A Soviet take on the Prague Spring

On August 21, on the 43rd anniversary of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops under the command of Moscow, the Czech press considers that the intervention marked not simply “the failure of the Czechoslovak Communist Party policy” and its wish to introduce socialism with a human face; it also marked a [“Waterloo for the Communist ideology”](http://www.euroskop.cz/46/19456/clanek/komunisticke-waterloo/" http://www.euroskop.cz/46/19456/clanek/komunisticke-waterloo/) of the Soviets, writes Euroskop. What’s more, “the hopes of the Communist intellectuals in both eastern Europe and the West for a bright tomorrow dimmed to a new low.” And lastly, “the invasion exposed the economic and military backwardness of the Soviet empire.”

Those are some of the readings of the times emerging from the book 1968: as the Russians Saw It, edited by the Czech historian Josef Pazderka, which is giving the Czechs their first glimpse of how the Soviets saw the Prague Spring and its abrupt conclusion. “Today, it’s not about demonising Russia,” writes Euroskop, “but it’s best to remain cautious towards a country that remains incapable of reflecting on the occupation of 1968. Even among the Russian intelligentsia, the myth that Czechoslovakia was rescued from a second German aggression continues to find fertile ground.”

The daily Mladá fronta DNES reveals in turn that parts of Soviet society, notably intellectuals and dissidents, followed the events in Czechoslovakia in 1968 closely in the hope that the Prague Spring would spread to the USSR. “For them,” writes the Prague daily, “the military intervention marked the ideological break with the Communist system.”