Word: easts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Czechoslovakia runs like a dagger from Europe into the Soviet Union and sits next door to East Germany, the shield of the Soviet bloc's de fense system. In a sense, Dubcek's growing unruliness-and the invasion of his country to bring it back in line-was a near-domestic issue for Moscow, not an international one. This was all the truer because, inside Russia, the youth and intellectuals-among others-seemed electrified by the spectacle of Czechoslovak reform...
...ternational claims as bloc lead er that just before the conference opened he won a unanimous vote of committee confidence. To the Russians' chagrin, the entire Czechoslovak delegation came to Cierna determined to render unto Moscow only what was Moscow's. Two weeks later, East Germany's Walter Ulbricht journeyed to Karlovy Vary and presumably reported to Moscow that the Czechoslo vaks had been completely unchastened by Cierna, that the contagion of reform was sure to spread, both within and without Czechoslovakia...
Flagrant Violation. The reaction throughout the free world was predictably bitter. Charles de Gaulle, his bridge building to the East in ruins, deplored the attack on "the rights and destiny of a friendly nation" and rapped the Russians for still being so old-fashioned as to think of Europe in terms of blocs. Prime Minister Harold Wilson called the attack "a flagrant violation of all accepted standards of international behavior." In New Delhi, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi expressed her "concern and anguish," but her statement was not strong enough to please members of Parliament, who filled the chamber with cries...
Though the Warsaw Pact countries that joined the Soviets in the invasion issued only official communiques of self-congratulation, their people clearly did not share that sentiment. In East Berlin, for example, hundreds of people flatly refused the demand of party workers to sign petitions in support of the intervention. Instead, they came to the Czechoslovak cultural center, where they left bouquets and bought, as some said, "souvenirs of Dubcek...
...executions of "Titoists" and "traitors." Fittingly, Gottwald caught a chill at Stalin's funeral in 1953 and died a few months later. An almost equally unbending Stalinist took his place: Antonin Novotny, who had been Communist boss of Prague. As the slight winds of liberalism blew throughout the East bloc following Khrushchev's 1956 denunciation of Stalin, Novotny tried his best to ward them off. Even so, the pressure for change built up. Art, especially literature and film making, experienced an underground renaissance. Artists and students demanded freedom of expression. Industrial planners and economists asked for freer and more effective...