Word: czechoslovakias
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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With a wrench, the mood of Czechoslovakia suddenly changed. Resuming operations, the official press, radio and television began to speak of the Russian invaders as "the visiting fraternal forces." Overt opposition all but ended, and most Czechoslovaks did their best to tolerate their unwanted visitors. While they still felt great animosity to ward their occupiers, they nonetheless recognized that since they had not resisted at the moment of the invasion, it was useless to provoke repressive measures by acts of defiance now. As a result, the country began to assume at least a veneer of normality. TIME Correspondent Peter Forbath...
After ten days of work stoppages, with drastic losses for Czechoslovakia's already ailing economy, factory laborers relit blast furnaces and returned to their work benches. The 10 p.m.-to-5 a.m. curfew was lifted. Nightclubs and cinemas reopened. One showed My Fair Lady, but another slyly screened The Good Soldier Schweik. Svelte bar girls in scalloped miniskirts or skintight trousers flitted through the cocktail lounge at Prague's Esplanade Hotel. The juggler was even back in action at Prague's Tetran club, though he tended to drop more plates than usual...
...guns and tank treads in the first days of the invasion. On the spot where the bloodied clothes of a slain 14-year-old had lain surrounded by candles, city workmen emplanted rows of blooming red salvias. Then a water truck sprayed the flowers, finishing the job of converting Czechoslovakia's main shrine to its martyrs into just another bit of cosmetic civic landscaping...
...Soviet invasion. On his return the week before from three days of negotiations in Moscow, Party First Secretary Alexander Dubċek told the Czechoslovak people that their only sensible alternative was to submit to the Soviet will. Then, setting the example, he began the humiliating task of dismantling Czechoslovakia's short-lived freedom and reforms...
...that point, Dubċek and his colleagues were equally unbending. As a justification for their invasion, the Soviets wanted Dubċek to make a public statement thanking the Red Army for saving Czechoslovakia from the clutches of counterrevolutionaries. Dubċek refused. Nor could the Soviets prevail upon two Novotnýite conservatives, whom most Czechoslovaks suspected of issuing the call for intervention, to give some credence to the rumor by at least keeping their mouths shut. As soon as they were re-elected to a new Central Committee that Dubċek formed last week...