Patriotic Guards (Romania)
The Patriotic Guards were Romanian paramilitary formations formed during the Communist era, designed to provide additional defence in case of a foreign attack.
Patriotic Guards training. The soldiers were often equipped with World War II weapons, such as the ZB vz. 30 (center).
The Patriotic Guards had to defend the national infrastructure during wartime.
The paramilitary formations were trained to adopt guerrilla warfare tactics in case of war.
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia
On 20–21 August 1968, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was jointly invaded by four Warsaw Pact countries: the Soviet Union, the Polish People's Republic, the People's Republic of Bulgaria and the Hungarian People's Republic. The invasion stopped Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring liberalisation reforms and strengthened the authoritarian wing of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ).
Photograph of a Soviet T-54 in Prague during the Warsaw Pact's occupation of Czechoslovakia
Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and Polish leader Władysław Gomułka in East Berlin, 1967
Brezhnev, Nikolai Podgorny, and East German leader Walter Ulbricht in Moscow
Nicolae Ceauşescu (right) visiting Czechoslovakia in 1968; here, with Alexander Dubček and Ludvik Svoboda
