1968 THE PRAGUE SPRING AND ROMANIA'S DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
1968 THE PRAGUE SPRING AND ROMANIA'S DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

Author(s): Florian BICHIR
Subject(s): History, Political history, Recent History (1900 till today), Post-War period (1950 - 1989)
Published by: Carol I National Defence University Publishing House
Keywords: Cehoslovacia; Prague Spring; 1968; URSS; Ceaușescu
Summary/Abstract: At dawn on August 21, 1968, half a million Soviet, Bulgarian, Polish, East German, and Hungarian soldiers invaded Czechoslovakia and crushed the Prague Spring. Twenty-nine divisions, 7,500 tanks, and over 1,000 Warsaw Pact aircraft crushed the fledgling democracy and utopian dreams of the Czechoslovakians in the Soviet camp. The Prague Spring was melted away by Brezhnev's doctrine, by the storm, by the Moscow blizzard. A few hours later, after the invasion, Nicolae Ceaușescu stood on the balcony of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party in front of a huge crowd and said: "The invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops is a great mistake and a threat to peace in Europe, to the fate of socialism in the world, and it is a day of shame for the international movement. There is no justification and there is no reason that would make acceptable, even for a moment, the idea of intervening in the internal affairs of a fraternal socialist state [...]. No foreigner has the right to say what form the construction of socialism should take" (Retegan, “1968 – Din primăvară până în toamnă. Schiţă de politică externă românească”, p. 101). A genuine declaration of independence!

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