On this day in history: Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia, 1968

In January 1968, Alexander Dubček became First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Dubček was previously leader of the party in Slovakia, where he had implemented a programme of liberalisation. His application of the same reforms to the whole country resulted in criticism from hard-liners and the Soviet leadership in Moscow.



The leaders in Russia and other Warsaw Pact nations tried to persuade the Czechoslovak party to limit their reforms. These leaders met with Dubček at Čierna nad Tisou, near the Slovak-Russian border, where he assured them that while he remained allied to the Russia and other Eastern Bloc nations, the reforms he implemented where an internal matter. Unimpressed, the Soviets returned to Russia and hatched a plan to bring the reforms to an end.



On 21st August 1968, 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops armed with 200 tanks swept across Czechoslovakia and took control in Prague. The troops, who crossed the border a little before midnight on the day before, included regiments from USSR, Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland. Dubček urged the Czechoslovak people not to resist the invasion; yet, 72 were killed and around 700 injured during the invasion.





Having secured the airport in Prague, and confined the Czechoslovak armed forced to barracks, the invading forces captured Dubček and other reformers and put them on a plane to Moscow. While there, all but one of the Czechoslovak reformers were impelled to accept and sign the Moscow protocols, effectively ending the liberalisation programme despite the non-violent protests in support of reform back in Czechoslovakia. The Soviets allowed most of the reformers to return home on 27th August, but Dubček's days were numbered: he was forced to resign his position in April 1969.



The Prague Life website includes more details about the reform programme known as the Prague Spring.



Related posts

Belgrade student revolt: 2nd June 1968

Czech reformist manifesto published: 27th June 1968

The Brezhnev Doctrine: 13th November 1968

On this day in history: Battle of Berestechko begins, 1651

In the mid-seventeenth century, one of the largest and most populace states in Europe was the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (also known by the rather the delightful name of Most Serene Commonwealth of the Two Nations). This elective monarchy extended from Poznan in the west to Smolensk in the east; it included Latvia and much of modern day Estonia, Belarus and Ukraine. As such the Commonwealth's population consisted of many ethnic groups, not all of whom were content to be ruled by a Polish-Lithuanian monarch.

In 1648, a number of ethnic groups within the Ukraine rebelled against the Roman Catholic King John II Casimir. Initiated by Cossacks the war of liberation soon attracted their fellow Orthodox Christians: Ukrainian peasants and Crimean Tatars. The rebels - commanded by Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, a Zaporozhian Cossack who gave his name to the uprising - managed to drive the Polish nobles, Catholic priests, and Jewish leaseholders from their land in the first few months of the insurgency - massacring those who did not flee. Meanwhile, the King was building an army to take back the Ukraine.

On 28th June 1651, the largest battle of the seventeenth century began when approximately 140,000 rebels engaged just over 50,000 Commonwealth soldiers under the command of the king at Berestechko in the western Ukraine. The battle lasted for three days by the end of which between forty- and seventy-thousand rebels lay dead (including women and children at their camp), while the Polish-Lithuanian army had lost less than one-thousand men. The rebels were forced to capitulate and signed the Treaty of Bila Tserkva on 28th September.

In spite of the defeat, Khmelnytskyi (aka Chmielnicki) had not given up hope of forcing the Commonwealth out of the Ukraine, but he realised that he needed allies to do so. Initially he approached the Ottoman Sultan who offered the rebels vassal status; however, the Ukrainians were not keen on a Muslim overlord. So it was that Khmelnytskyi signed the Treaty of Pereyaslav in 1654, making the Ukraine a vassal state of the co-religionist Russian Tsar, finally ending Polish-Lithuanian domination of the Ukraine.

Herman Rosenthal's article on JewishEncyclopedia.com gives a Jewish perspective of the Cossacks' Uprising.

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On this day in history: Czech reformist manifesto published, 1968

On 27th June 1968, the Czechoslovak writer and journalist, Ludvík Vaculík, published his progressive manifesto The Two Thousand Words. The text called upon the Czechoslovak people to demand greater openness and decentralisation from the Communist Party, which had already started making reforms under the influence of Alexander Dubček, who had become First Secretary of the party in January 1968. The article was accompanied by sixty signatures when it appeared in the journal Literarny Listy, which Vaculík was an editor of (the other editors distanced themselves from the text), as well as two other journals.

Over the next few months The Two Thousand Words became a petition which attracted thousands more signatures; however, not everyone supported Vaculík's programme. While progressives from the lower ranks of the Communist Party and other reform-minded intellectuals, writers and workers wrote letters in support of the manifesto, senior part officials and hardliners denounced Vaculík and set in motion the procedures for banning him from the party. As well as polarising opinion at home, the manifesto caused disquiet in other parts of the Soviet Bloc, particularly in Moscow where the Soviet hierarchy were becoming increasingly concerned by Dubček's reform programme, concerns that would eventually result in Russian intervention in Czechoslovakia.

An English translation of The Two Thousand Words is available at ThinkQuest.

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Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia: 21st August 1968
The Brezhnev Doctrine: 13th November 1968

Also on this day in history
First electronic Automatic Teller Machine installed, 1967

On this day in history: Belgrade student revolt, 1968

In the late 1960s, student dissatisfaction was not solely confined to capitalist countries. Many students in Yugoslavia shared similar concerns with their fellows at universities in France, the United States, and other countries that had seen campus revolts. The students of the New Belgrade campus resented the privileges of the party elite, and this resentments boiled over on the night of 2nd June 1968.

A popular theatre company were booked to play the university. The students requested that they perform at the university's large open-air amphitheatre but instead authorities arranged for them to play a smaller venue and only make seats available to youth members of the ruling Communist party. On the night of the show, a large group students gathered outside the theatre and attempted to force their way in. When the police drove them out again they reacted by throwing stones at the theatre windows and smashing its doors.


The police responded by sending in a fire-engine to clear the streets, but the students managed to turn it over and set fire to it. They also started turning cars over to form barricades, as they had seen done by Parisian students on the television news. As the police pressed forward the retreated to the university campus where they discussed how to proceed.

The next day, around four thousand students decide to march on the centre of Belgrade to air their grievances: their disgust with the inequalities of the socialist state; their concerns about unemployment; their demand for establishment of real democracy. Halfway along the route, they find their way blocked by thousands of armed police, who fire into the crowd. The ensuing battle creates around seventy casualties.


That afternoon about ten thousand students occupy the Philosophy and Sociology Faculty on the New Belgrade campus and draw up a list of demands. Meanwhile, the streets of Belgrade fill with riot police instructed to squash any further demonstrations. Over the following days many of professors and other faculty staff join with the students in their occupation. Tensions rise - the press demands swift and merciless action against the students and on the 9th June police surround the university. But then, to widespread surprise, President Tito intervenes.

In a television address, he welcomes the students' criticism of the state and endorses their programme of reform. His words defuse the situation, the media performs a volte-face and the riot police disappear. The majority of students are jubilant, but a small hardcore of student activists continue to express their concerns and following another speech Tito, in which he denounced extremism, riot police moved in and cleared the Philosophy and Sociology Faculty on the 20th June. Slowly and surely the status quo was restored.

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Night of the Barricades: 10th May 1968
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On this day in history: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, 1918

Following the seizure of power in Russia by the Bolsheviks during the October Revolution of 1917, the Second Congress of the Soviet of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies passed The Decree on Peace proposing the immediate withdrawal of Russia from war against Germany and her allies. In December the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Central Powers - Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire - signed an armistice and started peace negotiations. Months passed before the Russians delegation, led by Leon Trotsky in his role as People's Commissar for Foreign Relations, withdrew from the talks because they could not accept the German's demands for the secession of territory.

The Germans responded by repudiating the ceasefire, seized much of the Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic States before threatening the Russian capital, Petrograd. The Russians had little choice but to return to the negotiating table. On 3rd March 1918 the representatives of the belligerents signed a treaty at Brest-Litovsk in modern day Belarus.

The terms of the treaty were even more unfavourable to the Russians than those they had previously rejected. The fourteen articles of the treaty included provisions for the Central Powers to take effective control of the Baltic states, Finland, Belarus and the Ukraine. The Russians were also to return those lands captured from the Ottoman Empire. In return the Ottoman's accepted the creation of the Democratic Republic of Armenia.

The treaty did not last long: the Ottomans invaded Armenia just two months after the signing of the treaty; then the Germans renounced it in November 1918 as a response to Bolshevik attempts to provoke revolution in Germany. Russia itself annulled the treaty after the Allied victory over Germany and her allies. Over the next three years the Soviet Union reclaimed some of its lost territory in a series of military campaigns.

The text of The Peace Treaty of Brest-Litovsk is available on the World War I Document Archive site.

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The Year of Revolution: 1848

In a break from the 'On this day in history' series, I am taking inspiration from recent events in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and Libya. This year has seen a wave of revolutions in North Africa and Arabia, but it was Europe that rocked with demands for freedom in 1848. While many of these revolutions failed in the short term, they marked a sea change in European politics.

The year 1848 began with the Sicilian Revolution of Independence, which began on 12th January. This was the third popular rebellion against King Ferdinand II seeking the restoration of the liberal constitution of 1812. Negotiations between the monarch and revolutionaries dragged on for eighteen months before the king's forces finally recaptured the island.

The people of other Italian states also rose up against their rulers, notably in the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, then part of the Hapsburg Austrian Empire. The people of Milan and Venice instituted provisional governments, both of which were eventually defeated by the Austrians. These risings, along with the timely constitutional reforms in the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, laid the foundations for Italian unification.

Nationalist uprisings occurred elsewhere in the Hapsburg Empire. In March, Magyar nationalists forced Emperor Ferdinand to grant them a constitution and a government. This government ensured Magyar domination of Hungary, resulting in a further uprising of Slovaks in Upper Hungary starting in September, 1848.

The March Revolution in Germany resulted in the short-lived Frankfurt Parliament. This experiment in German unification failed because of the absence of national institutions and the lack support from the King Frederick William IV of Prussia. The final straw was when he turned down the offer of becoming Emperor of the Germans.

The Prussian king faced an uprising in his Polish possessions. In March, a Polish National Committee formed in the Grand Duchy of Poznań, taking inspiration from events in Germany. While the committee negotiated reforms with the Prussians and other Germans, the leader of the Polish militia ignored orders to disarm. This decision resulted in military confrontation with the Prussians whose victory ended any hope of Polish autonomy.

In modern day Romania, Imperial Russian faced liberal nationalist uprisings in Wallachia and Moldavia. Russian troops quickly put down the Moldavian revolt, before turning their attentions to neighbouring Wallachia. With help from the Ottoman Empire the Russians restored their joint hegemony over Danubian Principalities.

1848 saw another revolution in France, the third in less than sixty years. A financial crisis and King Louis Philippe's increasingly conservative policies resulted in a popular uprising in February. The king abdicated and fled to Britain, leaving the way clear for the establishment of the Second Republic.

Further uprisings happened in Belgium, Denmark, Ireland and Schleswig. As with those already detailed, these revolts made little difference in the immediate aftermath, but all these revolutions set the scene for political change in the rest of the nineteenth- and the early twentieth-century. It remains to be seen whether the revolutions in North Africa and Arabia will follow this model of eventual reform, or whether they will quickly establish new governments that endure.

On this day in history: Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia, 1968

In January 1968, Alexander Dubček became First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Dubček was previously leader of the party in Slovakia, where he had implemented a programme of liberalisation. His application of the same reforms to the whole country resulted in criticism from hard-liners and the Soviet leadership in Moscow.

The leaders in Russia and other Warsaw Pact nations tried to persuade the Czechoslovak party to limit their reforms. These leaders met with Dubček at Čierna nad Tisou, near the Slovak-Russian border, where he assured them that while he remained allied to the Russia and other Eastern Bloc nations, the reforms he implemented where an internal matter. Unimpressed, the Soviets returned to Russia and hatched a plan to bring the reforms to an end.

On 21st August 1968, 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops armed with 200 tanks swept across Czechoslovakia and took control in Prague. The troops, who crossed the border a little before midnight on the day before, included regiments from USSR, Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland. Dubček urged the Czechoslovak people not to resist the invasion; yet, 72 were killed and around 700 injured during the invasion.


Having secured the airport in Prague, and confined the Czechoslovak armed forced to barracks, the invading forces captured Dubček and other reformers and put them on a plane to Moscow. While there, all but one of the Czechoslovak reformers were impelled to accept and sign the Moscow protocols, effectively ending the liberalisation programme despite the non-violent protests in support of reform back in Czechoslovakia. The Soviets allowed most of the reformers to return home on 27th August, but Dubček's days were numbered: he was forced to resign his position in April 1969.

The Prague Life website includes more details about the reform programme known as the Prague Spring.

Related posts
Belgrade student revolt: 2nd June 1968
Czech reformist manifesto published: 27th June 1968
The Brezhnev Doctrine: 13th November 1968