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
Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, known from 1948 to 1960 as the Czechoslovak Republic, Fourth Czechoslovak Republic, or simply Czechoslovakia, was the Czechoslovak state from 1948 until 1989, when the country was under communist rule, and was regarded as a satellite state in the Soviet sphere of interest.
Pro-Communist demonstrations before the coup d'état in 1948
Image: Antonín Novotný 1968
Image: Dubcek 1991
Image: Gustáv Husák oříznuto