Free Republic

Saturday, in Pittsburgh, a Sabbath celebration at the Tree of Life synagogue became the site of the largest mass murder of Jews in U.S. history. Eleven worshippers were killed by a racist gunman. Friday, we learned the identity of the crazed criminal who mailed pipe bombs to a dozen leaders of the Democratic Party, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. From restaurants to Capitol corridors, this campaign season we have seen ugly face-offs between leftist radicals and Republican senators. Are we more divided than we have ever been? Are our politics more poisoned? Are we living in what...

As his country commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Soviet invasion that crushed an effort to ease the totalitarian grip of Communism known as the Prague Spring, the Czech Republic’s president is staying silent. Milos Zeman, an ardent supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, refused to mark Tuesday’s anniversary of the 1968 invasion of then Czechoslovakia. "I’m calling on you not to neglect your constitutional obligations,” Jiri Pospisil, head of the opposition party TOP 09 and a former justice minister, wrote in an open letter to Zeman. "Despite your pro-Russian sympathies, both you and I are citizens of one country...

Tuesday, Aug. 21, marks the 50th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia that crushed the Prague Spring, an attempt by local reformists to establish “socialism with a human face.” More Russians have said that they approve of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 than view it as a mistake, an independent Levada Center poll has said. Czechoslovakia remained under Soviet influence for the next 20 years until change came peacefully in the 1980s. Thirty-six percent of Levada’s respondents said the decision to quash the Prague Spring was “definitely” or “rather” correct, while 19 percent said the Soviet Union...

The number of Russians residing and working in the Czech Republic has been steadily growing in recent years. Today Russians are the fourth strongest foreign minority in the country, after Vietnamese, Slovak and Ukrainian nationals. In the last decade their number rose from 23,000 to 37,000. For young Russians, Prague is an attractive city free of the constraints of the Putin regime, and a good place for business and entertainment. The language barrier is easily surmountable due to both nations speaking a Slavic language. However there is one barrier that is harder to cross and that is the stigma of...

In August 1968 Soviet tanks rolled into communist Czechoslovakia to crush a burgeoning democratic reform movement known as the Prague Spring. Here is a recap of the shock intervention that reined in the Soviet satellite state, its aspirations for democracy warded off for another 20 years. "At 11:00 pm, Soviet, Polish, East German, Bulgarian and Hungarian troops crossed the Czechoslovak border," AFP reported early on August 21, picking up Radio Prague's announcement of the overnight invasion. Tensions had been mounting between then Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and the reformist government that had taken over in the Central European state. In...

Russia has been accused of interfering in the affairs of the Czech Republic after its embassy tried to block changes to the inscription on a Soviet-era statue explaining the chequered role of Russian Marshal Ivan Konev, who was twice designated a Hero of the Soviet Union by Stalin and whose remains are buried in the Kremlin. Now the dispute is set to come to a head at a historically sensitive moment, the 50th anniversary of the 1968 invasion of then-communist Czechoslovakia by Soviet-led forces to crush the liberal Prague Spring. Critics said the original plaque exaggerated the marshalÂ’s role while...

Strongman sorry for Prague Spring From correspondents in Prague August 22, 2005 FORMER Polish communist strongman, Wojciech Jaruzelski, has apologised to the Czech Republic and Slovakia for Poland's role in the Soviet-led invasion in August 1968 that crushed a pro-democracy movement. "I have felt bad, I have been tormented by that," said Jaruzelski during a broadcast on Czech public television, 37 years to the day after the invasion of then Czechoslovakia. Troops from the Soviet Union and four former Warsaw Pact countries squashed the so-called "Prague Spring", a movement led by Slovak reformer Alexander Dubcek that tried to put "a...

On the morning of Aug. 21, 1968, Mr. William Teltscher realized that his trip to Czechoslovakia had ended before it really started. Being a descendant of a traditional wine-trading Jewish family from Mikulov, south Moravia, he decided to visit his native country for the first time since his family left Czechoslovakia in 1939 for England, escaping the Nazi furor. However, he landed in Prague's Ruzyne airport only to see the tanks being unloaded from Soviet transport planes, so he turned around and left the country on the next plane for London. He was apparently one of those who believed the...