Word: brezhnevs
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...unmistakable signal of what was in store for the liberals came in May of 1965, when Brezhnev cited Stalin, who had become virtually an unperson, favorably in a public speech. A day later, Stalin's picture flashed on Moscow television screens for the first time in nine years. The initial effect was to arouse and unify the liberal intelligentsia as never before, a unity that has largely managed to hold through the ensuing crackdown...
Then, on March 29, in the first pronouncement on cultural policy by a top leader since Khrushchev's fall, Brezhnev attacked "the abominable deeds of these double-dealers," the intellectuals who had protested the writers' trials, and promised that "these renegades" would be punished. Another trial was held in Leningrad, with 17 intellectuals convicted on the bizarre and clearly fabricated charge of conspiracy to replace the Soviet government with a democracy under the Russian Orthodox Church. Mass expulsions from the Writers and Artists Unions began; this meant loss of jobs and apartments. Among those expelled was Solzhenitsyn's close friend...
Summons to Moscow. Most impatient of all, it seemed, was Communist Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev. Last week Brezhnev ordered Dubček to report to Moscow with his personal list of Czechoslovak "counter-revolutionaries"-for comparison with Brezhnev's own. Under pressure from Brezhnev and his Kremlin colleagues, Dubček accepted the resignation of Foreign Minister Jiři Hájek, who defiantly demanded withdrawal of Russian troops before the U.N. Security Council last month. He was the third reformer of ministerial rank to be sacked (Deputy Premier Ota Sik and Interior Minister Josef Pavel preceded...
...fruits of such journalism were quickly apparent. Circulation doubled and tripled. Czechs waited in line at newsstands, tuned in excitedly to newscasts on Czech radio and television. To the Kremlin, however, it was all an insufferable threat. In May, Dubček was summoned to Moscow, where Leonid Brezhnev thrust a stack of heretical clippings at him and, shaking with rage, told him that "this sort of thing has got to stop." But it did not stop. Dubček refused to restore censorship, contented himself with asking newsmen to tone down their attacks for a while. At a national...
...President Svoboda had flown to Moscow for face-to-face negotiations with the Soviet leaders. Though they gave him a regal reception in public, the Soviets subjected him in private to vitriolic abuse. "It was ten times worse than Cierna," a member of the Czechoslovak delegation said later. With Brezhnev leading the attack, the Russians ordered Svoboda to set up an anti-Dubček puppet regime. They insisted on the right to name the members of the Presidium. If he did not comply, they warned, Czechoslovakia would be submitted to punishments that would make the rape of Hungary seem...