Word: smrkovsk
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Dates: during 1968-1968
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Beneath crystal chandeliers inside Hradcany Castle, on a high hill over looking Prague, the party and government leaders of Czechoslovakia gathered to observe the 50th anniversary of their independence from Austro-Hungarian rule. The moment was solemn - and cautious. "I beg you not to demonstrate," Josef Smrkovský, President of the National Assembly, had pleaded with the students of Prague's Charles University. "Would it be surprising if tanks appeared? If you demonstrate, we might all be sorry." Most of the university heeded the warning, marking the day quietly with a philosophy-department "teach-in" against the Russian occupation...
...people from committing national suicide. In an urgent appeal to the National Assembly, they had implored the Deputies to refrain from inflaming the tense situation. The Deputies insisted on issuing their protest, but then they reluctantly went into recess. In a radio address, the President of the Parliament, Josef Smrkovský, argued that the present regressions represented only a temporary setback. He and the other leaders, he said, had accepted the Soviet dictates, and the attendant crackdowns on personal and political liberty, in hopes of getting the occupation lifted. "We are sure that you will see in all this...
After the announcement that the leaders would move on to Bratislava for another conference, the country was confused. A restless, worried crowd of several thousand people assembled in Prague's Old Town Square. "Tell us the truth!" they shouted when National Assembly President Josef Smrkovský came out on a balcony. "For how much did you sell us to the Russians?" "If I told you that I am not ashamed to look into the eyes of our citizens after Cierna," Smrkovský replied earnestly, "would you believe me?" In his radio address, Dubček reassured the people that...
...democracy so far unequaled anywhere in the Communist world, Czechoslovakia's revolution may have a far more lasting impact on Communism than either Tito's breakaway from the Kremlin or the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. "It lies upon us, on Czechs and Slovaks," says Forestry Minister Josef Smrkovský, "to enter courageously into unexplored terrain...