55 years ago, Warsaw Pact troops led by the Soviet Red Army crossed the border of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Apart from that, Czechoslovak territory was occupied by Poles, Germans, Hungarians and Bulgarians. At the peak of their strength, the invading troops had over 300,000 men, against which the Czechoslovak army did not stand much of a chance.
The reason for the invasion was relatively simple and the Soviet Union justified it on paper a few weeks in advance – the Bratislava Declaration was signed, where the communist countries of Eastern Europe, except Romania, confirmed their loyalty to Marxism-Leninism and the fight against the bourgeois economy, or capitalism. At the time, Moscow proclaimed its intention to intervene in developments in the countries of the Warsaw Pact at a time when there was a threat of introducing political plurality with a system having more political parties.
Warsaw Pact countries expressed official concern over “current events in Czechoslovakia”. A few days later, occupation troops occupied not only the streets of Prague, and the twenty-one-year period of darkness began.
Dubček took power 55 years ago. He was a symbol, not a driving force, of the reforms of the Prague Spring
As a reminder: it was the Red Army that led the invasion. The sovereign largest nation of the USSR was the Russians. But that the army was “Soviet” at this moment and every day it is driving water to the mill of the Czech disinformation community and the community dissatisfied with the accommodation of Ukrainian war refugees on the territory of the Czech Republic.
The troops of the Warsaw Pact came to Czechoslovakia from the German Democratic Republic, Poland and Hungary. It also gives tactical logic, a direct invasion from the current Ukrainian territory would mean a journey several hundred kilometers long. First through the terrain-unfriendly Podkarpatská Rus and Košice. In other words, the city is not nearly as important as Prague, Bratislava or Brno. There were also units on the territory of Ukraine, but how pointed out historian Prokop Tomek for the server Aktuálně.cz, this does not mean that they were primarily composed of Ukrainians.
That the invasion in 1968 was led by Ukrainians is the most pathetic and cheap argument. In addition, we currently have very high-quality relations with the Poles, Germans, and even with the Lithuanians, who are not reproached by anyone for participating in this event – because it simply does not make sense and it does not bring any “quality” arguments to the pro-Russian debate. If we wanted to blame all nations equally, it is necessary to mention over twenty of them.
So who should we not welcome here according to the pro-Russian scene? Germans, Poles, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Russians, Kazakhs, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Georgians, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Turkmens, Kyrgyz, Lithuanians, Estonians or Latvians. And we only mention the main nations. Dozens more remain in the thrall of Moscow. Most of them were then represented in the Red Army.
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It is important to mention that the vast majority of these nations would not do anything like that again. Moreover, most of them apologized for the invasion. And the Russians? They did exactly the same thing more than fifty years earlier. It shows the absence of any lessons from history and zero remorse for any action that took away the freedom of people who have nothing to do with Moscow.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is clear evidence that nothing has changed in Moscow. No order came from Kiev – in 1968 or 2022. Moscow decided it. More precisely, the Kremlin, only not communist, but oligarchic and Putinist.
The Red Army still exists today. The Empire in the East still hasn’t fallen, and it looks like it won’t for some time. But what is crumbling is the imperial army, its morale and supply, its machines imported to the front from as far away as Siberia.
What do the invasions against Czechoslovakia 1968 and Ukraine 2022 have in common? Both countries wanted to go their separate ways and were taking important steps to free themselves from the clutches of the Moscow Politburo. It took the Czechs and Slovaks 21 years to finish what they started. How long it will last for the Ukrainians remains to be seen. It is obvious, however, that the Russians crossed not only the borders of another sovereign and independent country, but also any values and international conventions built after the death of Adolf Hitler.
Source: eurozpravy.cz
