[PDF] The Czechoslovak Crisis 1968 eBook

Author : Günter Bischof
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 534 pages
File Size : 18,30 MB
Release : 2010
Category : History
ISBN : 9780739143049

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On August 20, 1968, tens of thousands of Soviet and East European ground and air forces moved into Czechoslovakia and occupied the country in an attempt to end the "Prague Spring" reforms and restore an orthodox Communist regime. The leader of the Soviet Communist Party, Leonid Brezhnev, was initially reluctant to use military force and tired to pressure his counterpart in Czechoslovakia, Alexander Dubccaron;ek, to crack down. But during the summer of 1968, after several months of careful deliberations, the Soviet Politburo finally decided that military force was the only option left. A large invading force of Soviet, Polish, Hungarian and Bulgarian troops received final orders to move into Czechoslovakia; within twenty-four hours they had established complete military control of Czechoslovakia, bringing and end to hopes for "socialism with a human face."

Author : Robert Rhodes James
Publisher : Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 21,99 MB
Release : 1969
Category : Czechoslovakia
ISBN :

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From the John Holmes Library ccollection.

Author : Carole Fink
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 508 pages
File Size : 37,52 MB
Release : 1998-10-28
Category : History
ISBN : 9780521646376

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1968: The World Transformed presents a global perspective on the tumultuous events of the most crucial year in the era of the Cold War. By interpreting 1968 as a transnational phenomenon, authors from Europe and the United States explain why the crises of 1968 erupted almost simultaneously throughout the world. Together, the eighteen chapters provide an interdisciplinary and comparative approach to the rise and fall of protest movements worldwide. The book represents an effort to integrate international relations, the role of media, and the cross-cultural exchange of people and ideas into the history of that year. 1968 emerges as a global phenomenon because of the linkages between domestic and international affairs, the powerful influence of the media, the networks of communication among activists, and the shared opposition to the domestic and international status quo in the name of freedom and self-determination.

Author : Jarom¡r Navr til
Publisher : Central European University Press
Page : 656 pages
File Size : 13,7 MB
Release : 1998-01-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9789639116153

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"In addition to revealing the events surrounding the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, this is the first book to document a Cold War crisis from both sides of the Iron Curtain. It is based on unprecedented access to the previously closed archives of each member of the Warsaw Pact, as well as once highly classified American documents from the National Security Council, CIA, and other intelligence agencies." "Presented in a highly readable volume, the book offers top-level documents from Kremlin Politburo meetings, multilateral sessions of the Warsaw Pact leading up to the decision to invade, transcripts of KGB-recorded telephone conversations between Leonid Brezhnev and Alexander Dubcek." "To provide a historical and political context, the editors have prepared essays to introduce each section of the volume. A chronology, glossary and bibliography offer further background information for the reader." "The editors have a unique perspective to offer to foreign audiences since they are members of the commission appointed by Vaclav Havel to investigate the events of 1967-1970."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Author : Maud Bracke
Publisher : Central European University Press
Page : 436 pages
File Size : 50,36 MB
Release : 2007-01-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9789637326943

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"The 1968-1969 Czechoslovak crisis was first and foremost a major crisis of European detente. While the Prague Spring was made possible by the immediate and unchecked consequences of early detente in Europe, its crushing sharply brought out the contradictions of detente as understood by the global Cold War protagonists. In a similar way as the Czecho-slovak crisis reflected the ambivalence at the heart of detente, the West European Communist Parties' responses to it revealed the ambivalence of detente as a context for radical social change, either in the East of the West. The scholarly literature on the PCI and PCF has, often in an unproblematic way, understood the shift from Cold War to detente on the European continent in the mid-1960s as a development essentially positive to these parties. The present study argues against this and demonstrates how the shift from the Cold War of the 1950s to detente in Europe reformulated the impasse of revolution or radical change in the West, rather than putting an end to it." Book jacket.

Author : Jiri Valenta
Publisher : Johns Hopkins University Press
Page : 298 pages
File Size : 41,27 MB
Release : 1991-11-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780801842979

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In this new edition of his highly acclaimed work, Jiri Valenta adds his assessment of Soviet military decisionmaking in the 1980s to his earlier analysis of decisionmaking and crisis management in the Soviet bureaucracy and Warsaw Pact. Comparing the events of 1968 to the Kremlin's very different reaction to reforms now under way in Czechoslovakia and the rest of Eastern Europe, Valenta shows that Soviet politics were never simple. The USSR's foreign policy response to the "Prague Spring," he contends, was the result of a complex political process conditioned by bureaucratic inertia, coalition politics, and East European pressures.

Author : M. Mark Stolarik
Publisher : Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers
Page : 346 pages
File Size : 13,56 MB
Release : 2010
Category : History
ISBN : 0865167516

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Essays and comments presented at an international conference held at University of Ottawa, Oct. 9-10, 2008.

Author : Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Staff
Publisher : CreateSpace
Page : 66 pages
File Size : 18,74 MB
Release : 2012-12-23
Category : Cold War
ISBN : 9781481818230

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The Czechoslovak crisis, as it became known, started in January 1968, when Alexander Dubcek was elevated to the post of First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPCz), replacing moribund Antonin Novotny, who had served as First Secretary since 1957. Under Dubcek, the communist leadership embarked on a program of dramatic liberalization of the Czechoslovak political, economic, and social order, including the overhaul of the CPCz leadership, increased freedom of speech, surrender of authority to the Czech National Assembly by the Communist Party, real elections at local and national levels, and even the suggestion of legalizing non-communist political parties. All this alarmed Moscow and the leadership of the Warsaw Pact, but throughout the Prague Spring, Dubcek went out of his way to demonstrate his personal loyalty to Moscow and Prague's intention to remain firmly within the Warsaw Pact military alliance. How sincere he was in these remonstrations is difficult to say, but Dubcek and his allies clearly feared a repetition of the Hungarian uprising of 1956, brutally crushed by Soviet troops. These fears were mirrored in Washington and, to a certain extent, even in Moscow. The crisis lasted more than a year, with the first none months consisting of Czech reforms triggering Soviet statements of concern and eventually threats, buttressed by Warsaw Pact military buildups disguised as exercises. When the invasion occurred in the early morning hours of 21 August, the Czechoslovak leadership as not immediately removed, but remained largely intact through April 1969, when Dubcek was finally replaced as First Secretary by a more pro-Soviet Gustav Husak.