Military intervention of the ATS countries in Czechoslovakia. The entry of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia is an urgent need

On the night of August 21, 1968, the temporary entry of troops of the USSR, the People's Republic of Bulgaria (now the Republic of Bulgaria), the Hungarian People's Republic (now Hungary), the German Democratic Republic (GDR, now part of the Federal Republic of Germany) and the Polish People's Republic (now the Republic of Poland) to the territory of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (Czechoslovakia, now the independent states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia) in accordance with the then understanding of the leadership of the Soviet Union and other participating countries of the essence of international assistance. It was carried out with the aim of "defending the cause of socialism" in Czechoslovakia, to prevent the loss of power by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CHR), the country's possible exit from the socialist community and the Warsaw Treaty Organization. (ATS).

By the end of the 1960s, Czechoslovak society faced a set of problems that could not be solved within the framework of the Soviet-style socialist system. The economy suffered from the disproportionate development of industries, the loss of traditional markets; democratic freedoms were virtually non-existent; national sovereignty was limited. In Czechoslovak society, demands were growing for a radical democratization of all aspects of life.

In January 1968, the President of Czechoslovakia and the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Antonin Novotny, was removed. Alexander Dubcek, a representative of the liberal wing of the Communist Party, was elected leader of the Communist Party, and Ludwik Svoboda became president of Czechoslovakia. In April, the program of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was published, which proclaimed a course for the democratic renewal of socialism, provided for limited economic reforms.

Initially, the leadership of the USSR did not interfere in the inner-party problems of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, but the main features of the proclaimed "new model" of socialist society (the synthesis of a planned and market economy; the relative independence of state power and public organizations from party control; the rehabilitation of victims of repression; the democratization of political life in the country, etc.) ) ran counter to the Soviet interpretation of the Marxist-Leninist ideology and caused alarm among the leadership of the USSR. The possibility of a "chain reaction" in the neighboring socialist countries led to hostility towards the Czechoslovak "experiment" not only of the Soviet, but also of the East German, Polish and Bulgarian leadership. A more restrained position was taken by the leadership of Hungary.

From a geopolitical point of view, a dangerous situation arose for the USSR in one of the key countries of Eastern Europe. The withdrawal of Czechoslovakia from the Warsaw Pact would inevitably undermine the Eastern European military security system.

The use of force was considered by the Soviet leadership as the last alternative, but nevertheless, in the spring of 1968, it decided that it was necessary to take measures to prepare its armed forces for operations on the territory of Czechoslovakia.

The introduction of troops was preceded by numerous attempts at political dialogue during inter-party meetings of the leadership of the CPSU and the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, mutual visits of government delegations, multilateral meetings of the leaders of Czechoslovakia and the socialist countries. But political pressure did not produce the expected results. The final decision on the introduction of troops into Czechoslovakia was made at an expanded meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU on August 16, 1968 and approved at a meeting of the leaders of the states parties to the Warsaw Pact in Moscow on August 18 on the basis of an appeal by a group of Czechoslovakian party and state leaders to the governments of the USSR and other countries of the Warsaw Pact with request for international assistance. The action was planned as short-term. The operation to bring in troops was codenamed "Danube", and its overall leadership was entrusted to General of the Army Ivan Pavlovsky.

Direct training of troops began on August 17-18. First of all, equipment was preparing for long marches, stocks of material resources were replenished, work cards were worked out, and other events were held. On the eve of the introduction of troops, Marshal of the Soviet Union Andrey Grechko informed Czechoslovak Defense Minister Martin Dzur about the upcoming action and warned against resistance from the Czechoslovak armed forces.

The operation to bring troops into Czechoslovakia began on August 20 at 23.00, when an alarm was announced in the involved military units.

On the night of August 21, the troops of the USSR, Poland, East Germany, Hungary and Bulgaria crossed the Czechoslovak border from four directions, ensuring surprise. The movement of troops was carried out in radio silence, which contributed to the secrecy of the military action. Simultaneously with the introduction of ground forces to the airfields of Czechoslovakia, contingents of airborne troops were transferred from the territory of the USSR. At two o'clock in the morning on August 21, units of the 7th Airborne Division landed at the airfield near Prague. They blocked the main objects of the airfield, where Soviet An-12 military transport aircraft with troops and military equipment began to land at short intervals. The paratroopers were supposed to take control of the most important state and party facilities, primarily in Prague and Brno.

The rapid and coordinated entry of troops into Czechoslovakia led to the fact that within 36 hours the armies of the Warsaw Pact countries established complete control over Czechoslovak territory. The introduced troops were deployed in all regions and major cities. Particular attention was paid to the protection of the western borders of Czechoslovakia. The total number of troops directly involved in the operation was about 300 thousand people.

The 200,000-strong Czechoslovak army (about ten divisions) offered practically no resistance. She remained in the barracks, following the orders of her Minister of Defense, and remained neutral until the end of the events in the country. The population, mainly in Prague, Bratislava and other large cities, showed discontent. The protest was expressed in the construction of symbolic barricades on the way of the advance of tank columns, the work of underground radio stations, the distribution of leaflets and appeals to the Czechoslovak population and military personnel of the allied countries.

The leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was actually arrested and taken to Moscow. However, the political goals of the action were initially not achieved. The plan of the Soviet leadership to form a "revolutionary government" of Czechoslovak leaders loyal to the USSR failed. All segments of Czechoslovak society strongly opposed the presence of foreign troops on the territory of the country.

On August 21, a group of countries (USA, England, France, Canada, Denmark, and Paraguay) spoke at the UN Security Council demanding that the "Czechoslovak question" be brought to the UN General Assembly, seeking a decision on the immediate withdrawal of troops from the Warsaw Pact countries. The representatives of Hungary and the USSR voted against. Later, the representative of Czechoslovakia also demanded that this issue be removed from consideration by the UN. The situation in Czechoslovakia was also discussed in the NATO Permanent Council. The military intervention of the five states was condemned by the governments of the countries of socialist orientation - Yugoslavia, Albania, Romania, and China. Under these conditions, the USSR and its allies were forced to look for a way out of the situation.

On August 23-26, 1968, negotiations were held in Moscow between the Soviet and Czechoslovak leadership. Their result was a joint communique, in which the timing of the withdrawal of Soviet troops was made dependent on the normalization of the situation in Czechoslovakia.

At the end of August, the Czechoslovak leaders returned to their homeland. At the beginning of September, the first signs of stabilization of the situation appeared. The result was the withdrawal of the troops of the countries participating in the action from many cities and towns of Czechoslovakia to specially designated places of deployment. Aviation was concentrated on dedicated airfields. The withdrawal of troops from the territory of Czechoslovakia was hampered by the continued internal political instability, as well as the increased activity of NATO near the Czechoslovak borders, which was expressed in the regrouping of the bloc's troops stationed on the territory of the FRG in close proximity to the borders of the GDR and Czechoslovakia, in conducting various exercises. On October 16, 1968, an agreement was signed between the governments of the USSR and Czechoslovakia on the conditions for the temporary presence of Soviet troops on the territory of Czechoslovakia "in order to ensure the security of the socialist community." In accordance with the document, the Central Group of Forces (CGV) was created - an operational territorial association of the Armed Forces of the USSR, temporarily stationed on the territory of Czechoslovakia. The headquarters of the CGV was located in the town of Milovice near Prague. The combat strength included two tank and three motorized rifle divisions.

The signing of the treaty was one of the main military-political results of the introduction of troops of five states, which satisfied the leadership of the USSR and the Department of Internal Affairs. On October 17, 1968, a phased withdrawal of allied troops from the territory of Czechoslovakia began, which was completed by mid-November.

The action of the troops of the Warsaw Pact countries, despite the absence of hostilities, was accompanied by losses on both sides. From August 21 to October 20, 1968, as a result of hostile actions of citizens of Czechoslovakia, 11 Soviet military personnel were killed, 87 people were wounded and injured. In addition, they died in accidents, with careless handling of weapons, died of diseases, etc. another 85 people. According to the Czechoslovak government commission, in the period from August 21 to December 17, 1968, 94 Czechoslovak citizens were killed, 345 people were injured of varying severity.

As a result of the introduction of troops into Czechoslovakia, a radical change in the course of the Czechoslovak leadership took place. The process of political and economic reforms in the country was interrupted.

Since the second half of the 1980s, the process of rethinking the Czechoslovak events of 1968 began. In the "Statement of the leaders of Bulgaria, Hungary, the GDR, Poland and the Soviet Union" of December 4, 1989, and in the "Statement of the Soviet government" of December 5, 1989, the decision on the entry of allied troops into Czechoslovakia was recognized as erroneous and condemned as unreasonable interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign states.

On February 26, 1990, an agreement was signed in Moscow on the complete withdrawal of Soviet troops from Czechoslovakia. By this time, the CGU was located in 67 settlements in the Czech Republic and in 16 in Slovakia. The combat strength included over 1.1 thousand tanks and 2.5 thousand infantry fighting vehicles, more than 1.2 thousand artillery pieces, 100 aircraft and 170 helicopters; the total number of military personnel was over 92 thousand people, civilian personnel - 44.7 thousand people. In July 1991, the TsGV was abolished in connection with the completion of the withdrawal of troops to the territory of the Russian Federation.

The invasion of the ATS troops in Czechoslovakia

"Tanks drive through Prague, tanks drive in truth..."

On the morning of August 20, 1968, a secret order was read to the officers on the formation of the Danube High Command. General of the Army I.G. was appointed commander-in-chief. Pavlovsky, whose headquarters was deployed in the southern part of Poland. Both fronts (Central and Carpathian) and the Balaton task force, as well as two guards airborne divisions, were subordinate to him. On the first day of the operation, to ensure the landing of airborne divisions, five divisions of military transport aviation were allocated at the disposal of the Commander-in-Chief "Danube".

The combat alert was announced at 23.00. Through closed communication channels, all fronts, armies, divisions, brigades, regiments and battalions were given a signal to advance. At this signal, all commanders were to open one of the five secret packages they kept (the operation was developed in five versions), and burn the four remaining in the presence of the chiefs of staff without opening. The opened packets contained an order to start operation "Danube" and to continue hostilities in accordance with the plans "Danube-Canal" and "Danube-Canal-Globus".

"Orders on interaction for the Danube operation" were developed in advance. All military equipment of Soviet and allied production without white stripes was subject to "neutralization", preferably without firing. In case of resistance, stripless tanks and other military equipment were to be destroyed without warning and without commands from above. When meeting with NATO troops, it was ordered to stop immediately and not to shoot without a command.To carry out the operation, 26 divisions were involved, of which 18 were Soviet, not counting aviation.

On the night of August 21, the troops of the USSR, Poland, East Germany, Hungary and Bulgaria crossed the Czechoslovak border in radio silence from four directions at twenty points from Zvikov to German. From the southern part of Poland, a Soviet-Polish contingent of troops was introduced in the directions: Jablonec-Kralove, Ostrava, Olomouc and Zilina. From the southern part of the GDR, a Soviet-East German contingent of troops was introduced in the directions: Prague, Chomutov, Pilsen, Karlovy Vary. From the northern regions of Hungary, the Soviet-Hungarian-Bulgarian grouping was included in the directions: Bratislava, Trencin, Banska Bystrica, and others. The largest contingent of troops was allocated from the Soviet Union.

Simultaneously with the introduction of ground forces to the airfields of Vodokhodi (Czech Republic), Turokani and Namesht (Slovakia), as well as to airfields near Prague, airborne troops were transferred from the territory of the USSR. August 21 at 3 p.m. 37 min. paratroopers on two lead aircraft of the 7th military transport division were already landing from the AN-12 at the Ruzyne airfield near Prague and blocked the main objects of the airfield for 15 minutes. At 5 o'clock. 10 minutes. a reconnaissance company of the 350th Airborne Regiment and a separate reconnaissance company of the 103rd Airborne Division landed. Within 10 minutes, they captured the Turzhani and Namesht airfields, after which a hasty landing of the main forces began. According to eyewitnesses, transport planes landed at the airfields one after another. The landing party jumped off without waiting for a complete stop. By the end of the runway, the plane was already empty and immediately picked up speed for a new takeoff. With a minimum interval, other planes with troops and military equipment began to arrive here.

On military equipment and captured civilian vehicles, the paratroopers went deep into the territory, and by 9.00 they blocked all roads, bridges, exits from the city, radio and television buildings, telegraph, main post office, administrative buildings of the city and region, printing house, stations in Brno , as well as the headquarters of military units and enterprises of the military industry. ChNA commanders were asked to remain calm and maintain order.

Prague, August 1968

Four hours after the landing of the first groups of paratroopers, the most important objects of Prague and Brno were under the control of the allied forces. The main efforts of the paratroopers were aimed at seizing the buildings of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, the government, the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff, as well as the buildings of the radio station and television. According to a predetermined plan, columns of troops were sent to the main administrative and industrial centers of Czechoslovakia. Formations and units of the allied forces were stationed in all major cities. Particular attention was paid to the protection of the western borders of Czechoslovakia.

The 200,000-strong Czechoslovak army (about ten divisions) offered practically no resistance. She remained in the barracks, following the orders of her Minister of Defense, and remained neutral until the end of the events in the country. Among the population, mainly in Prague, Bratislava and other large cities, there was dissatisfaction with what was happening. The protest of the public was expressed in the construction of barricades on the path of advancement of tank columns, the actions of underground radio stations, the distribution of leaflets and appeals to the Czechoslovak population and military personnel of the allied countries. In some cases, there were armed attacks on military personnel of the contingent of troops introduced into Czechoslovakia, throwing tanks and other armored vehicles with combustible mixture bottles, attempts to disable communications and transport, destruction of monuments to Soviet soldiers in cities and villages of Czechoslovakia.

The rapid and coordinated entry of troops into Czechoslovakia led to the fact that within 36 hours the armies of the Warsaw Pact countries established complete control over Czechoslovak territory. However, despite the obvious military success, it was not possible to achieve political goals. The leaders of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and after them the XIV Extraordinary Congress of the Party, already on August 21, condemned the introduction of allied troops. Representatives of the conservative-minded group of delegates at the congress were not elected to any of the leadership positions in the HRC.

On August 21, a group of countries (USA, England, France, Canada, Denmark and Paraguay) spoke at the UN Security Council demanding that the "Czechoslovak question" be brought to a meeting of the UN General Assembly, seeking a decision on the immediate withdrawal of troops from the Warsaw Pact countries. The representatives of Hungary and the USSR voted against. Later, the representative of Czechoslovakia also demanded that this issue be removed from consideration by the UN. The situation in Czechoslovakia was also discussed in the NATO Permanent Council. The governments of the countries of socialist orientation - Yugoslavia, Albania, Romania, and China - condemned the military intervention of the five states. Under these conditions, the USSR and its allies were forced to look for a way out of the situation. Negotiations began in Moscow (August 23-26) between the Soviet and Czechoslovak leadership. Their result was a joint communique, in which the timing of the withdrawal of Soviet troops was made dependent on the normalization of the situation in Czechoslovakia.

At the beginning of September, the first signs of stabilization of the situation appeared. The result was the withdrawal of the troops of the participating countries from many cities and towns of Czechoslovakia to specially designated locations. Aviation was concentrated on dedicated airfields.

The reason for extending the stay of the contingent of troops on the territory of Czechoslovakia was not only the continued internal political instability, but also the increased activity of NATO near the Czechoslovak borders, which was expressed in the regrouping of the bloc's troops stationed on the territory of the FRG in close proximity to the borders of the GDR and Czechoslovakia, in conducting various kinds of exercises .

On October 16, 1968, an agreement was signed between the governments of the USSR and Czechoslovakia on the conditions for the temporary stay of Soviet troops on the territory of Czechoslovakia, according to which part of the Soviet troops remained on the territory of Czechoslovakia "in order to ensure the security of the socialist community." The treaty contained provisions on respect for the sovereignty of Czechoslovakia and non-interference in its internal affairs. The signing of the treaty was one of the main military-political results of the introduction of troops of five states, which satisfied the leadership of the USSR and the Department of Internal Affairs. On October 17, 1968, a phased withdrawal of allied troops from the territory of Czechoslovakia began, which was completed by mid-November.

Despite the fact that when the troops of the Warsaw Pact countries were brought in, there were no military operations, there were losses. Thus, during the redeployment and deployment of Soviet troops (from August 20 to November 12), as a result of the actions of hostile persons, 11 military personnel, including one officer, were killed; 87 Soviet servicemen were wounded and injured, including 19 officers. In addition, 87 people died in catastrophes, accidents, careless handling of weapons and military equipment, as a result of other incidents, and also died of diseases. In the reports and reports of that time, one could read the following lines: "The crew of the tank 64 MSP 55 honey (foreman of extra-long service Yu.I. Andreev, junior sergeant E.N. elements of a crowd of young people and children. In an effort to avoid casualties from the local population, they decided to bypass it, during which the tank capsized. The crew died. "

As a result of the introduction of troops into Czechoslovakia, a radical change in the course of the Czechoslovak leadership took place. The process of political and economic reforms in the country was interrupted. At the April (1969) plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, G. Husak was elected the first secretary. In December 1970, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia adopted the document "Lessons of Crisis Development in the Party and Society after the XIII Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia", which generally condemned the political course of A. Dubcek and his entourage.

The topic of a real assessment of the events in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 is very important. Why? Yes, because the losses of the Soviet troops amounted to 720 people killed, 1540 wounded; 51 people are missing. . They were someone's sons, fathers, brothers. They lived on the next street, in your house. By calling a soldier who died in Hungary or Czechoslovakia an "occupier", you are not only insulting his memory. You are insulting yourself...

They have never been any occupiers. They were Russian soldiers. They defended her interests in Hungary and Czechoslovakia so that there would be no war in the Caucasus and Ukraine.

Therefore, a correct understanding of the events of those years is very important. In the book, I examined in detail the causes of the events in Hungary. There is a lot of information there about the Czechoslovak events of 1968.

I bring to your attention a very detailed material on this second topic.

But before you read it, I’ll ask one question: what happened to Alexander Dubcek, that at the time the troops of the Warsaw Pact countries entered the territory of Czechoslovakia, he was the first secretary of the Communist Party and the de facto leader of the country.

If you believe the stories about the occupation, then his "occupiers" should have been repressed. No one killed him, did not judge, did not arrest him.

“For some time he retained his post, but in April 1969 he was not re-elected to the post of First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. In 1969-1970 he worked as Czechoslovak Ambassador to Turkey. In July 1970, the plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia expelled Dubcek from the party, he was also deprived of the status of a deputy of the Federal Assembly and relieved of his duties as ambassador to Turkey.

That is, after an attempt to split Czechoslovakia from the Warsaw Pact, the initiator of these actions was simply transferred ... to another job. Such is the occupation, such are the "repressions".

And then came freedom. The USSR was gone, and Dubcek again took up politics. In December 1989, he was elected chairman of the Federal Assembly of Czechoslovakia and led its work until June 1992. Then he resigned. The fact is that the “sharing” of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia began. Dubcek, a Slovak by nationality, wanted to become the president of Slovakia.

And he died very quickly in a very strange car accident in the fall of 1992.
This is what democracy is...

"Socialism with a human face" in Czechoslovakia cost the lives of 96 of our soldiers.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the bloody events in Czechoslovakia. Then, for one year, the peoples of this country, under the leadership of the Communist Party, first built communism, then "socialism with a human face", and after - communism again.

And all this time, the party was headed by the same person - Alexander Dubcek. First, in the West, and now in our country, a stereotype has developed regarding the events in Czechoslovakia in 1968: they wanted to improve socialism in this country, but the USSR and its allies brought in troops and suppressed this process by force. However, the facts show something completely different. However, throughout modern history, not only a human face, but even a human attitude from this country has not been seen by any of its neighbors.

As you know, the Czechs and Slovaks received their state in modern Europe after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Unlike the Hungarians, they did not fight for it. Fulfilling the will of England, France and the United States, the new state participated in the destruction of the Slovak and Hungarian Soviet republics.

It also always supported the Czechoslovak corps, which actively participated in the civil war in Russia on the side of the Whites. When the Red Army began to crush the whites, the legionnaires abandoned the front and rushed to Vladivostok in order to sail home from there, seizing trains and throwing Russian women, children and the wounded out into the cold.

In exchange for unimpeded passage, they gave Admiral Kolchak to the Reds. They say that when parting, he told them: “Thank you, Czechoslovaks!”

But the legionnaires of the Czechoslovak Corps took with them to their homeland more than 2,000 ingots from the gold reserves of our country.

The question of compensation for this Czechoslovak robbery for 100 years was not even raised. But now the program of the current Ministry of Defense of the Czech Republic to install 58 monuments to White Czechs in Russia is being successfully implemented, but at the same time they have already been installed in 22 Russian cities!

And this despite the fact that in the Czech Republic almost every month there are desecrations of monuments to the soldiers of the Soviet army. The last case of desecration of the monument to Marshal Konev in Prague occurred on May 8, 2018. The Soviet tank, the first to break into Prague in May 1945, has been removed from its pedestal. Prior to that, it was regularly dyed pink. In Slovakia, the monument to the Soviet army on Mount Slavin is maintained in perfect condition.

The Czech Republic entered the Third Reich peacefully even before the Second World War - in March 1939. Slovakia became a formally independent state and even sent its troops to the USSR on the eastern front. However, they were of little use to Hitler, since the Slovaks constantly massively went over to the side of the Soviet army and partisans.

So on May 15, 1943, the chief of staff of the 101st Infantry Regiment, Yan Nalepka, went over to the partisans of Belarus with a large group of officers and soldiers, and a partisan detachment was formed from them. On June 8, 1943, they were joined by soldier Martin Korbela, who stole a tank with ammunition. On October 29, 1943, in the Melitopol region, 2,600 Slovaks immediately went over to our side. In December 1943, another 1250 Slovak soldiers went to the Belarusian partisans. 27 Slovak pilots flew to Soviet airfields. On August 27, 1944, the Slovak uprising began with the murder of 22 German officers, in which 60 thousand Slovaks took part and which lasted two months.

The Slovaks, who went over to the side of the Soviet troops, formed the basis of the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps, which fought on the Soviet-German front and took part in the liberation of Slovakia.

The Czech Republic after joining the Third Reich was called the "Protectorate of the Czech Republic and Moravia." In the German version of the name, the Czech Republic was called Bohemia. The president of Czechoslovakia, Emil Hacha, remained its president, although the Reich Protectors, who were appointed in Berlin, had real power. The executive power was in the hands of the Czech ministers, and the government was headed by the Czech Jaroslav Krejci.

The monetary unit was not the Reichsmark, but the crown with inscriptions in two languages. Back in the peaceful year of 1937, Czechoslovakia produced monthly 200 guns, 4,500 machine guns, 18,000 rifles, millions of ammunition, trucks, tanks and planes. After the outbreak of war and the mobilization of the war industry, these figures increased. It makes no sense to write who this weapon fired at before 1945.

There was theoretically a resistance movement in the protectorate, but the activity of both pro-Soviet and pro-Western underground organizations for some reason was reduced almost exclusively to leaflets and strikes (demanding higher wages). True, on May 27, 1942, an attempt was made on the life of SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich in Prague, but it was not carried out by local Czechs, but by employees sent from London by the British Special Operations Directorate.

And the fact that at the time of the assassination attempt, Heydrich was traveling to work accompanied only by a driver, suggests that the Germans felt at home in the protectorate. Interestingly, immediately after the assassination attempt, Heydrich was taken to the hospital by a Czech policeman who stopped the truck, although he could shoot him with impunity - the driver of the SS general ran away to pursue the assassins.

In London, sending a sabotage group to Prague, they hoped that after the death of Heydrich, the Nazis would carry out mass executions, and the Czechs, indignant at this, would begin an "underground" struggle against the Nazis. The calculations were justified by 50%. The Germans shot 172 men out of 465 inhabitants in the village of Lidice, and a total of 1331 people in the Czech Republic, but the partisan movement did not appear in the protectorate.

The Czechs themselves have an anecdote about their resistance movement, which talks about the meeting of the Slovak and Czech partisans after the war.

The Czech, after listening to the story of the Slovak about how they derailed the train, exclaims: “Class! And in our protectorate it was strictly forbidden.”

True, it cannot be said that the Czechs waited for liberation until the very end of the war. No, on May 5, 1945, when the Third Reich actually no longer existed, and only a few hours remained before the legal registration of its liquidation, the Prague Uprising took place. Nobody prepared or planned it. It's just that the German authorities of the city allowed the Czechs to fly their national flags. Hanging out their flags, the inhabitants of Prague began to rip off the German ones, then - to knock down signs in German on the shops, after that - to rob the shops themselves, and in the end, they simply rob and kill the German population. It was an ordinary German pogrom that became the beginning of the Prague uprising.

The Czech police took a particularly active part in it. They had to urgently become anti-fascists, otherwise they could be remembered for their help to the Nazis in sending local Jews to concentration camps. However, German troops came to the aid of their civilian population, and calls for help were heard on the radio to our army and to the armies of the allies.

The fate of the Czechs was of little interest to the allies, and our troops came to the rescue and carried out the Prague operation, which cost the lives of almost 12 thousand Soviet soldiers.

With the end of the Second World War, the misfortunes of the Germans living in Czechoslovakia did not end. No sooner had the ink dried on the act of surrender of Nazi Germany than the German and Hungarian minorities were required to wear white armbands with the letters N and M respectively. Their cars, motorcycles, bicycles, radios and telephones were confiscated. They were forbidden to speak their native languages ​​on the streets, use public transport, and they could even visit shops only at certain hours. They did not have the right to change their place of residence and were required to report to the police.

And all this was applied to those who did not commit any crimes against the Czechs in the protectorate. Those who committed or were members of the Nazi Party were punished both by court verdict and without it, most often by execution.

During the German occupation, nothing similar was applied to the Czechs. They were forbidden to listen to Soviet and Western radio stations only under the threat of execution. 350 thousand Czechs were taken to work in Germany, but some of them did it voluntarily. Thus, the position of the Germans and Hungarians in the liberated Czechoslovakia was much worse than that of the Czechs in the protectorate.

However, the mockery of the Germans did not last long, as their deportation to Austria and Germany soon began. Three million Germans, whose ancestors had lived in the Czech Republic and Slovakia for centuries, were forced to leave the country in just a few months. At parting, the Germans painted swastikas on their backs, robbed, raped, beaten, and often simply killed. According to official figures, 18,816 Germans died.

The “Death March from Brno” entered world history, where 5200 died during the deportation of 27 thousand Germans. Near the Czech city of Prerau (now Přerov), Czechoslovak soldiers stopped the train, took German settlers out of it and shot 265 people, including 74 children, the youngest of which was 8 months old. True, this crime was recorded by the Soviet military commandant F. Popov, and the commander of the execution, Lieutenant Karol Pazur, was convicted and spent about ten years in prison. In Postelberg (today Postoloprty) 763 Germans were killed in five days, in Landskron (today Lanskroun) in three days - 121.

Here is what General Ivan Serov, authorized by the NKVD of the USSR for the group of Soviet occupation forces in Germany, wrote to his People's Commissar Marshal Lavrenty Beria: “The Czechoslovak government issued a decree according to which all Germans living in Czechoslovakia are obliged to immediately leave for Germany. Local authorities, in connection with the decision, announce to the Germans that they should pack up and leave for Germany within 15 minutes. You are allowed to take 5 stamps with you on the road.

No personal belongings and food are allowed to be taken. Every day, up to 5,000 Germans arrive in Germany from Czechoslovakia, most of them women, old people and children. Being ruined and having no prospect of life, some of them commit suicide. So, for example, on June 8, the district commandant recorded 71 corpses.

In addition, in a number of cases, Czechoslovak officers and soldiers in the settlements where the Germans live, put up reinforced patrols in full combat readiness in the evening and open fire on the city at night. The German population, frightened, runs out of their houses, throwing their property, and scatters. After that, the soldiers enter the houses, take valuables and return to their units.”

For comparison, the deportation of about 150 thousand Germans from the Kaliningrad region and the Lithuanian SSR lasted six years - until 1951, and during it 48 people died, all of them as a result of diseases.

They do not like to remember all these historical events in today's Czech Republic. But every year on August 21, the highest officials of the state bring wreaths to the building of the Czech Radio, recalling the so-called Prague Spring of 1968. This "spring" began in January and ended in August 1968.

It began with the election of Alexander Dubcek as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. He, as they said then, had an excellent profile. He was a member of the party since 1939, a participant in the Slovak uprising of 1944, was wounded twice, his brother was killed by the Nazis. At the time of his election, he was 46 years old, of which 16 he lived in the USSR.

At first, he placed people personally devoted to him in key positions in the country, and then he declared that his main goal was "building socialism with a human face." It turned out that in all other countries of socialism he was with an anti-human face. It was announced that there would be changes in the production sector, and the planned economy would be replaced by workers' self-management and cost accounting.

In fact, in the eight months that the reforms were carried out, the only real result was the appearance of private taxis, and even then only in Prague.

The main ideologist of market socialism was Deputy Prime Minister Ota Shik. When he emigrated to Switzerland, there his journalists directly asked: how does your “socialism with a human face” differ from capitalism? The answer followed: the absence of private property in large-scale industry. However, Shik immediately added that it would not remain state-owned, but would belong to shareholders.

Then he was told that joint-stock property is simply collective private property, and Shik could not object to this. Nevertheless, all this demagoguery was used again 20 years later by the leader of another Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev, with much more serious consequences for the economy of our country.

In reality, Dubcek and his team carried out two major transformations: free travel abroad and what we called “glasnost” during the years of perestroika. Freedom of movement around the world did not really matter much, since in those years nowhere in the world the Czechoslovak koruna was accepted for exchange for another currency.

But the ability to say and write anything was used to the fullest. At first they criticized individual communist leaders, later they criticized the shortcomings of socialism, and then demanded its abandonment.

Here is what, for example, on June 14 the magazine Mlada Fronta, by the way, an organ of the Czechoslovak Youth Union - the Komsomol, wrote: “The law that we will adopt should prohibit all communist activity in Czechoslovakia. We will ban the activities of the HRC and dissolve it. We will burn the books of communist ideologists - Marx, Engels, Lenin."

The same was written in Nazi Czech newspapers during the protectorate in 1939-1945, but this did not prevent Czech youth two months later from calling Soviet soldiers fascists and drawing swastikas on their tanks and armored personnel carriers.

The Literary Lists magazine supported the Komsomol press: "The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia must be considered a criminal organization, which it really has always been, and thrown out of public life."

Party workers did not lag behind the Komsomol members. On May 6, the secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia Chestmir Cisarzh, at a meeting in honor of the 150th anniversary of Karl Marx, said: “Socialism did not fully justify the hopes of the peoples and working people and made them feel the full burden of the revolutionary transition, all the physical and mental tension associated with the restructuring of the social order, as well as a load of delusions, mistakes and betrayal.

Truly, with such communists, anti-communists are not needed. Regarding foreign affairs, the Czech media first demanded an independent foreign policy, then withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, then orientation towards the United States and Western European countries, and finally, the transfer of Transcarpathia to Czechoslovakia.

They demanded the reorientation of foreign trade from the USSR to Western countries, since "as a result of Soviet economic robbery, the standard of living is falling." It was a lie: the standard of living was growing, Czechoslovakia received raw materials from the Soviet Union at prices significantly lower than market prices, and sold finished products: trams, clothes, shoes.

As a result of the "robbery", the USSR's debt to this country by 1991 amounted to 5.4 billion dollars. By comparison, now that the reformers' dream of reorientation has come true, Czech Radio reported on September 22, 2017 that the Czech Republic has a debt of 173 billion euros.

However, freedom of speech was also relative. For example, even the most anti-communist publications did not write a word about the privileges of party workers, which began glasnost in the USSR under Gorbachev. Dubcek's team followed this, and at the slightest attempt left publications without paper and access to a printing house. And the local party apparatchiks had more privileges (comfortable housing and summer cottages, special supplies and medical care) than the Soviet ones.

Officially, in the USSR, the minimum wage was 70 rubles, and the general secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU received 600 rubles. In Czechoslovakia, the head of the Communist Party received 25 thousand crowns, and even the average salary was 1400 crowns.

Formally, no new parties were registered in Czechoslovakia, but their role was successfully played by anti-Soviet political clubs that appeared like mushrooms after rain. The most famous was Club 231, named after an article criminalizing anti-state and anti-constitutional activities.

Initially, he united people who had previously been convicted under this article, that is, former SS men, accomplices of the Nazis, spies, nationalists who were released thanks to the announced amnesty.

Its leader, Yaroslav Brodsky, declared: "The best communist is a dead communist, and if he is still alive, then he should pull out his legs."

Another major political club was KAN, a club of engaged non-partisans. In total, about 70 clubs appeared, and about 40 thousand people consisted of them. Interestingly, about the same number of people later protested against the entry of Warsaw Pact troops throughout Czechoslovakia. Not so much for 14 million people. On May 1, members of the clubs demonstrated in Prague with anti-communist and anti-Soviet slogans, but this did not prevent Alexander Dubcek from greeting them from the podium.

Dubcek and the party leaders who supported him ruthlessly expelled those leaders who did not agree with the break in relations with the USSR. For example, Deputy Minister of Culture Bohuslav Chneupek was fired.

He himself talks about it this way: “At a meeting in the Central Committee, I said: “Everyone who violates international treaties is punished. Did it get better in Argentina and Panama after the American troops entered there?

The next day I was fired. The walls of my house were written on: “The traitor Khneupek lives here”, threatening phone calls were heard, they approached my daughters at school and hinted that they would be punished - it was real terror.

Among those dismissed, 40 people committed suicide, among them General Jancu, who fought against the Nazis in the ranks of the Czechoslovak Corps. Those who sing of the Prague Spring never remember these victims.

Josef Pavel was appointed Minister of the Interior, to whom state security was also subordinate. He broke off all contacts with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the KGB of the USSR. Detained foreign spies were not brought to justice, but only expelled from the country.

All fortifications and equipment on the border with West Germany were dismantled. A secret headquarters began to be created to manage the country in case of an emergency and a camp for the maintenance of preventively arrested persons.

It's so "democratic": whoever doesn't like power "with a human face" should be sent to a concentration camp. In January 1969, the camp was discovered in the Tatra Mountains. The minister also carried out a purge among the state security officers, dismissing those who were clearly pro-Soviet.

Further developments were easy to predict: the removal of the Communist Party from power, the withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, the removal of the word "socialist" from the name of the country, the entry of NATO and the introduction of alliance troops.

This was recognized then even by the largest French newspaper Le Figaro: “The geographical position of Czechoslovakia can turn it both into a bolt of the Warsaw Pact and into a gap that opens the entire military system of the Eastern bloc.”

And here is what the English writer Stephen Stewart writes in his book “Operation Split”: “In each of these cases (the entry of troops into Hungary in 1956 and into Czechoslovakia in 1968), Russia faced not only the loss of of serious importance, but also in the face of a complete undermining of its strategic positions on the military and geopolitical map of Europe.

And this, more than the fact of the invasion, was the real tragedy. It was for military rather than political reasons that the counter-revolution in these two countries was doomed to suppression: because when the uprisings broke out in them, they ceased to be states, but instead turned into mere military flanks.

Since March, the leaders of the USSR and other socialist countries began to call on Alexander Dubcek to change his mind. There were many meetings at the highest level. After the delegation of Czechoslovakia did not come to the meeting of the leaders of the socialist countries in Warsaw, the head of the CPSU Leonid Brezhnev took an unheard of step, and for the first and last time in the history of the USSR, the entire Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU left the country for 4 days in the border town of Czechoslovakia Čierne nad Tisou to negotiate with their colleagues from the HRC.

Alexander Dubcek and his associates traditionally swore allegiance to the ideals of communism at such meetings, while inside the country they said diametrically opposite things. So now, they promised that Josef Pavel would not head the Ministry of Internal Affairs and that anti-Soviet propaganda would be stopped.

It's been two weeks and absolutely nothing has changed. Moreover, the so-called expansion of democracy continued. Then Leonid Brezhnev wrote a letter to Alexander Dubcek on August 17, but he did not even answer him. It became clear that the problem could not be solved through negotiations. On the night of August 21, the troops of the USSR, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria entered Czechoslovakia, and Operation Danube began.

That night, a Soviet passenger plane requested an emergency landing at Prague's Ruzyne Airport. Paratroopers of the 7th Airborne Division got out of the plane and established control over the airport, after which aircraft with paratroopers began to land on it. At the same time, columns of troops began to move out from four countries.

Alexander Dubcek and his comrades, who decided to become masters, were sure that they were under the protection of the 200,000-strong Czechoslovak army, and the USSR would not dare to start a gigantic bloodshed in the center of Europe. However, on March 30, General Ludwik Svoboda, the former commander of the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps, was elected President of Czechoslovakia, and, accordingly, Supreme Commander-in-Chief.

He was an ally of the Soviet army during the war years, and remained so in 1968. The Minister of Defense of Czechoslovakia was General Martin Dzur, who, back in January 1943, defected from the troops of fascist Slovakia to our side and now did not want to defend those who were called "neo-fascists with party cards" again. Thanks to the orders of these two generals, the Czechoslovak army remained in the barracks. NATO armies did not intervene either.

In just a few hours, Soviet paratroopers took control of all the key objects of Prague, Alexander Dubcek was detained in the building of the Central Committee and sent to the USSR along with other leading reformers. The Ministry of Internal Affairs was also taken, Minister Josef Pavel fled. Within 36 hours, all the objects of the country, planned according to the plan of operation "Danube", were taken under control.

Lev Gorelov, commander of the 7th Airborne Division, explained such instant success as follows: “What saved us from bloodshed? Why did we lose 15 thousand of our young guys in Grozny, but not in Prague? And here's why: detachments were ready there, ready in advance, Smrkovsky was in charge, an ideologist. They formed detachments, but they did not give out weapons, weapons on alarm - come, take weapons. So we knew, our intelligence knew where these warehouses were.

First of all, we seized the warehouses, and then we took the Central Committee, the General Staff, and then the government. We threw the first part of our forces into warehouses, then everything else. In short, at 2:15 I landed, and at 6:00 Prague was in the hands of paratroopers. The Czechs woke up in the morning - to arms, and our guards are standing there. All".

Indeed, weapons were found even in such places in Prague as the House of Journalists, ministries Agriculture, in branches of political clubs across the country. Now the Czech media claim that the fighters for "socialism with a human face" were peaceful people, and the weapons belonged to the workers' militia. However, documents show that the caches contained mines and explosives, which were never in service with the communist detachments. Yes, and firearms were often Western-made.

The bloodiest events unfolded in Prague near the building of the Czech Radio, from where calls were heard throughout the country to resist the troops of the Warsaw Pact. On August 21, a crowd of 7 thousand people gathered near the building, they built barricades from all sides. The fact that these were far from peaceful people is evidenced by the fact that Soviet tanks and vehicles were burned, as a result of a gunshot wound, Senior Sergeant Yevgeny Krasiy died. However, our troops have taken control of the building. In this they were helped by opening the door from the inside, an employee of the Czechoslovak state security Furmanek.

Among the defenders, the losses, together with those who died later from wounds, amounted to 15 people. However, this was the biggest tragedy after the introduction of troops.

State radio stopped calling for disobedience, but many underground radio stations immediately appeared. Their number reached 35.

This is further evidence that the organizers of the riots were linked to the West. Underground radio transmitters were combined into a system that determined the time and duration of work. The capture groups found working radio stations deployed in apartments, hidden in the safes of the leaders of various organizations.

There were also radio stations in special suitcases, along with tables of the passage of waves at different times of the day. Leaflets and underground newspapers began to appear en masse - paper and printing equipment for them were prepared in advance.

They called for the physical destruction of the Soviet army, saying that they were forbidden to shoot, explaining that it was necessary to make barricades, destroy road signs, street names, house numbers. Fictions were reported about the many women and children killed.

For example, it was reported that Soviet soldiers killed a small child right on Wenceslas Square in Prague. A photo was even published with wreaths at the place of death, but here the falsifiers made a mistake: there was no blood in the photo.

Then our soldiers were accused of firing tanks at the children's hospital on Charles Square in the capital, and not even a single glass was broken there. The most fantastic inventions were used that the Chinese stew, which the Soviet soldiers eat, was made from earthworms, that they were constantly starving and that dogs and cats had to be hidden so that they would not eat them.

Well, the main theme of the underground media was exactly borrowed from Ostap Bender: the West will help us. There was as much credibility in it as in the words of the great strategist. The West did not help the Czechs either in 1938, or in 1939, or in 1945. They did not wait for help this time either.

In addition to weapons and radio stations, the only help was the operation of radio stations in Czech and Russian of the 701st psychological warfare battalion of the German army. In modern terms, what was then happening in Czechoslovakia could be called a hybrid war after the failure of the attempted color revolution.

And as you know, there is no war without victims. Yes, some of our soldiers died in various road accidents, but very often they were provoked by supporters of Alexander Dubcek and Western democracy. In the early days in many cities there were attempts to block the advance of our troops. To do this, the militants used human shields of women and children.

On August 21, they were put up between the cities of Presov and Poprad after a turn. The lead vehicle of the Soviet tank column did not have time to stop, and so that it would not crush women and children, which the extremists were counting on, the crew threw the tank into a ditch. Petty officer Yuri Andreev, junior sergeant Yevgeny Makhotin and private Petr Kazaryk burned alive.

Two tactical mistakes were made when the troops were brought in. Soviet soldiers were allowed to open fire only in response to enemy fire, and even then, if it was not fired from the crowd. In addition, two barrels of fuel were stacked for each tank. The fighters for democracy pierced the barrel, set fire to the fuel flowing out of it, the tank flared up, the ammunition inside exploded and the crew died.

Here is what Vyacheslav Podoprigora, a former foreman of the 1st radio-relay company of the 3rd separate communications brigade, says: “During the passage of a column of our tanks, someone from the crowd set fire to a barrel of fuel on one of the tanks, the engine caught fire from the barrel. From the fire, the ammunition was about to explode. And this is the death of many civilians standing on the side of the road.

Anticipating this, the tank commander senior sergeant rushed into the crowd, urging people to quickly move away from the car. A few minutes later there was a huge explosion. The tank commander and the rest of the crew were killed. Several local residents died. Many residents were injured."

I have no doubt that these dead residents in the modern Czech Republic are included in the list of victims of Soviet aggression. Although, perhaps, one of them set fire to the tank. There are 108 people on the list.

There are memories of a person who cannot be suspected of love for Russia about the situation in this country. This is a deputy of the Lviv Regional Council and editor-in-chief of the local newspaper Nasha Batkivshchyna Vasily Semyon, who is proud that his two uncles fought in the UPA¹. In 1968, he was a sergeant in military service, and this is what he remembers about his mission in Czechoslovakia.

“Most of my platoon died - the ZIL in which they were transported fell off a cliff. They said that they were "cut off" by a Czech car. The guys from Luhansk died. There was a shot from our side. A taxi driver wanted to run over one guy, an Ossetian. He jumped back and fired. But he did not hit a taxi driver, but a passenger, who turned out to be the daughter of a party functionary. He wounded her and spent six months under investigation. However, they let him go after all.”

His words are confirmed by senior sergeant Nikolai Meshkov: “There was a case in my memory: Czechs came out of the crowd, speaking Russian well, and offered us to get out of their land in a good way. A crowd of 500-600 people became a wall, as if on cue, we were separated by 20 meters. They lifted four people from the back rows in their arms, who looked around.

The crowd went silent. They showed something with their hands to each other, and then instantly grabbed short-barreled machine guns, and 4 long bursts thundered. We did not expect such a trick. 9 people dropped dead. Six were wounded, the Czechs shooting disappeared instantly, the crowd was dumbfounded.

In the future, we became smarter, all the strikers were taken into the ring, and everyone was checked for weapons. There was not a single case that we did not seize it, 6-10 units each time. We handed over people with weapons to the headquarters, where they dealt with them. Women also found weapons, they skillfully hid them, not only pistols, but also grenades.”

There was no such provocation that would not be used against our soldiers. Dozens of them recall how they blocked their way with the help of baby carriages and they, risking their lives, had to make sure that they were empty. An ambulance drove around Prague, which turned around, the back door opened, a burst from a machine gun was fired from there, and it quickly left. Surely a videographer was hidden nearby, and if the shelling had been answered with fire, then all Western media would have shown how Soviet troops were shooting at a car with a red cross.

And here is what Vladimir Shalukhin from the 119th Guards Airborne Regiment remembers: “Often young people, provocateurs, staged a wound in the head or leg. They came up to us and shouted why we were shooting at peaceful unarmed demonstrators. Our guys caught one long-haired "wounded" and removed the bandages. It turned out that there was no wound, the bandages were smeared with red paint. They cut him bald and let him go."

Those who a few days ago stood up for the expansion of democracy, now propagated open Russophobia. Everywhere there were inscriptions about Russian pigs and calls to kill them.

Deputy of the State Duma, and in 1968 a sergeant of the 35th motorized rifle division, Yuri Sinelshchikov, recalls: “On the morning of August 22, we did not recognize the city. Prague was literally glued over and covered with leaflets, posters, anti-Soviet slogans in Czech and Russian: “Democracy without the USSR and communists”, “Occupiers, go home”, “Invaders get out of Prague”, “Death to the occupiers”.

Among them were many clearly offensive ones: "Soviet soldiers, vodka in Moscow - go there", "Russian drunkards, go to Siberia to your bears."

There were also many anti-communist slogans: "A good communist is a dead communist", "Beat the communists" and others. On the wall of one of the houses in the center of Prague, we saw a drawing that occupied several floors, which depicted a bear (with the inscription "USSR" on it) and a hedgehog (with the inscription "Czechoslovakia"), and on top of all this the word: "The bear can never eat a hedgehog." Already on the second day, this composition was supplemented with an inscription (probably made by Soviet soldiers): “And if you shave him?”

Every time the Czechs called us "occupiers", I gave them an irresistible counterargument - an example from the Soviet "occupation practice". Our troops in Prague occupied only one building for their needs - this is the building on Revolution Avenue, which housed the central military commandant's office of the Soviet troops in Prague.

And even then, three days after our entry into Prague, this commandant's office was relocated to the building of the secondary school at the Soviet Embassy. All other units of the Soviet army were in tents or staff vehicles.

Nikolai Kodintsev, then corporal of the 237th separate medical battalion, remembered the meeting: “Not far from our temporary location there was a settlement where there were several water pumps and a water tower, which we had to guard, and so did I. One day a woman came up to us, said that she was Russian, originally from Voronezh, she had once married a Czech.

Crying, she said that at night some people came to their house several times, looking for her in order to arrange a massacre. We sent her to the commandant's office."

Water sources had to be protected, as extremists poisoned them, covered them up and blocked them. It was in such conditions that our soldiers had to serve.

True, they had allies. In those days, it became clear that the military fraternity of the armies of the Warsaw Pact was not an empty phrase. There were not only no conflicts between their military personnel, but there was not even a case that they did not come to the aid of each other. True, it was easier for the Allies. If the Soviet soldier had to report for each cartridge, then they had no problems with this, and they had the right to shoot at any threat to their life and health.

The grouping of Soviet troops numbered 170 thousand people, and the next largest was the 2nd Army of the Polish Army - 40 thousand soldiers. On August 21, in the Czech city of Liberec, a building was being repaired on the central square, and when tanks appeared on it, building blocks, bricks, and boards fell on top of them from scaffolding.

The attacking Czechs were unlucky: the tanks were Soviet-made, but belonged to the Polish army. As a result, 9 of them went to heaven and 42 to the hospital. Later, on September 7, the Polish soldier Stefan Dorna shot two Czechs in the town of Jicin. Since he robbed them at the same time, he was sentenced to imprisonment in his own country. What is important: this is the only crime against citizens of Czechoslovakia in the entire almost 230,000-strong Warsaw Pact group.

Monuments have now been erected at the site of both incidents. They are now installed wherever at least one Czech died, even if he was the first to open fire. Moreover, if the death occurred as a result of a collision with Soviet troops, then this is indicated, but if the cause of death is our allies, no. It is understandable: the Czech Republic cannot offend the current NATO allies.

The Poles suffered the only combat loss - Tadeusz Bodnaruk was killed at the post on October 1. Another 5 people died as a result of accidents and suicide.

In the same way, only one combat loss was also suffered by the Bulgarians at the post, but they had no other losses at all. Bulgaria sent to Czechoslovakia the 12th and 22nd motorized rifle regiments, whose number at different times was from 2164 to 2177 fighters. The 12th regiment made a march from the Soviet border to the city of Banska Bystrica.

During the forced march, due to blockade attempts and shelling, 7 militants were killed in the city of Kosice and one in the city of Rozhnava, where the Bulgarians stood at the head of a column of Soviet troops, which was fired upon from firearms. 29 Bulgarians were injured. The Bulgarian regiment under the command of Colonel Alexander Genchev took control of the barracks, police buildings, printing house and radio in the city. The Bulgarians also captured the airfield in Zvolen and the military unit in Brezno.

The 12th Regiment of the Bulgarian People's Army not only guarded the facilities indicated to it by the Soviet command, but also actively participated in improving the situation. On September 11, the Smer newspaper, which is an organ of the local regional committee of the Communist Party, published an article "Defeated, but not subdued", in which it called for armed struggle.

On the same day, Bulgarian soldiers closed the newspaper, and its editor-in-chief Kuchera and his deputy Khagara were escorted to the headquarters of the Soviet 38th army. On September 17, the Vperyod newspaper in Zvolen was closed for such a violation, and the local party authorities were required to "immediately identify all enemy elements in the editorial office."

The 22nd Bulgarian regiment under the command of Colonel Ivan Chavdarov was transferred from the USSR by planes of the 7th Airborne Division to the Prague airport Ruzyne and began to protect it. On the very first day, the Bulgarians riddled with bullets the Czech fire engine, which did not stop at their request. The Czechs miraculously survived in it and the Bulgarians had no more problems when checking vehicles.

Ivan Chakalov, former foreman of the 8th motorized rifle company, recalls his service there: “Once we went to the nearest village for shopping. We were given 150 crowns. And the store owner refused to sell anything to us. Then junior sergeant Ivan Georgiev from Teteven fired an automatic burst at the ceiling. The plaster fell, the owner fled in horror. We took everything we needed and left money.

Another time they came to a bar, drank beer, treated the Czechs to our cigarettes, but did not take everything. We left the bar and we hear and see through the window how the Czechs argued whether smoking Bulgarian cigarettes is cooperation with the invaders. They got so excited that they got into a big fight.

The driver of the armored personnel carrier, Georgy Nikolov, still admires the Soviet fighters: “There was a special unit with soldiers in red berets near us. We and they hunted hares, which were many in the surrounding fields. But we killed them with bursts of machine guns, and they with knives!

We began to give them cartridges, but they did not spend them on hares, but shot over the heads of the Czechs in case of hostilities. Soon the Soviet command noticed that the Czechs did not undertake any provocations against the soldiers in red berets and dressed all their soldiers at the airfield in such berets.

On September 9, with the help of two girls, junior sergeant Nikolai Nikolov was lured to the car, where they stunned him with a blow to the head and took him to the forest near the village of Novi Dum, 37 km from the airport. There he was killed with a Western-made pistol and his Kalashnikov assault rifle, 120 rounds of ammunition and all his documents were stolen.

Soon, Soviet counterintelligence officers established that the killers were Milislav Frolik, Rudolf Stransky and Jiri Balousek. After the arrest, they stated that the murder occurred as a result of a domestic quarrel and had nothing to do with politics. For this they received from 4 to 10 years in prison. Now in the Czech Republic they are highly respected and regularly tell the media how they "prepared and carried out the destruction of the Bulgarian occupier."

In this regard, voices are heard in Bulgaria demanding that the local prosecutor's office open a criminal case on the murder of a Bulgarian citizen due to new circumstances and demand that the Czech Republic extradite Milislav Frolik and Rudolf Stransky, since their third accomplice has already died.

A monument was erected at the site of the death of Nikolai Nikolov, which is now destroyed and desecrated. However, he is remembered and revered at home. In his native village of Byrkachevo, a bronze monument was erected to him. It was recently stolen and a new white stone monument was unveiled in November 2017. At the same time, director Stefan Komandarev made a documentary about him. The memory of Nikolai Nikolov is traditionally honored at the hunting festival in Mezdra; there is a memorial plaque at the school in this city where he studied. I wonder if we have at least one monument to those who died in Czechoslovakia in 1968?

They also took care of their living soldiers in Bulgaria. All of them, after returning in October 1968, were immediately demobilized and admitted to universities without exams.

In 2008, a banquet was held in honor of the 40th anniversary of the introduction of troops, and the Chief of the General Staff of the Bulgarian Army in 1993-1997, General Tsvetan Totomirov, compared the actions of the army in Czechoslovakia with NATO missions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“In 1968, we participated with conscripts who did not receive any salary, and now the material incentive is the main one.”

The Hungarian soldiers, who were represented by the 8th motorized rifle division with reinforcement units totaling 12.5 thousand people, achieved the best results in their area of ​​responsibility. They controlled the city of Levice and the surrounding area.

This city was part of Hungary in 1938-1945, and the local population rightly feared that they might receive retribution for what happened to the Hungarians in 1945. Already at 3 am on August 21, Hungarian tanks entered the city. There was just an emergency meeting of the city council. A Hungarian officer came to him with 8 submachine gunners and announced that from now on the sale of alcohol is completely prohibited, and the population must hand over all hunting rifles by August 23.

Then the state security, police and workers' militia were disarmed. At the same time, the command of the division demanded that each Hungarian military patrol should have one representative of the police and the workers' militia. Obviously as a kind of "human shield".

Telephones were also turned off, and all decisions of state bodies had to be coordinated. If the Soviet and Bulgarian soldiers and officers lived in tents and staff vehicles, then the Hungarian military personnel settled in the party and public buildings in the very center of the city, and the tanks stood at the barracks of the Czechoslovak army.

Despite such harsh measures, no one fired at the Hungarian soldiers or even threw anything at them. The resistance was limited to writing offensive graffiti on the walls. Initially, drivers, passing by Hungarian soldiers, pressed their horns in protest, but after several machine gun bursts on the tires, this stopped. The Hungarian army is the only one of the Warsaw Pact countries that had no combat losses in Czechoslovakia, and from illness, accidents and suicide, the losses amounted to 4 people.

There are many memories on the Internet about the behavior of German troops in Czechoslovakia. This is surprising, since at the last moment the entry of two divisions of the national people's army of the GDR was canceled, and they remained in reserve on their territory.

20 German officers arrived in Czechoslovakia to coordinate and prepare for the entry of GDR troops (which never took place). One of them was in the Soviet military commandant's office in the city of Jihlava.

There, they could not force the local authorities to erase offensive anti-Soviet and anti-Russian inscriptions from the walls of houses. Those referred to the fact that there are no buckets, no cleaning products. Then a German officer asked for a car with a driver and a loudspeaker and drove around the whole city. Over the loudspeaker, he announced in German, without translation into Czech, the urgent need to wash off the inscriptions. What was the surprise of the Soviet officers when they saw that the population of the city poured into the streets and began to remove the inscriptions!

Now many media are strongly suggesting that the entire people of the country actively protested against the introduction of troops. In fact, as I wrote above, there were relatively few protesters, and they were mostly young people. Most Czechs who survived the German occupation supported the measures taken. Dozens of our soldiers remember how the Czechs secretly gave them cigarettes and food, thanked them. A general indefinite strike, called for not only by protesters, but also by underground and Western radio stations and newspapers, also broke down.

The situation in Czechoslovakia was very tense for the first five days. Those who protested and opposed the Allied armies put forward two demands: the withdrawal of troops and the release of the head of the communist party, Alexander Dubcek and other party leaders, but this did not stop them from writing anti-communist slogans on the walls of houses.

Everything changed dramatically on August 26: Alexander Dubcek and his comrades returned to Prague and announced that he had signed an agreement with the USSR on the deployment of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia. This came as a shock to the fighters for "socialism with a human face": one of their demands has been fulfilled - Dubcek is free, and the Soviet troops are now in Czechoslovakia with the consent of the country's leadership. They had a question: what were they fighting for? The number of protesters dropped sharply. In addition, by that time most of the underground radio stations and printing houses had been identified and stopped working.

The leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia strongly condemned the "bourgeois deviations and attacks of the counter-revolution" and returned to building communism. However, on January 16, 1969, student Jan Palach committed self-immolation on Wenceslas Square in Prague, and on February 25, Jan Zajic. On March 28, celebrating the victory of the Czechoslovak national team over Soviet hockey players, crowds of Praguers destroyed the representative offices of Aeroflot and Intourist, as well as the Soviet Book store.

All these events showed that Alexander Dubcek did not control the situation in the country, and on April 17 he ceased to be the head of the Czechoslovak communists. He worked for a year as ambassador to Turkey, and then he was expelled from the party and sent to lead the forestry in Slovakia.

In 1989, he again changed his position, began to criticize the communist ideology and claim that he had always been a convinced democrat. As a reward for this, until June 1992, he headed the parliament of Czechoslovakia. In September of the same year, he was in a car accident and died on November 7. Less than two months later, on January 1, 1993, Czechoslovakia also collapsed.

Dubcek's successor as head of the CPC was Gustav Husak. He was one of the organizers of the Slovak uprising and in 1944 advocated the entry of Slovakia without the Czech Republic into the USSR.

The further period of the country's history until 1989 was called "normalization". In the course of it, until 1974, 3,078 activists of the Prague Spring were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. Mostly those who fought not in word, but in deed, and for specific crimes, including political assassinations. A party purge was carried out, and after they found out what the communists were doing at the end of August 1968, 22% of the members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia were left without party cards. Three-quarters of its members were expelled from the writers' union, and half from the journalists' union.

Describing the events in Czechoslovakia, it is impossible not to mention the role of the United States in them. As soon as Dubcek's reforms began, the number of radio stations broadcasting in Czechoslovakia, funded by American money, immediately increased. They called for the expansion of democracy, admired what had already been done, and hinted that, if necessary, the United States would come to the rescue.

However, when two days before the introduction of troops, Leonid Brezhnev called US President Lyndon Johnson and asked if his country would continue to comply with the Yalta agreements, the American president answered in the affirmative and said that he recognized that Czechoslovakia and Romania were in the sphere of influence of the USSR.

Indeed, the United States then was not up to Czechoslovakia. They fought the Vietnam War. On March 16, 1968, they killed 504 civilians in Song My village. And in total, during the war, even according to American estimates, 2 million civilians died. But the Western media did not draw the attention of their audience to this. But the atrocities of Soviet soldiers in Czechoslovakia were the main topic for several months, although 108 citizens of Czechoslovakia died there, many of them with weapons in their hands.

Now the US is the best friend of the democratic Czech Republic. But there are moments in the relations between the two countries that their leaders prefer not to remember.

For example, the Americans have not yet fully returned the gold reserves of Czechoslovakia. Many interesting stories happened to him. When the Sudetenland was taken from this country in 1938, its leaders began to suspect that it would soon disappear from the political map of Europe, and sent half of the gold reserves to the Bank of England.

It really ceased to exist in March 1939. Great Britain did not recognize the accession of the Czech Republic to the Third Reich, but the Bank of England, for unclear but clearly corrupt reasons, handed over Czechoslovak gold to the Nazis.

Just a few months before the start of World War II, it was sold there, and the proceeds were transferred to Swiss Reichsbank accounts and spent the entire war on the purchase of weapons and raw materials in third countries for the needs of the Wehrmacht.

The remaining 45.5 tons of gold were captured by the Nazis in Prague. They were taken out and in 1945 went to the American army in the Frankfurt am Main area. Since then, negotiations have been going on for its return. In 1982, the Americans returned 18.46 tons of gold to Czechoslovakia, and in 2000, already independent Slovakia was able to receive 4.5 tons.

The remaining more than 20 tons of gold continue to strengthen the US financial system. For comparison: according to the data of the Czech National Bank dated September 30, 2016, the gold reserves of the Czech Republic are 9.642 tons. The Americans explain the refusal to return it to the problem of identifying part of the gold reserve.

On the bars from the gold reserves of all countries there is the coat of arms of the country, and on some Czechoslovakia - the coat of arms of the Russian Empire. That is, this is actually our gold, stolen by Czechoslovak legionnaires in 1920. In general, the United States, which declares the right of private property sacred, likes to keep someone else's property. For example, the Hungarians had to wait for the return of their main shrine, the crown of King Stephen, also captured by the American army in 1945, for 33 years.

Another embarrassing incident for Americanophiles occurred on February 14, 1945, when the US Air Force bombed Prague, and not a single German soldier was injured, but 701 Praguers were killed and 1,184 were wounded. They are not remembered by the current leaders, but they annually lay wreaths at the Prague building of the Czech Radio, where 15 citizens of Prague died on August 21, 1968. The main thing is that Soviet soldiers can be blamed for their death for decades, and not those who invented the myth with the beautiful name "socialism with a human face."

¹ The organization is banned on the territory of the Russian Federation.

Alexander Dubcek - First Secretary of the HRC (January-August 1968)

For almost eight months in 1968, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (Czechoslovakia) experienced a period of profound change, unprecedented in the history of the communist movement. These transformations have become a natural result of the growing crisis in this relatively prosperous and developed country, in whose political culture predominantly democratic traditions are deeply rooted. The process of democratization in Czechoslovakia, prepared by the reformist forces within the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, for a number of years went almost unnoticed by most analysts and politicians of the West and East, including the Soviet leaders. They misinterpreted the nature of the political conflict within the CPC at the end of 1967, which led to the removal in January 1968 of the first secretary of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPC A. Novotny. A. Dubcek, a graduate of the Higher Party School under the Central Committee of the CPSU, who spoke excellent Russian, was elected instead.

At the end of March, A. Novotny resigned from the post of president of Czechoslovakia. Instead, on the recommendation of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, the hero of the Second World War, General Ludwik Svoboda, was elected to this post, against whom the Soviet leaders also had no objections.

The fall of Novotny was not just the result of a struggle for power within the Czechoslovak leadership, but occurred for a number of reasons, including: the economic crisis of 1962-1963, which aroused the desire for economic reforms, the slow pace of the process of political rehabilitation of the repressed, the open dissent of writers and students, the awakening reformist-minded intellectual strata in the party, who began the struggle for freedom of thought and expression.

The protracted nature of the political crisis, the stubborn opposition of Novotny and his supporters to Dubcek, a series of scandalous incidents in 1968 (for example, the sensational escape to the United States of General Jan Cheyna, accompanied by rumors of a failed military coup attempt in favor of the restoration of Novotny), the weakening of censorship - all this contributed to the mobilization public support for the new leadership. Interested in reform, the HRC leaders included their pluralistic concept of socialism "with a human face" in the "Program of Action" adopted in April 1968 as the "Magna Carta" of the new leadership of Dubcek. In addition, Dubcek allowed the creation of a number of new political clubs and also abolished censorship; in the field of foreign policy, it was decided to pursue a more independent course, which, however, met the interests of the Warsaw Pact in general and the policy of the USSR in particular.

The astonishing swiftness of events in Czechoslovakia in January-April 1968 created a dilemma for the Soviet leadership. The resignation of Moscow-oriented Novotny supporters, and especially the reformist programs of the Dubcek leadership and the revival of press freedom, led, from the Soviet point of view, to a dangerous situation in one of the key countries of Eastern Europe. In addition, the leadership of a number of countries participating in the Warsaw Pact thought about the increased, in their opinion, vulnerability of the borders and territory of Czechoslovakia, the prospect of its withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, which would inevitably undermine the Eastern European military security system.

Potentially, the situation in Czechoslovakia could affect neighboring Eastern European countries, and even the Soviet Union itself. The Czechoslovak slogan "socialism with a human face" called into question the humanity of Soviet socialism. "Magna Carta" meant a much greater degree of internal party democracy, granting greater autonomy to the state apparatus, other political parties and parliament, the restoration of civil rights (freedom of assembly and association) and a more decisive continuation of political rehabilitation, the restoration of national rights of ethnic minorities within the federation, economic reform, etc.

Prague. August 1968

The possibility of a "chain reaction" in neighboring socialist countries, where the social upheavals of the recent past were still fresh in their memory (GDR in 1953, Hungary in 1956), led to hostility to the Czechoslovak "experiment" not only of the Soviet, but also of East German (W. Ulbricht ), Polish (V. Gomulka) and Bulgarian (T. Zhivkov) leadership. A more reserved position was taken by J. Kadar (Hungary).

However, the Prague Spring represented a different kind of protest than the one that Soviet leaders faced in Hungary in 1956. Dubcek's leadership did not challenge the foundations of ensuring the interests of the national security of the USSR, it did not come up with a proposal to revise the foreign policy orientation of Czechoslovakia. The retention of membership in the Department of Internal Affairs and the CMEA was not questioned. Limited pluralism also did not mean the loss of overall control on the part of the Communist Party: power, although somewhat dispersed, would remain in the hands of a reformist party leadership.

From the point of view of the Soviet leadership, the events in Czechoslovakia created problems and were potentially dangerous. Burned in Hungary, the Soviet leaders long time could not determine their course in relation to what was happening in Czechoslovakia. Should the changes that have taken place there since January should be eradicated or simply limited? What means should be used to influence Czechoslovakia? Should we confine ourselves to political and economic actions or resort to armed intervention?

Despite the fact that the Kremlin was unanimous in its negative attitude towards Czechoslovak reformism, they did not incline for a military invasion for a long time. Some members of the Soviet leadership engaged in an intensive search for a peaceful solution to the problem. This became apparent after March 1968, when the Soviet government began to use a number of political and psychological pressures to persuade Dubcek and his colleagues to slow down the imminent change.

The Soviet side exerted political pressure on the leadership of Dubcek during various meetings and negotiations: at a multilateral meeting in Dresden in March, during a bilateral meeting of the leaders of the CPSU and the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in Moscow in May, at unprecedented high-level negotiations between the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in Čierna nad Tisou in July, in Bratislava in August 1968. The Czechoslovak delegation refused to come to the meeting of the leaders of Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany, Poland and the USSR in Warsaw (July 1968).

The aggravation of the situation was also facilitated by the initially restrained reaction, and then the categorical refusal of the Czechoslovak leadership to accept repeated proposals to deploy a Soviet military contingent on the territory of Czechoslovakia.

Political pressure was accompanied by psychological pressure: near the borders of Czechoslovakia, large-scale exercises of the ATS troops were held with the participation of the USSR, the GDR and Poland. Later, such a type of psychological influence was used as the presence of troops of the Warsaw Pact countries on the territory of Czechoslovakia during and after military exercises in June and July 1968.

In addition, the Soviet leadership did not rule out the possibility of applying economic sanctions against Czechoslovakia as a form of pressure. However, despite the reports that appeared at the end of April 1968 that Soviet grain supplies had been cut off, there was no real evidence of the use of economic levers.

On August 21, 1968, Soviet airborne troops conducted a successful operation to capture key points in the capital of Czechoslovakia.

No matter how much you feed the wolf, he looks into the forest. No matter how much you feed a Czech, Pole, Hungarian or Lithuanian, he will still look to the West. From the very moment of the formation of the socialist camp, concern for its well-being was entrusted to the country that liberated these countries from fascism. The Russian peasant ate gray bread so that the East German could spread his favorite kind of marmalade on a rich bun. The Russian peasant drank Solntsedar so that the Hungarian could drink his favorite Tokay wines. A Russian man was shaking to work in a crowded tram so that the Czech would have the opportunity to ride in his beloved Skoda or Tatra.

But neither the Germans, nor the Hungarians, nor the Czechs appreciated any of this. The first staged the Berlin crisis in 1953, the second staged the notorious events in Hungary in 1956, and the third staged the so-called Prague Spring in 1968.

It was to eliminate this turmoil that Operation Danube was carried out.

At 2 am on August 21, 1968, advanced units of the 7th Airborne Division landed at the Ruzyne airfield in Prague. They blocked the main objects of the airfield, where Soviet An-12s with troops and military equipment began to land. The capture of the airfield was carried out with the help of a deceptive maneuver: a Soviet passenger plane flying up to the airfield requested an emergency landing due to alleged damage on board. After permission and landing, paratroopers from the aircraft captured the control tower and ensured the landing of landing aircraft.

At 5 o'clock. 10 minutes. a reconnaissance company of the 350th Airborne Regiment and a separate reconnaissance company of the 103rd Airborne Division landed. Within 10 minutes, they captured the Turzhani and Namesht airfields, after which a hasty landing of the main forces began. According to eyewitnesses, transport planes landed at the airfields one after another. The landing party jumped off without waiting for a complete stop. By the end of the runway, the plane was already empty and immediately picked up speed for a new takeoff. With a minimum interval, other planes with troops and military equipment began to arrive here.

On military equipment and captured civilian vehicles, the paratroopers went deep into the territory, and by 9.00 they blocked all roads, bridges, exits from the city, radio and television buildings, telegraph, main post office, administrative buildings of the city and region, printing house, stations in Brno , as well as the headquarters of military units and enterprises of the military industry. ChNA commanders were asked to remain calm and maintain order.

Four hours after the landing of the first groups of paratroopers, the most important objects of Prague and Brno were under the control of the allied forces. The main efforts of the paratroopers were aimed at seizing the buildings of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, the government, the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff, as well as the buildings of the radio station and television. According to a predetermined plan, columns of troops were sent to the main administrative and industrial centers of Czechoslovakia. Formations and units of the allied forces were stationed in all major cities. Particular attention was paid to the protection of the western borders of Czechoslovakia.

The 200,000-strong Czechoslovak army, as 30 years before, during the capture of the country by the Germans, offered practically no resistance. However, among the population, mainly in Prague, Bratislava and other large cities, there was dissatisfaction with what was happening. The protest of the public was expressed in the construction of barricades on the path of advancement of tank columns, the actions of underground radio stations, the distribution of leaflets and appeals to the Czechoslovak population and military personnel of the allied countries. In some cases, there were armed attacks on military personnel of the contingent of troops introduced into Czechoslovakia, throwing tanks and other armored vehicles with combustible mixture bottles, attempts to disable communications and transport, destruction of monuments to Soviet soldiers in cities and villages of Czechoslovakia.

On August 21, a group of countries (USA, England, France, Canada, Denmark and Paraguay) spoke at the UN Security Council demanding that the "Czechoslovak question" be brought to a meeting of the UN General Assembly, seeking a decision on the immediate withdrawal of troops from the Warsaw Pact countries. The representatives of Hungary and the USSR voted against. The governments of the socialist countries - Yugoslavia, Albania, Romania and China - condemned the military intervention of the five states.

On October 16, 1968, an agreement was signed between the governments of the USSR and Czechoslovakia on the conditions for the temporary stay of Soviet troops on the territory of Czechoslovakia, according to which part of the Soviet troops remained on the territory of Czechoslovakia "in order to ensure the security of the socialist community." The treaty contained provisions on respect for the sovereignty of Czechoslovakia and non-interference in its internal affairs. The signing of the treaty was one of the main military-political results of the introduction of troops of five states, which satisfied the leadership of the USSR and the Department of Internal Affairs.

On October 17, 1968, a phased withdrawal of allied troops from the territory of Czechoslovakia began, which was completed by mid-November.

Despite the fact that when the troops of the Warsaw Pact countries were brought in, there were no military operations, there were losses. Thus, during the redeployment and deployment of Soviet troops (from August 20 to November 12), as a result of the actions of hostile persons, 11 servicemen, including one officer, were killed; 87 Soviet servicemen were wounded and injured, including 19 officers.

Many are now asking the question, why was it necessary to keep all these Czechs, Poles, Germans and Hungarians in the socialist camp? But if we allowed all of them to lie under the West, American military bases would immediately be at our borders. And therefore, in Poland, we were forced to keep the Northern Group of Forces, in the GDR - the Western, in Hungary - the Southern, and in Czechoslovakia - the Central.

MEMORIES OF THE PARTICIPANTS OF THE OPERATION

Lev Gorelov(in 1968 - commander of the 7th Guards Airborne Division):

There is no such thing in the charters of the Airborne Forces, it is not intended to fight in cities. In the charters of combined arms, where the infantry is, there is also nothing there - “features of the conduct of hostilities” ...

What to do? The guys from the villages, some of them were not even in the houses, do not know what a multi-storey building is.

I gathered retired veterans who once took settlements during the war. We are writing a temporary instruction on taking the house. Houses, like houses, not on a global scale, but as a large house to take. We are withdrawing a division, regiments, and the regiments were separated, and in every city there are microdistricts. So here we are at dawn, until people come home from work, we trained there - we worked out the capture of the settlement. And this is a different tactic: an assault detachment, a support detachment, fire support, cover squads - this is a whole new tactic for paratroopers, and for everyone. To take a settlement is to create assault groups. I’ve been training for a month, they say: “The division commander has gone crazy, what is it, they took everyone out, from morning to night, before the arrival of the working class, they storm ...”

What saved us from bloodshed? Why did we lose 15 thousand of our young guys in Grozny, but not in Prague? And here's why: detachments were ready there, ready in advance, Smarkovsky led, the ideologist. They formed detachments, but they did not give out weapons, weapons on alarm - come, take weapons. So we knew, our intelligence knew where these warehouses were. First of all, we seized the warehouses, and then we took the Central Committee, the General Staff, and so on, the government. We threw the first part of our forces into warehouses, then everything else.

In short, at 2:15 I landed, and at 6:00 Prague was in the hands of paratroopers. The Czechs woke up in the morning - to arms, and our guards are standing there. Everything.

So there was no resistance?

— Only in the Central Committee. So, in the Central Committee, 9 Czech people were killed by ours. The fact is that they went through the cellars and came out on the opposite side, the corridor is long, you know, these are service premises. And our guard stood in Dubchik's office, and the machine gunner was sitting about 50 meters before this office and saw - they were coming, running with machine guns. He took aim and fired. He then unloaded the entire tape from a machine gun, kills them, and then the Czechs were taken away by helicopter. Where they were buried, I do not know.

NIKOLAY MESHKOV(senior sergeant of a motorized rifle regiment pp 50560):

The commander of the regiment, Colonel Klevtsov, a combat commander, a participant in the Great Patriotic War, as well as a participant in the Hungarian events, said: “I learned from the bitter experience of the Hungarian events, many soldiers died because of orders “not to shoot”. And we were ordered to defend the socialist gains in Czechoslovakia and we will defend them with weapons in our hands, and for every shot from their side, we will answer the same.

The first 50 kilometers passed without incident. Passing somewhere at 2 o'clock in the morning some settlement where one of the military units of Czechoslovakia was located, we saw that the soldiers were withdrawing tanks and vehicles on alert. We heard the first bursts of machine guns, about 40 kilometers before reaching Prague. Each of us immediately found his helmet, half of the soldiers went down into the armored personnel carrier. All the soldiers attached the horn to their machine gun and put it on a combat platoon. The soldier's jokes went aside.

The city greeted us warily. There are no signs around, the streets are narrow. Everywhere 10-15-storey buildings. The tank in such a place seemed like a matchbox. Almost a kilometer later, the first obstacle stood in the way of the cars - a barricade of cars and buses, all Soviet-made. Our convoy stopped. From some building, fire from automatic weapons began from above. The bullets clicked on the armor of the APC, we were blown into the car like the wind. In response, we also opened fire from machine guns. No harm done. The lead tank was ordered to fire a blank charge to clear the road. The shot rang out suddenly, breaking the silence of the early morning. A barricade of cars exploded, some cars overturned and caught fire. The column moved on.

... The road ran along the river, and on the left were skyscrapers. The road was very narrow, two tanks, being on it, could not pass. A kilometer and a half later, at the turn, a crowd of armed people appeared, who covered themselves with small children. They opened fire on us. The front tank began to move to the right, so as not to run into the children, broke through the parapet and fell into the river. None of the crew got out, everyone died, but at the cost of their lives they saved the kids. Then people began to scatter to their homes, and we pushed back the armed militants with fire. Three of them died, and we had two wounded and a dead crew ...

Even on the way to Prague there were two barricades of cars and buses, and also all the equipment was Soviet, where did they get so much of it? The BAT moved ahead of the column with a cleaner and raked the barricades like a pile of garbage. We were fired on three more times from the houses... Behind us, an armored personnel carrier caught fire, another 40 meters later, soldiers jumped out of the vehicles. A mixture in cellophane was dropped from the windows on the armored personnel carrier, when the cellophane was torn upon impact, the mixture immediately ignited like gasoline, the commanders said that it was impossible to put out this fire ... Having reached the government residence at about 7 am with losses and surrounding it from all sides, we did not We saw not a single paratrooper, they were not there. As it turned out later, for some reason they were delayed for almost three hours, and they got to their destination in whatever way they could. In general, the column of motorcycles on which they arrived was 100 units. But they were immediately taken to other lines, their task was completed by our unit.

On the north side there was a regiment of Germans, next to them the Hungarians, and a little further on the Poles.

By 8 am the city woke up as if on cue, deafened by explosions, machine guns and machine guns. All Allied troops entered the city 6 hours earlier than expected.

The city began to live a military life, military patrols appeared. The shooting in the city did not stop, but grew with every hour. We have already distinguished well where our machine gun fires and where someone else's, the shots of our cannons and the explosions of other people's shells. Only the fan of bullets could not be distinguished, it is the same in flight. The first picketers and students appeared. They staged a strike, then went on the assault, we could hardly hold back the onslaught. A howitzer was captured, we recaptured the gunners as a platoon.

... I remember a case: Czechs who spoke Russian well came out of the crowd and offered us to get out of their land in a good way. A crowd of 500-600 people became a wall, as if on cue, we were separated by 20 meters. They lifted four people from the back rows in their arms, who looked around. The crowd went silent. They showed something with their hands to each other, and then instantly grabbed short-barreled machine guns, and 4 long bursts thundered. We did not expect such a trick. 9 people dropped dead. Six were wounded, the Czechs shooting disappeared instantly, the crowd was dumbfounded. A soldier standing in front, whose friend was killed, discharged a clip into the crowd. Everyone dispersed, carrying away their dead and wounded. So the first death came to our "gunners". In the future, we became smarter, all the strikers were taken into the ring, and everyone was checked for weapons. There was not a single case that we did not seize it, 6-10 units each time. We handed over people with weapons to the headquarters, where they dealt with them.

A week of fighting and shooting has left its mark. One day, when I woke up in the morning, I looked in the mirror and saw that I had gray temples. The experiences and death of comrades made themselves felt ... Somewhere on the fifth day in the morning, a kilometer from us, a machine gun hit with heavy fire. Bullets clattered against the walls, showering rivulets of sand. Everyone fell to the ground and covered their heads with their hands, began to crawl. The command was given to suppress the firing point. The machine gun hit, not allowing to raise the head, the bullets, ricocheting on the paving stones, made a buzzing sound that made the heart stop. I felt something hot in my right leg, crawled around the corner, took off my boot. It was torn, the whole footcloth in the blood. The bullet split the boot and cut the skin on the leg, in fact, a scratch. Rewound the package and made an injection. There was no pain as such, luckily. Received a baptism of fire. The guys from the second company, and they were grenade launchers, suppressed the firing point. With one volley of a grenade launcher, the 4-story building from which the fire was fired became 3-story, one floor settled completely. After such a shot, pride in the power of our weapons covers.

... Somewhere on the twentieth day of hostilities, the fighting began to subside, there were only minor skirmishes, although there were both dead and wounded.

I will describe one more case. One day in September 1968, our company was sent to unload food for the army. 4 railway refrigerators arrived, loaded with pork and beef carcasses, 2 wagons of butter, sausages, stews and cereals. Before unloading, our doctors checked the products for suitability, it turned out that all the meat and other food was poisoned, although all the seals and documents were intact. The echelon was driven farther from the city, into the field. The soldiers dug trenches. We in chemical protection unloaded food into the pits, poured diesel fuel on it and set it on fire. They razed everything to the ground… There was a real war going on…

Alexander Zasetsky (in 1968 - radio platoon commander, lieutenant):

The Czech people met us in different ways: the adult population was calm but wary, while the youth were aggressive, hostile and defiant. She was well "processed" by hostile propaganda. Prague was then full of Westerners, they were then caught and expelled. From the youth, there were mainly attacks, shooting, arson of cars and tanks. On our tanks, two barrels of fuel were attached above the engine compartment, so they jumped on the tank, pierced the barrels and set them on fire. The tank was on fire. Then there was an order - to remove the barrels. There were, of course, human losses. Radio operator Lenya Pestov worked with me on a helicopter, sorry I don’t know from which unit. A few days later, when he was not visible, he asked - where is Lenya? They say he died. The helicopters on which we flew were fired upon many times. Some crashed. People died. I remember they shot down a helicopter with journalists. Two journalists and the pilot were killed.

Although other moments of the then military life I remember with pleasure. Next to our location was the estate, there was a large luxurious garden. Autumn. Everything is ripe, a lot of fruits. To avoid the temptation to eat from the garden, the commander organized the guard of this estate. When things calmed down a bit, an elderly Czech arrives in a three-wheeled car and asks for permission to harvest in the garden. "If there's anything left," as he put it. Imagine his surprise when he saw that everything was intact, everything was in perfect order, and a detachment of soldiers was assigned to help him clean up. The touched elderly Czech burst into tears and thanked for a long time.