Word: ek
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Those qualities saw Czechoslovakia through an extraordinary week of showdown with the Soviet Union. With mounting pressures, including a virtual ultimatum to the Czechoslovak nation, Russia did everything that it could, short of sending tanks to halt and reverse the reform program led by Party Boss Alexander Dubček. At week's end, armed intervention was still a possibility. But under Dubček's shrewd direction, little Czechoslovakia stood up and talked back, reaffirming its commitment to a new form of democracy-cum-socialism and defiantly refusing to retreat. If Czechoslovakia gets away with it, Communism...
Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev imperiously summoned Dubček to the Soviet Union for a face-to-face meeting. Radio Prague reported that Dubček would not go until some 16,000 Soviet troops remaining on Czechoslovak soil leave the country. Whether or not Dubček eventually decides to meet Brezhnev, however, he emerged from last week's events with the most powerful backing he has had since he took over from the deposed Antonin Novotny almost seven months ago. The fight may have just begun, and Dubček could still be knocked...
...Retreat. Besieged all week by harsh notes, threats and warnings from the Soviet Union and its followers-and pressured further by the continued presence of the Russian troops-Dubček took to national TV to rally his people around him. He talked as no Communist leader had ever dared to do before. Czechoslovakia, he pledged, would "not make the slightest retreat from the path that we took up in January." He called upon all Czechoslovaks to press forward to "develop socialism into a free, modern and profoundly humane society. Since the party cannot change the people, it must itself...
...Russians had set up radio transmitters within Czechoslovakia with which they could either jam all Czechoslovak broadcasts or beam their own propaganda into the country's homes. They had also, reported Prchlík, invited ex-Party Boss Novotny to Moscow to broadcast a plea for Dubček's overthrow via their network. (Last week Novotny was waiting things out at a country villa at Rokycany, about nine miles from Pilsen, where he was under close surveillance.) The Russian embassy in Prague contains a printing plant that has been turning out a stream of antireform leaflets...
...Union ultimately takes in handling the Czechoslovak crisis - from inaction to armed intervention-it will have to pay dearly. If Moscow chooses muscle, it will not only antagonize most of the non-Communist world but will also alienate many Communist countries and national parties. If it permits Dubček to proceed, his sweeping reforms are bound to spread elsewhere and further weaken Russia's hold over its Communist neighbors. The Kremlin is caught in an enormous dilemma and. no matter what it does, the shape and strength of what used to be called the Communist bloc are bound...