40 years ago today; the end of Prague Spring

On the morning of the August 21^st 1968, the shooting had begun at the Czechoslovak Radio building on Vinohradská Street. Wenceslas Square, with its patron saint, Vaclav IV riding high on horse back, draped with the Czech flag, and taken over by oppressors. Soviet Tanks hurling out of the side streets, firing volleys at the National Museum. Burning cars, people in movement, photographers, pleading faces, and countless pointed guns. The future of their country was not something the Czechs gave up lightly, although there was little hope. They protested in the thousands for days. They clashed, and they pleaded, they hung up placards, and slogans, and wrote graffiti on the walls, crying a common appeal for justice. The world did nothing. In their protest there was simple genius - emotional to observe even forty years after the event.

There would be another 21 years of oppression, for the then Czechoslovakia, before Czechs and Slovaks would become free. Dozens were lost during those dark August days, including one student shot at Karlov, in the Little Quarter, for nothing more than wearing a tri-color pin featuring Czechoslovakia's colors. Most others would endure the oppressive 'normalization' period following the fall of Czechoslovakia.

There are a series of sculptures at the end of Narodní trida, where it intersects with Ujezd, adjacent to the Hunger Wall. It is a memorial “To the victims of Communism, those who were not only jailed or executed, but also those whose lives were ruined by totalitarian despotism”

1968 - A year that began with hope and promise for Czechoslovakia and ended in tragedy no one could have foreseen. That invasion changed the direction of a country, and the lives of millions; an invasion by a country that continues to this day to still oppress the free despite the outcries of the world.

The last Russian troops finally left Czech soil in 1991. Now they have yet again entered
another nation to the East. History repeats itself. The world does nothing.

It is stunning what they have done as a people and as a country in the very short number of years since their freedom of 1989. One can only say on this day: God Bless the Czech Republic. They have endured. +97