Editing Prague Spring (section)

== Memory ==
[[File:T-54A in Prague.jpg|thumb|Soviet tank, exhibited in Prague in remembrance (2008) of the Prague Spring.]]
[[File:Pietna spomienka na obete 21. augusta 1968 (36540833222).jpg|thumb|Commemorative event (2017) in Bratislava, Slovakia.]]

=== Places and historical sites ===
The photographs that were taken in Vinohradská Avenue and [[Wenceslas Square]] are widely represented in the photographic archive of the 1968 invasion while other sites of protests are missing. The memory of the Prague Spring is marked by the Czech Republic's and Slovakia's desire to avoid unpleasant collective memories leading to a process of historical amnesia and narrative whitewashing. Photographs taken by [[Josef Koudelka]] portray memories of the invasion such as a memorial to the victims set up in Wenceslas Square.  There are many omnipresent signs of memorial of the Soviet invasion in the city of Prague.<ref name="Skovajsa 2014 671">{{Cite journal|last=Skovajsa|first=Marek|date=2014|title=Total and Foreign-Journal Citedness of Sociologický časopis: The Results of a Citation Analysis|journal=Czech Sociological Review|volume=50|issue=5|pages=671–712|doi=10.13060/00380288.2014.50.5.119|issn=0038-0288|doi-access=free}}</ref>

During the invasion, protesters set up several memorials to record the location of the victims' death. The [[Jan Palach]] memorial is a monument remembering the suicide of a student in 1969. This place is often called the "boulevard of history." Palach was the first to kill himself in [[Wenceslas Square]] but was not the last, he was belonging to a student pact of resistance.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/jan-palach-memorial|title=Jan Palach Memorial|website=Atlas Obscura|language=en|access-date=2019-08-24}}</ref> There is also (at Újezd, at the bottom of Petrin hill) the memorial for the victims of communism in Prague: a narrowing staircase along which seven male bronze silhouettes descend. The first one, the one at the bottom, is complete, while the others gradually disappear. It aims at representing the same person at different phases of the destruction caused by communist ideology.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.afar.com/places/memorial-to-the-victims-of-communism-prague|title=Memorial to the Victims of Communism {{!}} Prague {{!}} Czech Republic {{!}} AFAR|date=2019-06-06|website=www.afar.com|access-date=2019-08-24|archive-date=24 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190824023333/https://www.afar.com/places/memorial-to-the-victims-of-communism-prague|url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Conflicted memories ===
The Prague Spring has deeply marked the history of communism in Eastern Europe even though its outcomes were modest. Rather than remembering the cultural democratization, the opening of the press and its impact on the emergence of a new form of socialism, history textbooks consider Prague Spring as one of the major crises of Socialism in the Soviet bloc.{{According to whom|date=April 2021}} The memory has acquired a negative significance as marking disillusion of political hopes within Eastern European communism.   Indeed, long hidden and rejected from the [[collective memory]], the Prague Spring of 1968 is rarely commemorated in Prague and is often considered a painful defeat, a symbol of disappointed hope and surrender that heralds twenty years of 'normalisation'.{{Citation needed|date=April 2021}} It was not until the 2000s, following the publication of texts dating from 1968, such as Milan Kundera, "Český úděl" (The Czech Fate), and Václav Havel, ''"Český úděl?"'' published in 2007 in the weekly magazine ''Literární Noviny (52/1)'', that the debate on the Prague Spring resumed. Indeed, the posterity of the Prague Spring remains first and foremost the memory of the military intervention of the Warsaw Pact as well as the failure of reform within a communist regime, which definitely discredited the Dubcekian "revisionist" perspective in the East.{{Citation needed|date=April 2021}} The memory of the Prague Spring is thus largely obscured and often overviewed.{{By whom|date=April 2021}} Indeed, the Prague Spring also deeply impacted the Czech society and should also be remembered for the cultural momentum that accompanied and illustrated this movement, of which there are still films, novels, and plays.{{Specify|reason=which ones?|date=April 2021}} The Prague Spring also influenced a renewal of the Prague artistic and cultural scene as well as a liberalization of society which deeply marked the following years. The 1960s indeed saw the emergence of a major shift in Czechoslovakia with cultural changes and movement coming from the West, notably rock music and sub-cultural movements which are the symbol of cultural renewal for Czechoslovakia.{{Citation needed|date=April 2021}} The Czech sixties were thus a process of emancipation of culture from the constraints of existing political structures and were the prelude to the upheavals of 1968.  In fact, the regime's political crisis did not begin with Dubcek's election as party leader on 5 January 1968, but with the break-up speeches delivered at the Writers' Congress in June 1967 by [[Ludvík Vaculík]], [[Milan Kundera]] and [[Antonín J. Liehm|Antonín Liehm]]. In addition, the revitalization of society was also an essential component of the Prague Spring. Indeed, the great achievements of the Prague Spring, i. e. the abolition of censorship, the restoration of individual and collective freedoms... have revitalized society, which has begun to express itself more freely. Although the Prague Spring only restored what had existed thirty years earlier in Czechoslovakia, the spring of 1968 had a profound and long-lasting impact on the society.<ref name="Skovajsa 2014 671"/> {{Failed verification|date=April 2021}}

Recently, the anniversary of the 50 years of the conflict raised the question of the memory of the Prague Spring. The [[European Commission]] Vice-president [[Maroš Šefčovič]], himself a Slovak, reminded us on the occasion that ''"we should never tolerate a breach of international law, crushing people's legitimate yearning for freedom and democracy".'' The European justice commissioner [[Věra Jourová]] also made a speech. However, the memory is still very conflicted as demonstrated when the Czech Republic's pro-Russian President [[Miloš Zeman]] refused to attend any ceremony remembering the Prague Spring and didn't give any speech in memory of the numerous deaths.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.politico.eu/article/milos-zeman-skips-prague-spring-commemoration/|title=Czech president under fire for skipping Prague Spring commemoration|last=Mortkowitz|first=Siegfried|date=2018-08-21|website=Politico|access-date=2019-08-24}}</ref>

The memory of the Prague Spring is also transmitted through testimonies of former Czechoslovak citizens. In a 2018 article, [[Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty|Radio Free Europe]] collected testimonies of four women who witnessed the Warsaw Pact troops invasion and bravely acted. Stanislava Draha who volunteered to help some of the 500 wounded testifies says that the invasion had a major impact on her life. Besides, Vera Homolova, a radio reporter broadcasting the invasion from a covert studio testifies "I experienced the Soviet-led troops shooting recklessly into the Czechoslovak Radio's building, into windows." In the aftermath, Vera Roubalova, who reacted as a student to the occupation by demonstrating posters, that tensions were still present towards the countries that occupied Czechoslovakia. On the night of 20–21 August, 137 Czechoslovaks died during the invasion.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.rferl.org/a/invasion-of-czechoslovakia-through-womens-eyes/29442053.html|title=The Invasion of Czechoslovakia Through Women's Eyes|last=Foltynova|first=Kristyna|website=Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty|language=en|access-date=2019-08-24}}</ref>