ПОКУШАЈ СТВАРАЊА ЈЕЗГРА ЧЕХОСЛОВАЧКЕ ЕМИГРАЦИЈЕ У ЈУГОСЛАВИЈИ НАКОН СОВЈЕТСКЕ ОКУПАЦИЈЕ ЧЕХОСЛОВАЧКЕ У АВГУСТУ 1968. ГОДИНЕ
An Attempt at Forming a Core of Czechoslovak Emigration in Yugoslavia after the Soviet Occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968

Summary/Abstract: An infl uential group of members of the Czechoslovak government, that happened to be in Yugoslavia at the moment of Czechoslovakia’s occupation, was staying in Belgrade between August 21 and 29, 1968. O. Šik, J. Hájek, F. Vlasák and F. Gašparik tried to form the core of a future Czechoslovak emigration in Belgrade. The attitude of the Yugoslav leaders toward this group was ambivalent. In unoffi cial talk’s Šik and others won sympathies of all the leading members of the Yugoslav oligarchy; they were granted the possibility to act in public (press conference, help for the Foreign Minister Hájek for organizing his trip to the session of the Security Council of the OUN). However, the real help was minimal. Tito’s regime feared above all what Moscow’s reaction would be. Thus, for instance, Šik’s request to establish special coded contacts with Prag was denied. After the so-called Moscow Protocol had been signed, the Yugoslav regime wanted the members of the Czechoslovak government to return home as soon as possible. Hájek, Vlasák and Gašparik left already on August 29. Otto Šik stayed on in Belgrade in a bizarre exile until early October. (He was formally an economic adviser to the Embassy in Belgrade, but he never started working at the Embassy.) The stay of the members of the Czechoslovak government was one of the major reasons for deterioration of relations between Yugoslavia and the USSR after September 1968.

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