Tanks in Bratislava (source: UPN archive)
Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia. In this issue, we mark the anniversary of the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, look at who the next foreign affairs minister might be, and highlight the story of a Ukrainian mother living as a refugee in Slovakia.
Please note that Monday August 29 and Thursday September 1 are national holidays in Slovakia. Last Week in Slovakia is taking a break next week, and will be back with the next issue on September 5. Until then, follow www.spectator.sk for updates about the government crisis and more.
Memories of a previous invasion
On the night of August 20, 1968, troops from every one of its notional allies in the Warsaw Pact (except Romania and Albania) entered the territory of Czechoslovakia to put an end to its democratisation movement, thereby cementing its status as a Soviet satellite on the western flank of what was then the Eastern Bloc.
This is, somewhat inaccurately, etched into the collective memory of the inhabitants of the then Czechoslovakia, as the arrival of “the Russian tanks” or just “the Russians”. In reality, the soldiers on the Soviet-made tanks were of various nationalities, from Kazakh to Ukrainian. But our collective memory does not fail us when it recalls the invasion as, at root, a display of Russian imperialism – not unlike the one the world has been witnessing this year in Ukraine. Indeed, for many Czechs and Slovaks in their sixties and seventies, whose lives changed from one day to the next – like that of photographer Pavol Bielik – the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February this year was a reminder of 1968. The “we’ve been there too” feeling may be one reason why the wave of solidarity with Ukrainians fleeing the war was so strong here. Many were reminded of their own friends and relatives who fled the country in 1968 and soon after – you can read some of their stories, collected four years ago in The Slovak Spectator.
