Author : Jakub Drábik
Publisher :
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 48,12 MB
Release : 2021-04-21
Category :
ISBN : 9783838215549
This book brings the international context of the 1968 crisis in Czechoslovakia to the center of attention. It brought together experts from within as well as from without Central Europe to kindle an international discussion on the Prague spring, its origins, its unfolding, its aftermath, and, most importantly, the international context.
Author : Josef Pazderka
Publisher :
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 39,65 MB
Release : 2021-06-15
Category :
ISBN : 9781793602947
This collection of interviews, diaries, and scholarly analyses is the first comprehensive look at Russian sentiments in the wake of the Warsaw Pact occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. It features the reflections of Russian soldiers, dissidents, and journalists.
Author : David Francois
Publisher : Europe@war
Page : pages
File Size : 25,11 MB
Release : 2020-10-19
Category : History
ISBN : 9781913336295
On 20 August 1968, hundreds of thousands of soldiers, dozens of thousands of tanks and armored vehicles, and hundreds of military aircraft of the Warsaw Pact armed forces invaded Czechoslovakia in an operation code-named Danube. It was the largest military undertaking in Europe since 1945. Starting with a description of the history of Czechoslovakia, especially after the communist takeover of power in 1948, this volume describes the birth and development of the Prague Spring in 1968 and an attempt to reform the communist system from within. It recounts the hostility this process encountered on the part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR/Soviet Union), and its allies within the Warsaw Pact, and provoked a split in the Kremlin about solutions for the resulting 'Czechoslovak problem'. The crisis that developed throughout the spring and summer of 1968 led to the military intervention. While paying special attention to the military and strategic aspects of the Czechoslovak crisis, this volume also provides a blow-by-blow account of its impacts upon the Czechoslovak armed forces and the Warsaw Pact. The subsequent military operation - codenamed Operation Danube - is described in all of its components, including the airborne and ground aspects, and the political operation that supported it. Within only 24 hours, the Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces secured the entire territory of Czechoslovakia, de-facto overrunning the local armed forces in the process. The Czechoslovak population organized non-violent resistance, thus highlighting the political aspects of the intervention. However, it was hopelessly out of condition to prevent the ultimate downfall of the so-called 'Prague Spring', and the related hopes. Nevertheless, the application of military power against a popularly-supported political reform marked a turning point in the Cold War, and forever changed the balance of power in Central Europe. Guiding the reader meticulously through the details of the forces involved, their organisation and equipment, Operation Danube offers a uniquely in-depth account of the invasion of Czechoslovakia and is profusely illustrated with more than 100 photos, maps, and exclusive colour artworks.
Author : Jiri Valenta
Publisher : Johns Hopkins University Press
Page : 298 pages
File Size : 19,39 MB
Release : 1991-11-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780801842979
In this new edition of his highly acclaimed work, Jiri Valenta adds his assessment of Soviet military decisionmaking in the 1980s to his earlier analysis of decisionmaking and crisis management in the Soviet bureaucracy and Warsaw Pact. Comparing the events of 1968 to the Kremlin's very different reaction to reforms now under way in Czechoslovakia and the rest of Eastern Europe, Valenta shows that Soviet politics were never simple. The USSR's foreign policy response to the "Prague Spring," he contends, was the result of a complex political process conditioned by bureaucratic inertia, coalition politics, and East European pressures.
Author : Harold Gordon Skilling
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 944 pages
File Size : 47,99 MB
Release : 2015-03-08
Category : History
ISBN : 1400871158
For about eight months in 1968 Czechoslovakia underwent rapid and radical changes that were unparalleled in the history of communist reform; in the eight months that followed, those changes were dramatically reversed. H. Gordon Skilling provides a comprehensive analysis of the events of 1968, assessing their significance both for Czechoslovakia and for communism generally. The author's account is based on all available written sources, including unpublished Communist Party documents and interviews conducted in Czechoslovakia in 1967, 1968, and 1969. He examines the historical background, the main reforms and political forces of 1968, international reactions, the Soviet intervention, and the experiment's collapse, concluding with his reasons for regarding the events of the Prague spring as a movement of revolutionary proportions. The author's account is based on all available written sources, including unpublished Communist Party documents and interviews conducted in Czechoslovakia in 1967, 1968, 1969. He examines the historical background, the main reforms and political forces on 1968, international reactions, the Soviet intervention, and the experiment's collapse, concluding with his reasons for regarding the events of the Prague spring as a movement of revolutionary proportions. Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author : Grey Hodnett
Publisher : Canberra, [Australia] : Department of Political Science, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University
Page : 168 pages
File Size : 11,25 MB
Release : 1970
Category : History
ISBN :
Author : Karl Schlögel
Publisher : Reaktion Books
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 32,24 MB
Release : 2018-08-15
Category : History
ISBN : 178914020X
Ukraine is a country caught in a political tug of war: looking East to Russia and West to the European Union, this pivotal nation has long been a pawn in a global ideological game. And since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014 in response to the Ukrainian Euromaidan protests against oligarchical corruption, the game has become one of life and death. In Ukraine: A Nation on the Borderland, Karl Schlögel presents a picture of a country which lies on Europe’s borderland and in Russia’s shadow. In recent years, Ukraine has been faced, along with Western Europe, with the political conundrum resulting from Russia’s actions and the ongoing Information War. As well as exploring this present-day confrontation, Schlögel provides detailed, fascinating historical portraits of a panoply of Ukraine’s major cities: Lviv, Odessa, Czernowitz, Kiev, Kharkov, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk, and Yalta—cities whose often troubled and war-torn histories are as varied as the nationalities and cultures which have made them what they are today, survivors with very particular identities and aspirations. Schlögel feels the pulse of life in these cities, analyzing their more recent pasts and their challenges for the future.
Author : Jarom¡r Navr til
Publisher : Central European University Press
Page : 656 pages
File Size : 10,52 MB
Release : 1998-01-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9789639116153
"In addition to revealing the events surrounding the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, this is the first book to document a Cold War crisis from both sides of the Iron Curtain. It is based on unprecedented access to the previously closed archives of each member of the Warsaw Pact, as well as once highly classified American documents from the National Security Council, CIA, and other intelligence agencies." "Presented in a highly readable volume, the book offers top-level documents from Kremlin Politburo meetings, multilateral sessions of the Warsaw Pact leading up to the decision to invade, transcripts of KGB-recorded telephone conversations between Leonid Brezhnev and Alexander Dubcek." "To provide a historical and political context, the editors have prepared essays to introduce each section of the volume. A chronology, glossary and bibliography offer further background information for the reader." "The editors have a unique perspective to offer to foreign audiences since they are members of the commission appointed by Vaclav Havel to investigate the events of 1967-1970."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Author : Mikhail Gorbachev
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 255 pages
File Size : 16,28 MB
Release : 2012-08-14
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0231529279
Mikhail Gorbachev and Zdenek Mlynar were friends for half a century, since they first crossed paths as students in 1950. Although one was a Russian and the other a Czech, they were both ardent supporters of communism and socialism. One took part in laying the groundwork for and carrying out the Prague spring; the other opened a new political era in Soviet world politics. In 1993 they decided that their conversations might be of interest to others and so they began to tape-record them. This book is the product of that “thinking out loud” process. It is an absorbing record of two friends trying to explain to one another their views on the problems and events that determined their destinies. From reminiscences of their starry-eyed university days to reflections on the use of force to “save socialism” to contemplation of the end of the cold war, here is a far more candid picture of Gorbachev than we have ever seen before.
Author : Piotr Stefan Wandycz
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 470 pages
File Size : 32,82 MB
Release : 1962-01-01
Category : History
ISBN : 0816658862
France and her Eastern Allies, 1919–1925 was first published in 1962. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. Relations between France, Czechoslovakia, and Poland occupied an important position in European diplomacy in the years between World War I and World War II. Beginning with the breakdown of the old political, social, and economic order on the Continent during the first World War, these relations went through many changes. This book deals with the crucial period from the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 to the signing of the Locarno Pact in 1925. During this time France attempted to establish an eastern barrier of buffer states with Poland and Czechoslovakia at the core, with the aim of keeping Germany and Bolshevik Russia apart. This, France hoped, would guarantee European peace and security. Although an effective eastern barrier was never realized, the attempt to create one was a worthy and important undertaking. Professor Wandycz considers in detail the various aspects of the complex relationship between France and the two western Slav states — geographic, economic, social, and political. In addition, he provides a clear and interesting picture of some of the personalities involved. Through the use of hitherto unpublished source material, he throws new light on many events of general European diplomatic history as well as on Polish, French, and Czechoslovak foreign policy in particular.
