When two thousand tanks and half a million soldiers from the Soviet Union, Poland, Bulgaria and Hungary invaded what was then Czechoslovakia on the night of August 21, 1968, brutally crushing the Prague Spring, 50 years ago, an Austrian photojournalist was caught up in the action. His name was Franz Goës.
The young photojournalist was actually commissioned by a French newspaper to report on the reform efforts under Alexander Dubcek that had been underway in the ČSSR since January 1968.
On October 31, 1967, Antonín Novotný, then head of state and party leader of the ČSSR, had student protests violently crushed, causing tensions within the Czechoslovak Communist Party (KPČ). As a result, Novotný was replaced on January 4, 1968 at the so-called January meeting of the Central Committee of the CPČ. He was succeeded by Alexander Dubcek, until then 1st Secretary of the Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS) and now the reform-oriented leader of the ruling party.
In his reform efforts, Dubcek propagated a "socialism with a human face" and strove for cultural pluralism, in which basic rights such as freedom of expression, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly and the admission of other parties were to be guaranteed. To this end, he lifted press censorship in February 1968. In further reform efforts, companies were to be granted more freedom and a move away from the centrally planned economy. The critical examination of the Communist Party's past culminated in the "Manifesto of 2000 Words" published on June 27, 1968, in which intellectuals and artists rejected the Communist Party's claim to power and spoke out in favor of continuing the reform policy.
The Soviet Union was extremely suspicious of all these events, which had been taking place since January 1968. It feared that the idea of reform would spread to the other Eastern Bloc countries and ultimately endanger socialism. The first talks between government representatives from Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland and the GDR were held as early as March 21, 1968. Further meetings, then without the participation of Czechoslovakia, followed in May and June 1968. The states known as the "Warsaw Five" increased the pressure on the Czechoslovak leadership and demanded an immediate and clear renunciation of the reform process in the "Warsaw Letter" of July 15, 1968, which was later understood as the Brezhnev Doctrine, threatening to no longer accept this. This set the course for military intervention.
As tanks rolled towards Prague and Bratislava on the morning of August 21, 1968, the Prague Spring stood no chance. Czechoslovak citizens were still trying to defend their newly won freedom. But their resistance was bloodily crushed by the invading troops of the Warsaw Pact. A few days later, Alexander Dubcek was forced to sign the "Moscow Protocol", in which almost all the reform points of the Prague Spring were repealed and the stationing of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia was enshrined.
The suppression of the Prague Spring cost the lives of around 150 people.
The photo exhibition is provided by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs and the Rakouské kulturní fórum Prague and can be seen from November 9, 2018 to January 13, 2019 at the University of Applied Sciences Zittau/Görlitz, Campus Görlitz, Hermann-Heitkamp-Haus (GI) on the 3rd floor.
Contact:
Jürgen Möldner, Dipl.-Ing.(FH)
Faculty of Social Sciences
Multimedia Center (MMZ)
Tel.: 03581 374-4273
Email: j.moeldner(at)hszg.de