The spontaneous, non-violent civic resistance against the Warsaw Pact invasion of August 1968

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The late 1960s in Czechoslovakia saw the emergence of a society-wide movement for democratisation of the communist regime. The Soviet leadership monitored these developments with increasing concern. In early August 1968 representatives of Warsaw Pact countries met in Bratislava and signed the Bratislava Declaration, which stated in part that “it was the common internationalist duty of all socialist countries to protect and consolidate socialist gains”. It was supposedly at this time that a ‘letter of invitation’, giving an appearance of legitimacy to the impending military intervention, was passed to the Soviet leadership. On the night of 20-21 August Czechoslovakia was invaded by armed forces from several Warsaw Pact countries. The invasion force included three hundred thousand foreign soldiers and more than six thousand tanks and combat vehicles. As a result of the invasion, the reform process was stopped and the period of ‘normalisation’ began. The invasion of Czechoslovakia shocked the world and triggered spontaneous civic resistance that made headlines at home and abroad.