Kiska wants letter allowing 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion in Slovak archives

A COPY of the letter based on which Warsaw Pact armies were permitted to cross the border of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 should be part of Slovakia’s national archives, President Andrej Kiska stated on August 23, adding that he will request a copy from Moscow at an appropriate time.

A COPY of the letter based on which Warsaw Pact armies were permitted to cross the border of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 should be part of Slovakia’s national archives, President Andrej Kiska stated on August 23, adding that he will request a copy from Moscow at an appropriate time.

Kiska views August 1968 as the beginning of one of the darkest periods of Slovakia’s contemporary history, and one with tragic consequences, he wrote in a statement on the recent anniversary of the occupation, which falls on August 21, the TASR newswire reported.

“Many talented and educated people didn’t want to live in an occupied country any more, leaving for free foreign countries,” Kiska wrote, as quoted by TASR. “Thousands of others [those who stayed] were being fired from their jobs and their children were prevented from studying at schools. The period of so-called ‘normalisation’ [which came in response to the liberal tendencies of the 1968 Prague Spring and immediately followed the invasion of August of the same year] prompted the spread of despair, resignation, passivity, grief, but also the reporting on one’s own relatives to the authorities.”

Source: TASR

Compiled by Michaela Terenzani from press reports.
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information
presented in its Flash News postings.

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