Intervention
At approximately 11 pm on 20 August 1968, Eastern Bloc armies from five Warsaw Pact countries – the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, and East Germany – invaded Czechoslovakia. That night, 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 2,000 tanks entered the country. Romania did not take part in the invasion, and neither did Albania, which withdrew from the Warsaw Pact over the matter.
The invasion was well planned and coordinated, simultaneously with the border crossing by ground forces, a Soviet airborne division (VDV) captured Prague's Ruzyne International Airport in the early hours of the invasion. It began with a special flight from Moscow which carried more than 100 plainclothes agents. They quickly secured the airport and prepared the way for the huge forthcoming airlift, in which An-12 transport aircraft started arriving and unloading Soviet airborne troops equipped with artillery and light tanks.
As the operation at the airport continued, columns of tanks and motorized rifle troops headed toward Prague and other major centers, meeting no resistance. The bulk of invading forces were from the Soviet Union supported by other countries from the communist bloc. Among them were 28,000 troops of the Polish 2nd Army from the Silesian Military District, commanded by general Florian Siwicki, and all invading Hungarian troops were withdrawn by 31 October. The degree of participation of the East German Army is dubious: either they were withdrawn within a few days or barely crossed the border.
During the attack of the Warsaw Pact armies, 72 Czechs and Slovaks were killed (19 of those in Slovakia) and hundreds were wounded. Alexander Dubček called upon his people not to resist. He was arrested and taken to Moscow along with several of his colleagues. Dubček and most of the reformers were returned to Prague on 27 August, and Dubček retained his post as the party's first secretary until he was forced to resign in April 1969 following the Czechoslovak Hockey Riots.
The invasion was followed by a wave of emigration, largely of highly qualified people, unseen before and stopped shortly after (estimate: 70,000 immediately, 300,000 in total). Western countries allowed these people to immigrate without complications.
Read more about this topic: Warsaw Pact Invasion Of Czechoslovakia
Famous quotes containing the word intervention:
“I was curious, I was avid to know only what I found more real than myself, that which allowed me to glimpse the thoughts of a great genius, or the force or grace of nature left to its own devices, without the intervention of man.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“All of the assumptions once made about a parent’s role have been undercut by the specialists. The psychiatric specialists, the psychological specialists, the educational specialists, all have mystified child development. They have fostered the idea that understanding children and promoting their intellectual well-being is too complex for mothers and requires the intervention of experts.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)