In August 1968, the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries invaded Czechoslovakia to reassert communist control after the liberalizing Prague Spring reforms. The Czechoslovak people resisted nonviolently, with over 1,300 delegates secretly attending the Communist Party congress to condemn the invasion. Civilians blocked Soviet tanks, painted anti-invasion slogans, and demoralized soldiers. Clandestine radios spread information. However, Czechoslovak leaders capitulated and signed agreements ending the resistance, demobilizing the population and beginning a period of normalization of communist rule. The nonviolent resistance may have succeeded longer if not for the leaders' collaboration.

1. Étienne Godinot
Translation: Claudia McKenny Engström
17.03.2015
Series « Towards a nonviolent civil defence »
Diaporamas 2 :
Historical examples of civil non-armed resistance to military aggression
Diaporama 2-2
Non-armed civil resistance
in Czechoslovakia
21-28 August 1968

2. Non-armed Civil Resistance in Czechoslovakia – 21-28 August 1968
Sources :
- Jean-Marie Muller, Vous avez dit pacifisme ? (Pacifism you said ?),
Cerf, 2nd Part, Chapter 6, « Comment fut brisée la résistance
tchécoslovaque » (« How Czechoslovakian resistance was broken »)
- Christian Brunier, L’imagination au pouvoir (autopsie d’une
résistance) - Tchécoslovaquie 1968, Review Alternatives Non-
Violentes nr. 33, copied in Résistances civiles, les leçons de l’histoire,
Dossier de Non-violence Actualité, 1983.
- François Vaillant, Review Alternatives non-violentes, winter 2001-
2002, Les luttes non-violentes au XXè siècle, « Tchécoslovaquie,
Août 1968 »
- Wikipedia

3. Non-armed civil resistance in Czechoslovakia
21-28 August 1968
In the night of the 20th August 1968, 200 000 soviet
soldiers and 2 000 tanks of the Warsaw Pact invaded
Czechoslovakia. They came to re-establish communist
order, troubled by the “human socialism” of the Prague
Spring.
The Parliament continued to sit, MPs sleeping on the
floors of the Parliament. The Presidium of the
Czechoslovakian Communist Party (CCP) published a
declaration condemning the invasion and calling the
population to renounce any form of violence.
Photos : - Alexander Dubcek during the Prague Spring
- Soviet tanks marching in Prague in August 1968.

4. A spontaneous and improvised resistance
The 14th CCP Congress was initially supposed to
take place in September 1968, but gathered secretly
on 21st August in the CKD factory in Vysocany,
Prague suburbs. 1 319 delegates out of 1 534 came
on foot, by bicycle, most of them dressed in workers
clothes. The Congress condemned the invasion and
demanded withdrawal of the occupation troupes.
Signposts change direction, the names of the streets
are removed : the country becomes a labyrinth for
the invader.
Photo above : CKD factory in Visokany

5. Clandestine radios
As soon as national television and radios cease to
function, dozens of free radios start emitting
information and instructions. A program does not
exceed 7 minutes, and is then handed over to
another radio.
The Soviets transport, by rail, materiel to jam these
free radios, but railroad workers divert the trains. On
26th August, part of the wagons arrive in GDR,
another in Poland…

6. Demoralisation of occupation soldiers
The Czechoslovakian people enters into a
nonviolent resistance it discovers spontaneously in
action :
standing in front of tanks, they obstruct their
passage and call out to soviet soldiers, refuse to
give them water; they paint slogans and graffiti
carrying messages such as “We survived Hitler,
we will survive Brejnev” or “You can imprison a
whole people”, etc.
Irony gains great importance in direct actions of
demoralisation.
- Photo above : Face to face with tanks
- Photo below : Irony on the restricted passage signpost.

7. …very efficient…
The soldiers of the Warsaw Pact desert, collectively refuse to obey :
3 demoralised regiments are repatriated to their barracks abroad.
The Soviets are neutralised and totally incapable of installing docile
collaborators.
“The occupant, incapable of giving out orders or ensuring the population
respects the slightest instruction, has become grotesque. Terrifying by the
power of arms, he is nonetheless morally crushed.”
Le Monde, editorial, 28th August 1968.
Photos : - Poster symbolising “The soviets, liberators in 1945; oppressors in 1968v
- ”For your freedom and ours” banner

8. …but crushed by the capitulation of its leaders
On 23rd August, President Svoboda and other leaders,
Dubcek, Cernik and Smrkovsky, leave Prague for Moscow
in an attempt to negotiate with the oppressor, but
misreading the resistance taking place at the same time in
the country, and sign the Moscow Agreements on 26th
August. These will crush the resistance.
The speech of capitulation spoken by Dubcek on 27th
August, leave the population appalled and in distress. His
silences and sobs were cut by soviet censorship.
The submission of its leaders led to the population’s
demobilisation and marked the beginning of “normalisation”.
Photos : - Josef Smrkowsky and Ludvik Svoboda
- Alexander Dubcek

9. A lesson for the future
“The form of nonviolent resistance spontaneously
adopted by the population could have continued
for much longer and led to a very different
situation, if its leaders hadn’t voluntarily ended it
with collaboration, synonym of capitulation”.
Michel Tatu, Le Monde, 21st August 1973

10. Jan Palach, a student we will talk about again in 1989…
On 16th January 1969, a student, Jan Palach, immolated
himself on Wenceslas Square as protest against his
country’s invasion. He died 3 days later.
Two other young Czechs imitated his gesture on 29th
February and 9th April.
Photos : - Jan Palach
- Statue by Andreas Back on the Dijon Science-Po
Campus commemorating Jan Palach.
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