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Today is a very important date for my country. Exactly 46 years go, we have been militarily invaded by a contingent of armies led by the Soviet Union, which marked the start of a 22-year Soviet occupation.
I want everyone who is not deeply familiar with this particular piece of modern history to take now a step back and appreciate, how extraordinarily outrageous this is. We are not talking about a remote country you may never have heard before, we are talking about Czechoslovakia, the country that borders with Germany and Austria and of which the capital is Prague, now one of the top tourist destinations of Europe. We are also not talking about some past forgotten history and many people involved in the invasion are still alive.
While the death toll of 9/11 is undoubtedly tragic, the real reason why it became such a breaking point is that it hit so close to home for the western civilization. However, the events of 8/21 were just only a couple of hours of drive from Vienna, Frankfurt or even Paris and Brussels. Thus, the really intriguing thing about 8/21 for me is that nobody really seemed to give a fuck and we were lefty completely defenseless. The western world was both too scared of Soviets and too comfy in their nice flowery hippy sixties to move an eyebrow when a country that happened to be one of their close allies a couple of decades ago was overnight taken by force. The invasion, while luckily leaving "only" about a hundred immediate victims, completely halted the efforts to at least partially re-establish democracy in Czechoslovakia and led to twenty years of twisted soul-crushing regime from which the society of the (now two) countries have not healed even 25 years after the breakdown of the system in November 1989.
This year's anniversary is not particularly numerically special. Nevertheless I feel that there are good reasons to remember the events of 1968 right now.
  
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Dont expect other people to fight for you, if you yourself dont show any signs of fighting. Just saying, I dont feel particularly betrayed by our allies. If we did fight and died in thousands and noone bat an eye, then I would be.
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That certainly sounds like a huge part of your history, and I feel bad that your country had to endure such an invasion and occupation. Is there more information on this "8/21" somewhere? I Google searched it and got one relevant hit (wilsoncenter.org), and even Wikipedia doesn't have anything on this "8/21" event. This is surprising to me, especially since you compare it to 9/11 and historical information on that is everywhere (and there are countless sites and Wiki articles on many older historical events, so 8/21 occurring 46 years ago shouldn't be a reason for it not to exist online).
We are not talking about a remote country you may never have heard before, we are talking about Czechoslovakia
This is probably the ignorant American in me, but I involuntarily laughed at this. We're so busy fighting with other people and other countries that there hasn't been too much up-to-date news on the Czech Republic around here.
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On August 21 2014 23:23 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:That certainly sounds like a huge part of your history, and I feel bad that your country had to endure such an invasion and occupation. Is there more information on this "8/21" somewhere? I Google searched it and got one relevant hit (wilsoncenter.org), and even Wikipedia doesn't have anything on this "8/21" event. This is surprising to me, especially since you compare it to 9/11 and historical information on that is everywhere (and there are countless sites and Wiki articles on many older historical events, so 8/21 occurring 46 years ago shouldn't be a reason for it not to exist online). Show nested quote +We are not talking about a remote country you may never have heard before, we are talking about Czechoslovakia This is probably the ignorant American in me, but I involuntarily laughed at this. We're so busy fighting with other people and other countries that there hasn't been too much up-to-date news on the Czech Republic around here.
You won't find anything if you just google for 8/21 or 21st August, you also need the year and the city. What you want to read is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring
Honestly, I don't know what to make of this topic. It was cold war, what did you expect the Western world to do? See the example of the People's Uprising in Germany in June as well. Both sides had nukes, there was no way to react without having the scenario changing into a real third world war nobody wanted - especially after the Cuba Crisis six years prior to the events in your country. It's also not like this was completely ignored in Germany, quite the contrary, the news were flooded with the events.
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Thanks, Gecko 
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I really meant this to be mainly for stimulation of interest in random bycomers - thus the slight use of dramatic hyperbole, which got out of hand with my own "8/21" designation (devised to be able to make the 9/11 paralell more natural) which doesn't make it very easy for people to google it, I admit. As Gecko linked, wikipedia has a wealth of details, other good page (probably linked somewhere on Gecko's link, but I couldn't find it) is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact_invasion_of_Czechoslovakia. I have chosen this specific event not only because it is personally close to me, but because some particular similarities to certain contemporary events are uncanny.
On a lighter note, DarkPlasmaBall, it's completely fine that you haven't heard much news on us, it just shows that we have been doing pretty much normally. In today's world, making big news is almost always bad news (unless you have for example discovered the Higgs, an example that comes to my mind as I am just sitting in the very room where this discovery was first announced).
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My family came to America from what was Czechoslovakia some 130 years +/- ago. My family's surname is Novotny. I must apologize that I am a part of the diaspora of Czechs but did not endure the same hard-ship as your family.
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I find Cold War politics especially interesting, shame that the Prague Spring is not touched upon more in history classes in the States at least. I had to do a presentation on the Alexander Dubček reforms while I studied abroad (in China strangely enough).
As I recall from my own, non AP high school experience, we lumped most of it into the broader heading of Glasnost and Perestroika, then minor details about reform movements and uprisings int he eastern block countries were covered. This could have been anywhere from the early sixties, and I think it ran into the Solidarity movement in Poland as well.
I am glad I got a chance to focus on things more concretely in my Eastern European history class though, my professor was brilliant and has spent a number of years teaching in Bratislava which helped bring the material to life.
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On August 21 2014 23:59 opisska wrote:I really meant this to be mainly for stimulation of interest in random bycomers - thus the slight use of dramatic hyperbole, which got out of hand with my own "8/21" designation (devised to be able to make the 9/11 paralell more natural) which doesn't make it very easy for people to google it, I admit. As Gecko linked, wikipedia has a wealth of details, other good page (probably linked somewhere on Gecko's link, but I couldn't find it) is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact_invasion_of_Czechoslovakia. I have chosen this specific event not only because it is personally close to me, but because some particular similarities to certain contemporary events are uncanny. On a lighter note, DarkPlasmaBall, it's completely fine that you haven't heard much news on us, it just shows that we have been doing pretty much normally. In today's world, making big news is almost always bad news (unless you have for example discovered the Higgs, an example that comes to my mind as I am just sitting in the very room where this discovery was first announced).
your hyperbole worked, you piqued my interest. were you alive when this happened?
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On August 22 2014 06:45 Aveng3r wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2014 23:59 opisska wrote:I really meant this to be mainly for stimulation of interest in random bycomers - thus the slight use of dramatic hyperbole, which got out of hand with my own "8/21" designation (devised to be able to make the 9/11 paralell more natural) which doesn't make it very easy for people to google it, I admit. As Gecko linked, wikipedia has a wealth of details, other good page (probably linked somewhere on Gecko's link, but I couldn't find it) is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact_invasion_of_Czechoslovakia. I have chosen this specific event not only because it is personally close to me, but because some particular similarities to certain contemporary events are uncanny. On a lighter note, DarkPlasmaBall, it's completely fine that you haven't heard much news on us, it just shows that we have been doing pretty much normally. In today's world, making big news is almost always bad news (unless you have for example discovered the Higgs, an example that comes to my mind as I am just sitting in the very room where this discovery was first announced). your hyperbole worked, you piqued my interest. were you alive when this happened?
No, i was born 14 years later. I was only 8 when they finally left in 1990. I must say that I am very glad for that, because with my attitude, I would either have to emigrate or spend most of the 70s and 80s in jail ...
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WCS
