The End of the Prague Spring

Broadside: Srdečně Vás vítáme doma! Dnes v 7,20 hod. se nám vrátili z Moskvy soudr. Svoboda, Dubček, Černík, Smrkovský a Kriegel [We cordially welcome you home! Today at 7:20 a.m. our comrades Svoboda, Dubček, Černík, Smrkovský a Kriegel returned home from Moscow].

Card stock broadside, letterpress-printed to recto, measuring 20.9 × 29.9 cm. Very good.

Broadside celebrating the return on August 27, 1968 of leading Czechoslovak statesmen Alexander Dubček, Ludvík Svoboda, Oldřich Černík, Josef Smrkovský, and František Kriegel, following their deportation to Moscow and the forced signing of the Moscow Protocol, which was negotiated from Aug 23-26 and which brought to a tragic close the more liberal interlude of the Prague Spring. While remaining in favor of communist ideology, all five were popular politicians in the 1960s and were united in their efforts to bring about democratic reforms within the existing regime, a goal encapsulated in the phrase "socialism with a human face." Confident that they could steer these changes without interference from Moscow, Dubček and his colleagues underestimated the danger of their reform project: on August 20, 1968 the Soviet Union executed an invasion of Czechoslovakia using Warsaw Pact forces, which quickly occupied Prague and escorted the reformers to Moscow. All but Kriegel eventually signed the Moscow Protocol, and the achievements of the Prague Spring were gradually undone, heralding the period of so-called Normalization under Gustáv Husák.

As of August 2021, we cannot trace any copies of this broadside.

Book ID: 51529

Price: $275.00