We remember Alexander Dubček who was born in Uhrovec, nestled in the Strážovské Mountains of western Slovakia, on this day in 1921. He died in 1992.
We learned about Mr. Dubcek back in 1968 and "The Prague Spring". He was the face of that movement or a challenge to the old USSR and its control over Eastern Europe.
The USSR and The Warsaw Pact are now history. It all collapsed at the end of 1991. In other words, most young people younger than 35 have no emotional involvement with what we grew up with. They’ve probably never heard of the Berlin Wall or the 1956 Hungarian revolution or the atrocities of communism. Prague is now the capital of the Czech Republic and Slovakia is another country. It all seems like a past so long ago.
Some of us are old enough to remember this week when 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 5,000 tanks invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the “Prague Spring.”
It was a dark day for freedom. Like the Hungarians in 1956, the people of Czechoslovakia were given a taste of Soviet “tolerance.” The “Prague Spring” was all about freedom and reforms but the Kremlin did not accept it and sent the tanks in.
A sad day for those of us who were watching from the West, especially when Fidel Castro defended the USSR. by saying among many things that the country was “…..heading toward a counter-revolutionary situation, toward capitalism and into the arms of imperialism.”
We remember today all the people who stood up to Soviet tanks in Prague. And we remember more victims of communism.
