recalls.
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50 Years Of The Prague Spring
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Czech Republic: 50 Years Of The Prague Spring
Half a Million soldiers, first tanks of the Soviet army: In the night from 20. on the 21. In August 1968 ended the troops of the Warsaw Pact, the Prague spring, at the behest of the Communist party (CP) in Moscow. Thus, the dream ended, that there could be a socialism in Eastern Europe, relies on freedom, especially freedom of expression. Already since the beginning of 1968, journalists had ignored the censorship of the CSSR-KP. Alexander Dubcek, the head of the Czechoslovak Communists, had you let them. He sat on a free and democratic socialism in the hope that Moscow will allow the Prague way. Especially since the Czechoslovak Communist part of the Soviet wanted the Japanese to remain dominated Eastern bloc. But the fear that more freedom in Prague, could end the reign of the Communist parties of the neighbouring countries, was finally greater.
21. August 1968: tanks roll through the streets of Prague
A witness with a camera
Roland Berauer had spent the night in a boy scout tent on the festival grounds of Prague above the Vltava river. “We have seen how the armored car drove past us in the direction of downtown,” recalled the now 82-year-old. He had joined a newspaper of path finder that could be freely published, was a result of the Prague spring. In a tent they had set up an editorial Board. With a typewriter, printing machine and camera. Roland Berauer was the photographer. He informed the group about the invasion, and called for, to hide the editing machines. “For me, was left alone to grab my camera and go in the city.” He photographed the day of the occupation by the soldiers of the Warsaw Pact countries. In front of the radio building was shot, he saved up load in a color. In front of the main entrance to the radio house protesters of the Soviet soldiers were shot. “It was horrible.” A few months later, Alexander Dubcek was deposed, the Reformer at the head of the Communist party.
Witness Roland Berauer with path finder newspaper
New files finds in the archives of the state security
The memory of that day still has an effect today in the Czech Republic, says Ondrej Matejka. The Vice-Director of the Institute for totalitarianism research in Prague is the documentation of the direct Partner of the German Stasi authority. “68 continues to be handed down as of this emotional shock, which is associated with the occupation. This 21. August and the few days afterwards, when the people were able to fight back passively, as they’ve really held together as a society – and it was already very, very strong.”
Historian Ondrej Matejka in Prague
For the historians dealing with the events of 1968, has lost none of its relevance. Especially since in the archives of the former state security of the USSR as the socialist brother States, new files show up. Especially the East German state security had observed since the spring of 1968, the reforms in Prague, sharp, and collected photos and reports of informal employees. “It is documented for the first Time that the intelligence service of a friendly Nation takes the right to observe the citizens of another country,” says the Berlin-based archivist Oliver Strübing,
Photo expert in the Stasi archives: Oliver Strübing
of the more than a thousand photographs reviews. Even more: After the suppression of the Prague spring, the East German agents were used in Prague as an expert. And in fact, all the secret services in the Eastern bloc in the next two decades, to Snitch to secure the rule of the Communist parties.
IN the accusations against the head of government
The professional historian for the reappraisal of the Czechoslovak state security in the two main cities of the former Czechoslovakia – Prague and Bratislava – are also convinced that these shadows up to the present time.
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Andrej Babis: an Oligarch in the Czech Republic?
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Andrej Babis: an Oligarch in the Czech Republic?
Last year they released the first files, from which it is clear that the present Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, Andrej Babis, since 1982, unofficial employees of the Czechoslovak state to be security. The one who defends himself against the charges legally, but his lawsuit against the historian was dismissed.
Unfinished Refurbishment
“Babis constantly repeating the word lie,” says Petr Pithart. The Prime Minister, without a doubt, an Informal collaborator of the CSSR had been a Stasi. “We have all the can in television of the documents.” Pithart was Prime Minister of the Czech Republic of Czechoslovakia in the transitional period after the fall of the Iron curtain, and belonged to the closest circle of the reversing-President Vaclav Havel. Babis worked in foreign trade of the socialist Czechoslovakia, and after the fall of the Iron curtain, using his rope to a successful entrepreneurial career passions.
Turning-Prime Minister Petr Pithart
The party of the multi-millionaire was last year, after a populist election campaign, the strongest force in the Czech Republic. The Havel-Familiar Petr Pithart does not believe, however, that the incumbent Prime Minister can survive the Snitch accusations harmless. Babis will be not a successful Prime Minister, says Pithart. The historian Ondrej Matejka looks at the development, however, self-critically: “Why do we now have a Prime Minister who depends on a IN the was, rather, what we have done in the last 30 years of reclamation, and since we have done some of that.”