Word: svoboda
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...hope. For hours, as tension and expectations rose, Radio Free Prague played over and over Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, whose stirring strains once served to rally Czechoslovakia's wartime resistance movement against the Germans. Then, in midafternoon, one of the leaders finally spoke. It was President Ludvik Svoboda, and when he finished, Radio Free Prague played a dirge...
...meantime, President Svoboda had flown to Moscow for face-to-face negotiations with the Soviet leaders. Though they gave him a regal reception in public, the Soviets subjected him in private to vitriolic abuse. "It was ten times worse than Cierna," a member of the Czechoslovak delegation said later. With Brezhnev leading the attack, the Russians ordered Svoboda to set up an anti-Dubček puppet regime. They insisted on the right to name the members of the Presidium. If he did not comply, they warned, Czechoslovakia would be submitted to punishments that would make the rape of Hungary...
License Numbers. Back home, the Czechoslovak people continued to show the same sort of solidarity with Dubcek as Svoboda had shown. Many of them wore red, white and blue corsages and carried IVAN GO HOME! placards. Thev burned propaganda leaflets dropped from Soviet helicopters. Hundreds of thousands of citizens in fac tories, sports clubs and professional associations signed petitions calling upon Svoboda to declare Czechoslovakia neu tral and withdraw from the Warsaw Pact. Radio Prague began broadcasting the license-plate numbers of secret police cars so that people could slash their tires...
What sort of bargain Svoboda and Dubcek might be able to strike in Moscow remained problematical. Pravda's massive editorial sounding the warning on the invasion made it clear that the Kremlin wants to be assured of several things before it withdraws its army. The Russians insist that the old-line cad res be kept in their jobs in the party and government. They want press freedoms curtailed. They want guarantees that Czechoslovakia's economy will remain oriented toward the Soviet bloc...
Many Czechoslovaks were encouraged by the length of Svoboda's stay in Moscow. "If the Soviets had been convinced that they were right," said Agriculture Minister Josef Boruvka, "the negotiations would not have lasted more than an hour." One report said that Svoboda was promising to reimpose a degree of censorship and brake the democratization a bit as part of a political compromise. The Russians, in return, would permit not only Dubcek but also Cernik and Smrkovsky to continue in office. This would leave mat ters pretty much where they stood after Cierna?except that Soviet tanks would still...