Word: czechoslovakias
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Offering a Pacifier. The Russians let it be known in embassies around the world that they were going to Czechoslovakia armed with five major points: 1) that internal Czechoslovak developments constitute a threat to socialism and the Warsaw Pact; 2) that the Czechoslovak Communist Party is losing or giving up its leading role; 3) that the party is overrun with "revisionists"; 4) that Czechoslovak journalists are against the party, the Warsaw Pact and the unity of the Communist camp; and 5) that if Dubček does not act himself, he can expect "international help"-meaning from Red army troops...
Show of Force. To strengthen their case at the summit conference, the Russians mobilized their armies throughout Eastern Europe in a massive and unprecedented show of power. At least 3,000 men, out of the original Soviet force of 16,000 troops who had come to Czechoslovakia in June for Warsaw Pact exercises, kept up their conspicuous bivouac near roads in Slovakia last week. The few Russian units that did leave marched straight to Poland, where they pitched their tents hard by Czechoslovakia's border. Soviet tanks and at least 1,000 other military vehicles suddenly began rolling over...
...same time, the Soviets busily built a rationale for possible military action. They charged that new hoards of arms hidden away for insurrectionists had been discovered in Czechoslovakia. The Prague government denied it. Privately, Czechoslovak officials claimed that a cache of U.S.-made guns discovered near the West German border last month was probably planted there by Russian troops as a pretext for intervention, should one be required...
Dwarf-Sized Man. Since Dubček is unlikely to retreat very far, the only hope that the Russians would seem to have of defeating his program is to somehow oust him as party boss. In the present mood of Czechoslovakia, that would probably require nothing less than a bullet-or the Red army. In spite of minimal concessions, Dubček is not yet in deep trouble with his party and clearly leads a united people. At week's end, Dubček called on the nation to back him with "strong faith in our good cause...
...defend the way that we have entered and do not in tend to leave while we live." Along with the manifesto, the journal's editors ran a cartoon showing a gargantuan figure of Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev frantically pouring buckets of water on a tiny bungalow representing Czechoslovakia. A dwarf-sized man is peeking out of a window and shouting at him: "This house is not on fire...