Day of the Victims of the Occupation of Czechoslovakia

The 21st of August is Day of the Victims of the Occupation of Czechoslovakia in Slovakia.  On this day we commemorate  the 1968 invasion of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic by the Warsaw Pact armies from the Soviet Union, the Polish People’s Republic, the People’s Republic of Bulgaria and the Hungarian People’s Republic. The invasion was intended to stop the so-called Prague Spring.

Roughly 250,000 Warsaw Pact troops along with thousands of tanks and hundreds of aircrafts participated in the overnight invasion which was code named Operation Danube.  The goal of the invasion was to curtail the liberalization reforms of Alexander Dubcek and strengthen the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia’s authoritarian wing.During the invasion, 137 Czechoslovaks were killed and 500 were seriously wounded.

The Prague Spring reforms were an attempt by Dubcek to give citizens of Czechoslovakia additional rights through decentralization of the economy and democratization.  Loosening restrictions on media, speech and travel were some of the freedoms granted as a part of the reform. 

Source: TASR