When we hear something about the Prague Spring of 1968, we immediately think about the courage of the Czech population to launch a series of reform in the communist regime of that time. However, this is a partially wrong view of the reality, since the man behind the reforms was the Slovak Alexander Dubcek (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Dub%C4%8Dek).
He was elected Chairman of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and he soon decided to carry out a series of reforms to make the communist regime more human and bearable for the population. These reforms were, needless to say, not welcomed by the Soviet Union, which soon sent its army (tanks included) to Prague, to finish the reforms. The main leaders of the country, Dubcek amongst them, were secretly taken by plane to Moscow and forced to sign a document taking back the reforms. After that, he virtually disappeared from the public domain, until his strange death in a car accident in 1992.
One must not underestimate the merit of the actions by Alexander Dubcek. Before him, there were other leaders in the communist party of Czechoslovakia, who did exactly what was mandated from Moscow. After him, there were other leaders who exactly did what Moscow mandated them, with no question from their side. Maybe they were also opposed to the ideas coming from Moscow, but they did not have the courage to bring them to life. It was Dubcek who first tried to make the regime more human and light, calling not for a violent revolution, but for democratic reforms. Faced with the brutal invassion of the Soviet Union, he called the citizens not to fight, as he understood clearly that this was a lost battle.
With this post, I just want to praise the courage of Alexander Dubcek, who did not hesitate to do what his heart was telling him was the right thing to do. I also want to give some credit to him as Slovak, since it seems that in the Prague Spring was a mere Czech event.
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