Day: August 21, 2017

Today in History 08/21/17

Czech protesters holding a Czechoslovak flag on Aug 21, 1968, as Soviet-led armies crush the so called Prague Spring reform (© LIBOR HAJSKY/AFP/Getty Images)(1968) The USSR puts a chokehold on Czechoslovakia
Hopes for a freer society are brutally quashed as Warsaw Pact tanks and hundreds of thousands of troops thunder through the street of Prague, Czechoslovakia. Democratic reforms that began seven months earlier as the ‘Prague Spring’ are now crushed in the iron grip of Soviet domination.
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II. It began on 5 January 1968, when reformist Alexander Dubček was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and continued until 21 August 1968 when the Soviet Union and other members of the Warsaw Pact invaded the country to halt the reforms.
Start date: Jan 05, 1968
End date: Aug 21, 1968

wiki/Prague_Spring
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