Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia

Date

5 January – 21 August 1968

Category

Military & conflict

Region

Central/Eastern Europe (Czechoslovakia)

Era

Contemporary

Significance

The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalisation in Czechoslovakia that began on 5 January 1968 when the reformist Alexander Dubček became First Secretary of the Communist Party.

Under the banner of 'socialism with a human face', his government loosened censorship, expanded freedoms of speech, press and travel, and pursued partial economic decentralisation. Alarmed that the reforms threatened communist control and could spread across the Eastern Bloc, the Soviet Union and three Warsaw Pact allies (Poland, Bulgaria and Hungary); East Germany's army was mobilised at the border but, on Moscow's orders, did not cross launched Operation Danube on the night of 20–21 August 1968, sending roughly 250,000 troops (later about 500,000) with tanks and aircraft into Czechoslovakia. The largely non-violent resistance could not prevent the occupation; the reforms were reversed in a process of 'normalisation'. The invasion was justified afterward by the 'Brezhnev Doctrine' asserting Moscow's right to intervene in socialist states, and it deepened disillusionment with Soviet communism among Western leftists.

Empires active in 5 January – 21 August 1968

• Soviet Union
  1922 CE – 1991 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE – 1997 CE
• Spanish Empire
  1492 CE – 1976 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE
• Solomonic dynasty
  1270 CE – 1974 CE
• Dutch Empire
  1581 CE – 1975 CE

Related military & conflict events

• Cuban Missile Crisis
  16–28 October 1962
• Fall of Saigon and reunification of Vietnam
  30 April 1975 (reunified 1976)
• Khmer Rouge Seize Cambodia and Declare Year Zero
  1975
• Korean War
  25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953
• Creation of Israel and the 1948 Arab–Israeli War
  14 May 1948 (war May 1948 – July 1949)
• The Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi
  7 April – 19 July 1994

Also relevant

• Six-Day War
  5–10 June 1967
• The Nigerian Civil War And The Biafran Famine
  1967–1970

Further reading

Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire

The wider story

Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire

Roger Crowley

Fast-paced narrative of Portugal's seaborne empire.

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