On Monday, 30 years have passed since the last transport with Soviet soldiers left Czechoslovakia. Moreover, June 21 is marked as a remembrance day of this event. The Soviet armies had been present in Czechoslovakia for 23 years since August 1968, when they invaded the country to interrupt the so called Prague Spring, which was the name of the movement representing the liberalisation of the communist Soviet led totalitarian regime.
On August 20 and 21 1968, five armies of the Warsaw pact (USSR, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria and East Germany), entered Czechoslovakia, which was the start of the so called normalisation of the regime. All but the Soviet armies left within three months and the soldiers of the USSR remained until June 21, 1991.
The demand for the departure of the Soviet army became one of the priorities of Czechoslovak foreign policy immediately after the Velvet Revolution which ended the Soviet led communist totalitarian regime in November 1989.
The entire departure took place in three phases and started on February 26, 1990. In 16 months, 73,500 Soviet officers and soldiers, almost 40,000 family members, 1,220 tanks, 2,500 infantry fighting vehicles, more than 100 aircraft, almost two hundred helicopters and 95,000 tons of ammunition left the territory of Czechoslovakia in 925 transports.
Their presence - officially called temporary - was legalized on October 18, 1968 with an agreement approved by the Czechoslovak National Council. 228 MPs voted for, 10 abstained from the vote and four voted against - František Kriegel, František Vodsloň, Gertruda Sekaninová-Čakrtová and Božena Fuková.
