The Prague invasion remembered

Czech artists, politicians and journalists recall August 21, 1968 – the day the Russians sent in the tanks to crush the Czechs’ bid for social reform

MILOS FORMAN, director (The Firemen's Ball, Amadeus), interviewed in 1997:
"At the time I asked, 'Where are all the friends of liberty? Where is England? Where is France? Where is America? Why is nobody helping us?' We called Stanley Kubrick and asked him to make a proclamation to the press. He excused himself. He was never interested in politics."

VACLAV HAVEL, playwright and first President of the Czech Republic, in his New Year's address to the nation, 1990:
"Those who rebelled against totalitarian rule and those who simply managed to remain themselves and think freely, were all persecuted. We should not forget any of those who paid for our present freedom in one way or another."

MICHAEL GATES, a child in Prague at the time of the invasion, quoted on the BBC:
"I remember walking with Czech relatives past Kafka's house on a scorching day and my mother's cousins praising Dubcek and saying things had never been so good... I opened the window and pulled the canvas back. A seemingly endless line of Russian tanks was passing over a bridge visible from the campsite."

MILAN KUNDERA, Czech novelist, quoted on Eurozine.com:
"The Prague Spring was a passionate defence of the European cultural tradition in the widest and most tolerant sense of the term. We all struggled for the right to maintain that tradition that had been threatened by the anti-Western messianism of Russian totalitarianism."

ALEXANDER DUBCEK, President of Czechoslovakia in 1968, speaking in 1988, four years before his death:
"Without the external intervention into the affairs of our party and of Czech society, our attempt would've been crowned with success."

ANATOLY BABI, a Soviet soldier at the time, quoted in the Guardian:
"We were given gas masks. We were told to sleep in our clothes. We were told to expect big exercises. But when we were given real bullets and set off in a convoy on rails, I understood that it was no game."

LIBOR HAJSKY, Czech press photographer, on Radio Praha:
"Perhaps two metres away from me stood a couple of people. I stepped away and a truck crashed into them; someone at the top of the hill had released the truck's brakes. I took a photo of an overturned tram which was being used as a barricade, and the troops were shooting from behind this tram and right beside me, three people were shot dead. It was like a war zone, it really was."

SIR JOHN TUSA, former BBC executive and managing director of the Barbican Arts Centre, in the Daily Telegraph:
"Tanks and troops filled Prague; Czech leaders were arrested. Hundreds of thousands filled the streets in protest. They had no weapons; there were deaths, but no senseless self-immolation. The occupation was brutal in its totality."

JOSEF KOUDELKA, Magnum photographer, on Aktualne.cz:
"It was a great misfortune, a tragedy for the entire country, but it was also fortunate for me that I could be there... I had experienced something extraordinary. Primarily that everything changed at once, overnight."

DORA SLABA, who worked for the English language service on Radio Prague. From the BBC Radio Today programme, August 19, 2008:
"I went into the streets and talked to the Russians. We tried to get through to them. Tell them there was no reason for them to come. We turned around all the street signs to try and confuse them."

BOHUMIL HAJNY, amateur photographer in the Guardian:
"We simply didn't understand why they had come. We were so convinced we had been moving socialism in the right direction with the Prague Spring."

FIRST POSTED AUGUST 21, 2008