Word: czechoslovakias
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Sometimes the history of a place is best told through the history of a remarkable man. Jiri Ruml is such a man. Twenty years ago this month, Moscow dispatched Warsaw Pact troops to Czechoslovakia to crush a budding reform movement, a brutal act that plunged the country into a dark winter of repression from which it is only now emerging. Ruml, a journalist in Prague, was fired, but that was merely the beginning of his troubles. Senior Correspondent Frederick Ungeheuer, who covered the invasion for TIME, knew Ruml well. This month he returned to Prague to find...
...stage for the extraordinary reform movement known as the Prague Spring. He reported on the enthusiasm that Party Leader Alexander Dubcek's vision of "socialism with a human face" had aroused among factory workers, and wrote scathing pieces about the ominous Warsaw Pact army maneuvers taking place in Czechoslovakia that summer. On Aug. 21, those exercises had turned into a full-scale invasion...
Iran's first plea was to the International Civil Aviation Organization, meeting in Montreal. But of the 33 nations that sit on the I.C.A.O.'s governing body, only four (the Soviet Union, China, Czechoslovakia and Cuba) were in favor of condemnation. Iran eventually had to settle for a statement that merely "deplored" the incident and promised an investigation...
...probably five in all, dealing with such issues as legal reform, nationalities and a general political resolution. They will then become official party policy. The theses include a manifesto of freedoms that suggests a cross between the U.S. Bill of Rights and the "Socialism with a human face" of Czechoslovakia's Alexander Dubcek, which was crushed by Soviet tanks in 1968. The state, according to the document, should provide "material and juridical conditions for the exercise of constitutional freedoms (freedom of speech, the press, conscience, assembly, meetings, street processions and demonstrations, etc.). And firmer guarantees of personal rights, such...
...diligence can sometimes be charming. During a visit to Czechoslovakia in 1987, Raisa kept behind Mikhail and conscientiously repeated, "Thank you so much for coming," as they worked the crowd. In Prague she noticed that the General Secretary was about to overlook a young boy. "Mikhail Sergeyevich," she said in her high-pitched voice. Her husband turned around, greeted the child and invited him to Moscow. Her thoroughness can be irritating too. At a State Department lunch in Washington, Raisa upset Secretary of State George Shultz by having a brief conversation with each of the 180 people on the receiving...