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 min. 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 way of the advance 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 bottles of combustible mixture, 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 the UN General Assembly meeting, 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. But this tactic is different: 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 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 command, 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 who shot 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.

Operation Danube. That is what the documents called the strategic exercise of the troops of the five member countries of the Warsaw Pact, the purpose of which was "to protect the socialist gains in Czechoslovakia." Under Gorbachev, the introduction of troops into Czechoslovakia on August 21, 1968 was written as “the suppression of the construction of socialism with a human face”, and after the collapse of the USSR, these events are described only in a sharply condemning and rude form, the foreign policy of the USSR is considered aggressive, Soviet soldiers are called “occupiers” etc…

Today's publicists do not want to reckon with the fact that all events in the world took place, and are taking place, in a specific international or domestic situation at a given period of time, and they judge the past by today's standards. Question: could the leadership of the countries of the socialist camp and, first of all, the Soviet Union at that time make a different decision?

International environment

At that time in Europe there were two worlds, opposite in ideologies - socialist and capitalist. Two economic organizations - the so-called Common Market in the West and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance in the East.

There were two opposing military blocs - NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Now they only remember that in 1968 in the GDR there was a Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, in Poland - the Northern Group of Soviet Forces and in Hungary - the Southern Group of Forces.

But for some reason they do not remember that the troops of the United States, Great Britain, and Belgium were stationed on the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany and that the army corps of the Netherlands and France were ready to advance if necessary. Both military groups were in a state of full combat readiness.

Each side defended its own interests and, observing appearances, tried by any means to weaken the other.

Socio-political situation in Czechoslovakia

At the January 1968 Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, the mistakes and shortcomings of the country's leadership were subjected to fair criticism, and a decision was made on the need for changes in the management of the state's economy.

Alexander Dubcek was elected General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, who led the reforms, later called "the construction of socialism with a human face." The country's top leadership has changed (except for President L. Svoboda), and with it, domestic and foreign policy began to change.

Using the criticism of the leadership voiced at the Plenum, the opposition political forces, speculating on the demands of the “expansion” of democracy, began to discredit the Communist Party, power structures, state security agencies and socialism as a whole. Covert preparations for a change in the state system began.

In the media, on behalf of the people, they demanded: the abolition of the leadership of the party's economic and political life, the declaration of the CPC as a criminal organization, a ban on its activities, the dissolution of the state security agencies and the People's Militia. (People's militia - the name of the armed party workers' detachments that have been preserved since 1948, reporting directly to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.)

Various "clubs" ("Club 231", "Club of Active Non-Party People") and other organizations arose throughout the country, the main goal and task of which was to denigrate the country's history after 1945, rally the opposition, and conduct anti-constitutional propaganda.

By mid-1968, the Ministry of Internal Affairs received about 70 applications for the registration of new organizations and associations. So, "Club 231" (On the basis of Article 231 of the Law on the Protection of the Constitution, anti-state and anti-constitutional activities were punished) was established in Prague on March 31, 1968, although it did not have permission from the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The club united over 40 thousand people, among whom were former criminals and state criminals. As the Rude Pravo newspaper noted, among the members of the club were former Nazis, SS men, Henlein, ministers of the puppet "Slovak state", representatives of the reactionary clergy.

At one of the meetings, the general secretary of the club, Yaroslav Brodsky, said: “The best communist is a dead communist, and if he is still alive, then he should pull out his legs.” At enterprises and in various organizations, branches of the club were created, which were called "Societies for the Protection of the Word and the Press."

One of the most striking anti-constitutional materials can be considered the appeal of the underground organization "Revolutionary Committee of the Democratic Party of Slovakia", distributed in June in organizations and enterprises in the city of Svit.

Demands were put forward in it: to dissolve the collective farms and cooperatives, to distribute land to the peasants, to hold elections under the control of England, the USA, Italy and France, to stop criticism of Western states in the press, and to focus it on the USSR, to allow the legal activities of the political parties that existed in bourgeois Czechoslovakia, to annex already in 1968 "Transcarpathian Rus" to Czechoslovakia. The appeal ended with the call: "Death to the Communist Party!"

The French weekly Express on May 6 cited Antonin Lima, editor of the foreign department of the newspaper Literarni Listy: "Today in Czechoslovakia there is a question of taking power." Underground activities were revived by the Social Democratic Party and the Labor Party.

In order to create some kind of counterbalance to the Warsaw Pact, the idea of ​​creating the Little Entente was revived as a regional bloc of socialist and capitalist states and a buffer between the great powers.

Publications on this topic were picked up by the Western press. Noteworthy was the remark of the analyst of the French newspaper "Figaro": "The geographical position of Czechoslovakia can turn it both into a bolt of the Warsaw Pact, the pact, and into a gap that opens the entire military system of the Eastern bloc."

In May, a group of employees of the Prague Military-Political Academy published "Remarks on the development of the Program of Action of the Czechoslovak People's Army." The authors proposed "withdrawal of Czechoslovakia from the Warsaw Pact or, possibly, joint actions of Czechoslovakia with other socialist countries to eliminate the Warsaw Pact as a whole and replace it with a system of bilateral relations." As an option, there was a proposal to take a position of "consistent neutrality" in foreign policy.

Serious attacks from the position of "sound economic calculation" were also made against the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance.

On June 14, the Czechoslovak opposition invited the famous "Sovietologist" Zbigniew Brzezinski to give lectures in Prague, in which he outlined his strategy of "liberalization", called for the destruction of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, as well as the elimination of the police and state security. According to him, he fully "supported the interesting Czechoslovak experiment."

A direct undermining of the national interests of Czechoslovakia were calls for "rapprochement" with the FRG, which were heard not only in the media, but also in the speeches of some of the country's leaders.

The matter was not limited to words.

The western borders of Czechoslovakia were opened, border barriers and fortifications began to be liquidated. At the direction of the Minister of State Security Pavel, spies of Western countries identified by counterintelligence were not detained, but were given the opportunity to leave. (In 1969, Pavel was put on trial and shot by the Czechoslovak authorities.)

Activities of foreign authorities, military and media

During this period, consultative meetings of representatives of NATO countries were held, at which possible measures were studied to bring Czechoslovakia out of the socialist camp. The United States expressed its readiness to influence Czechoslovakia on the issue of obtaining a loan from the capitalist countries, using the interest of Czechoslovakia in returning its gold reserves.

In 1968, the Vatican stepped up its activities in Czechoslovakia. Its leadership recommended directing the activities of the Catholic Church towards merging with the movement for "independence" and "liberalization", as well as taking on the role of "support and freedom in the countries of Eastern Europe", concentrating on Czechoslovakia, Poland and the GDR.

The population of Czechoslovakia was persistently instilled with the idea that there was no danger of revanchism from the FRG, that one could think about the return of the Sudeten Germans to the country. The newspaper "General Anzeiger" (FRG) wrote: "The Sudeten Germans will expect from Czechoslovakia, liberated from communism, a return to the Munich Agreement, according to which the Sudetenland was ceded to Germany in the autumn of 1938."

In the program of the National Democratic Party of Germany, one of the points read: "The Sudetenland must again become German, because they were acquired by Nazi Germany within the framework of the Munich Treaty, which is an effective international agreement." This program was actively supported by the "Fellowship of the Sudeten Germans" and the neo-fascist organization "Vitikobund".

And the editor of the Czech trade union newspaper Prace, Irzicek, told German television: “About 150,000 Germans live in our country. One can hope that the remaining 100-200 thousand could return to their homeland a little later.” Of course, no one anywhere remembered the persecution of the Czechs by the Sudeten Germans.

In the correspondence of the ADN agency, it was reported that Bundeswehr officers were repeatedly sent to Czechoslovakia for reconnaissance purposes. This applied, first of all, to the officers of the 2nd Army Corps, whose formations were stationed near the border of Czechoslovakia.

Later it became known that in preparation for the Black Lion exercise planned for autumn, the entire command staff of the 2nd Corps, up to and including the battalion commander, visited Czechoslovakia as tourists and traveled along the probable routes of movement of their units.

With the start of the “exercises”, it was planned to take the territories torn away by Germany in 1938 in a short throw and put the international community before the fact. The calculation was based on the fact that if the USSR and the USA did not begin to fight because of the Arab territories occupied by Israel in 1967, they will not now either.

In order to create a situation in Czechoslovakia that would facilitate the withdrawal of Czechoslovakia from the Warsaw Pact, the NATO Council developed the Zephyr program.

An article in the Finnish newspaper Päivän sanomat dated September 6, 1968 reported that in the region of Regensburg (Germany) “an agency has been operating and continues to function to monitor Czechoslovak events. In July, a special Observation and Control Center began to operate, which American officers call the "Strike Group Headquarters." It has more than 300 employees, including intelligence officers and political advisers.

The center reported information about the situation in Czechoslovakia to NATO headquarters three times a day. The remark of a representative of the NATO headquarters is interesting: “Although due to the entry of Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia and the conclusion of the Moscow Agreement, the special center did not solve the tasks assigned to it, its activities still were and continue to be valuable experience for the future.”

Choice

Thus, by the spring of 1968, the countries of the socialist camp faced a choice:
- allow opposition forces to push Czechoslovakia off the socialist path;
- to open the road to the East for a potential enemy, endangering not only the groupings of the Warsaw Pact, but also the results of the Second World War;

OR
- by the forces of the Commonwealth countries to protect the socialist system in Czechoslovakia and to assist in the development of its economy;
- once and for all put an end to the Munich policy, discarding all the claims of Hitler's revanchist heirs;
- put a barrier in front of the new "Drang nah osten", showing the whole world that no one will be able to redraw the post-war borders established as a result of the struggle of many peoples against fascism.

Based on the current situation, at the end of July 1968, the second was chosen. However, if the leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia had not shown such weakness and tolerance towards the enemies of the ruling party and the existing state system, nothing like this would have happened.

The military-political leadership of the USSR and other countries of the Warsaw Pact closely followed the events in Czechoslovakia and tried to bring their assessment to the authorities of Czechoslovakia. Meetings of the top leadership of the Warsaw Pact countries were held in Prague, Dresden, Warsaw, Cierna nad Tisou. During the meetings, the current situation was discussed, recommendations were made to the Czech leadership, but to no avail.

In the last days of July, at a meeting in Cierna nad Tisou, A. Dubcek was told that in case of refusal to carry out the recommended measures, the troops of the socialist countries would enter Czechoslovakia. Dubcek not only did not take any measures, but also did not bring this warning to the members of the Central Committee and the government of the country.

From a military point of view, there could be no other solution. The rejection of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, and even more so the entire country from the Warsaw Pact and its alliance with NATO, put the groupings of the Commonwealth troops in the GDR, Poland and Hungary under flank attack. The potential enemy received a direct exit to the border of the Soviet Union.

From the memoirs of the commander of the Alpha group of the KGB of the USSR, Hero of the Soviet Union, retired major general Zaitsev Gennady Nikolaevich (in 1968 - the head of the group of the 7th Directorate of the KGB of the USSR during Operation Danube):

« At that time, the situation in Czechoslovakia looked as follows.

… Not even the “progressives” from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia began to come to the fore, but non-party forces — members of various “social” and “political” clubs, which were distinguished by their orientation towards the West and hatred of the Russians. June marked the beginning of a new phase of the aggravation of the situation in Czechoslovakia and the leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and in mid-August the Dub-Chek team completely lost control over the situation in the country.

It is also noteworthy that some leaders of the "Prague Spring" believed that the sympathies of the West would certainly materialize in the form of a tough anti-Soviet position of the United States in the event of forceful actions by the Soviet Union.».

The task was set: a group led by G.N. Zaitsev to enter the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Czechoslovakia and take control of it. Interior Minister I. Pavel managed to escape the day before. According to numerous testimonies, I. Pavel, as the Prague Spring developed, gradually liquidated the state security agencies, getting rid of the communist cadres and supporters of Moscow.

He threatened his employees, who were trying to neutralize the so-called "progressives" (the Club of Non-Party Activists and the K-231 organization), with reprisals. Prior to the government's decision, they were ordered to immediately stop jamming foreign transmissions and begin dismantling equipment.

... The documents contained information that the Minister of Internal Affairs I. Pavel and the head of the department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, General Prkhlik, “prepared a project for the creation of a leading Center that should take all state power into its own hands during political tensions in the country.” It also spoke about the implementation of "preventive security measures against the actions of conservative forces, including the creation of labor camps."

In other words, a covert, but quite real preparation was carried out in the country for the creation of concentration camps, where all forces opposed to the regime “with a human face” were to be hidden ... And if we add to this the titanic efforts of some foreign special services and agents of influence of the West, who intended to tear off at any cost Czechoslovakia from the Eastern bloc, the overall picture of events did not look as unambiguous as they are trying to convince us of this.

... How did you manage to capture a by no means small European country in the shortest possible time and with minimal losses? A significant role in this course of events was played by the neutral position of the Czechoslovak army (and this is about 200 thousand people armed at that time with modern military equipment). I want to emphasize that General Martin Dzur played a key role in that very difficult situation. But the main reason for the small number of victims was the behavior of Soviet soldiers, who showed amazing restraint in Czechoslovakia.

... According to Czech historians, about a hundred people died during the introduction of troops, about a thousand were wounded and injured.

… I am convinced that at that time there was simply no other way out of the crisis. In my opinion, the results of the Prague Spring are very instructive. If not for the harsh actions of the USSR and its allies, then the Czech leadership, having instantly passed the stage of "socialism with a human face", would have found itself in the arms of the West. The Warsaw bloc would have lost a strategically important state in the center of Europe, NATO would have found itself at the borders of the USSR.

Let's be completely honest: the operation in Czechoslovakia gave peace to two generations of Soviet children. Or not? After all, by "letting go" of Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union would inevitably face the effect of a house of cards. Unrest would break out in Poland and Hungary. Then it would be the turn of the Baltic states, and after it the Transcaucasus.”

Start

On the night of August 21, the troops of five countries of the Warsaw Pact entered the territory of Czechoslovakia, and troops landed at the Prague airfield. The troops were ordered not to open fire until they were under fire. The columns were moving at high speeds, stopped cars were pushed off the roadway so as not to interfere with traffic.

By morning, all the advanced military units of the Commonwealth countries had reached the assigned areas. Czechoslovak troops were ordered not to leave the barracks. Their military camps were blocked, batteries were removed from armored vehicles, fuel was drained from tractors.

Interestingly, in early August, representatives of the People's Militia met with their commander A. Dubcek and presented an ultimatum: either he changes the policy of the leadership, or on August 22, the People's Militia will take control of all important objects, take power into their own hands, and remove him from his post General Secretary and demand the convening of a party congress. Dubcek listened to them, but did not give any concrete answer.

Most importantly, he did not tell the commanders of the party's armed detachments subordinate to him personally about the ultimatum he received in Cierna nad Tisou from the leaders of the GDR, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and the USSR. Apparently, he was counting on something. And when the Warsaw Pact troops entered Czechoslovakia on August 21, the leadership of the detachments and ordinary communists considered this an insult.

They believed that they could cope with the situation in the country themselves, without the introduction of foreign troops. Life has shown that then they overestimated their strength. Only after the defeat of the opposition in August 1969 did the opponents of the regime go underground for a long time.

The attitude of the local population

At first, the attitude of the local population towards the military personnel of the Commonwealth countries was bad. Intoxicated by hostile propaganda, duplicitous behavior of the first persons of the state, lack of information about the true reasons for the introduction of troops, and sometimes intimidated by local oppositionists, people not only looked askance at foreign soldiers.

Stones were thrown at the cars, at night the places where the troops were located were fired from small arms. Signs and signs were demolished on the roads, and the walls of houses were painted with slogans such as "Occupiers, go home!", "Shoot the occupier!" etc.

Sometimes local residents secretly came to military units and asked why the Soviet troops had come. And it would be fine, only Russians came, otherwise they brought “Caucasians” with “narrow-eyed” with them. In the center of Europe (!) people were surprised that the Soviet army was multinational.

The actions of the opposition forces

The entry of allied troops showed the forces of the Czech opposition and their foreign inspirers that the hopes of seizing power collapsed. However, they decided not to give up, but called for armed resistance. In addition to shelling cars, helicopters and locations of allied troops, terrorist acts began against Czech workers of party organs and intelligence officers.

The evening edition of the English newspaper The Sunday Times of August 27 published an interview with one of the leaders of the underground. He said that by August "the underground numbered about 40,000 people armed with automatic weapons." A significant part of the weapons was secretly supplied from the West, primarily from the FRG. However, they were unable to use it.

In the very first days after the entry of the allied troops, in cooperation with the Czech security agencies, several thousand automatic weapons, hundreds of machine guns and grenade launchers were seized from many hiding places and cellars. Even mortars were found.

So, even in the Prague House of Journalists, which was run by extremely opposition figures, 13 machine guns, 81 machine guns and 150 boxes of ammunition were found. At the beginning of 1969, a ready-made concentration camp was discovered in the Tatra Mountains. Who built it and for whom, at that time was unknown.

Information-psychological warfare

Another evidence of the existence of organized anti-constitutional forces in Czechoslovakia is the fact that by 8 o'clock on August 21, underground radio stations began to operate in all regions of the country, on some days up to 30-35 units.

They used not only radio stations pre-installed on cars, trains and in secret shelters, but also equipment captured in the MPVO, in branches of the Union for Cooperation with the Army (such as DOSAAF in the USSR), in large agricultural enterprises.

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. Install the antenna attached to the station and work.

Radio stations, as well as four channels of underground television, disseminated false information, rumors, calls for the destruction of allied troops, sabotage, and sabotage. They also transmitted encrypted information and code signals to the underground forces.

The radio transmitters of the West German 701st psychological warfare battalion fit well into this "choir".

At first, Soviet radio intelligence officers were surprised that a number of anti-government stations were taking direction in the west, but on September 8 their guess was confirmed by the Stern magazine (Germany).

The magazine reported that on August 23, the Literarni Listy newspaper, followed by the underground radio, reported that “Allied troops fired on the children's hospital on Charles Square. Broken windows, ceilings, expensive medical equipment…” A German television reporter rushed to the area, but the hospital building was unscathed.

According to the Stern magazine, "this false information was transmitted not from Czech, but from West German territory." The magazine noted that the events of these days "provided an ideal opportunity for the practical training of the 701st Battalion."

If the first leaflets with a message about the introduction of allied troops were issued by official government or party bodies and printing houses, then there were no imprints on subsequent ones. In many cases, the texts and appeals in different parts of the country were the same.

A change of scenery

Slowly, but the situation changed.

The Central Group of Forces was formed, the Soviet military units began to settle in the Czech military towns liberated for them, where the chimneys were littered with bricks, the sewers were clogged, and the windows were broken. In April 1969, A. Dubcek was replaced by G. Husak, the leadership of the country changed.

Emergency laws were adopted, according to which, in particular, a fist shown to a Russian “cost” up to three months in prison, and a provoked fight with Russians cost six. At the end of 1969, military personnel were allowed to bring their families to the garrisons where construction battalions built housing. Construction of housing for families continued until 1972.

So, what are these "occupiers" who sacrificed their lives so that civilians would not die, would not respond with a shot to the most brazen provocations, would save people unknown to them from reprisal? Who lived in hangars and warehouses, and the beds, even in officers' and women's (for medical staff, typists, waitresses) dormitories, stood in two tiers? Who preferred to act not as soldiers, but as agitators, explaining to the population the situation and their tasks?

Conclusion

The entry of troops of the Warsaw Pact countries into Czechoslovakia was a forced measure aimed at preserving the unity of the countries of the socialist camp, as well as at preventing the entry of NATO troops to the borders of the USSR.

Soviet soldiers were not occupiers and did not behave like invaders. No matter how pathetic it sounds, but in August 1968 they defended their country on the front lines of the socialist camp. The tasks assigned to the army were completed with minimal losses.

No matter what modern political scientists say, but in that situation the government of the USSR and other countries of the socialist camp made a decision adequate to the current situation. Even the current generation of Czechs should be grateful to the Soviet army for the fact that the Sudetes remained part of Czechoslovakia and their state exists within modern borders.

"Notes in the Field"

But here is what is interesting and raises questions.

The soldiers who were the first (!) to be called “Internationalist Warriors” are not even recognized as such in Russia, although by Order of the Minister of Defense Marshal of the Soviet Union A. Grechko No. 242 of 10/17/1968 they were thanked for fulfilling their international duty.

By order of the Minister of Defense of the USSR No. 220 of 07/05/1990 "The list of states, cities, territories and periods of hostilities with the participation of citizens of the Russian Federation" was supplemented by the Republic of Cuba.

For unknown reasons, Czechoslovakia (the only one!) was not included in the list, and, as a result, the relevant documents were not handed over to former servicemen who performed their international duty in this country.

Questions were repeatedly discussed at various levels whether or not to recognize the participants in the operation as internationalist soldiers and combat veterans.

A group of scientists, after analyzing the materials available for study and after meetings with direct participants in the Czechoslovak events, stated that “in 1968, a superbly planned and impeccably implemented military operation was carried out in Czechoslovakia, during which military operations were conducted. Both from the point of view of military science, and the real situation in the use of forces and means.

And the soldiers and officers who fulfilled their duty during the operation "Danube" have every right to be called soldiers-internationalists and fall under the category of "combatant".

However, the Russian Ministry of Defense does not recognize them as such, and answers the questions and appeals of regional organizations of the participants in the Danube operation that there were “only clashes”, and they were thanked for “fulfilling their international duty”, and not for participating in hostilities.

To date, the youngest participants in the operation "Danube" are already 64 years old, and every year their ranks are becoming rarer. The last, according to the author of the article, appeal only by the Rostov organization of the participants in the operation "Danube" was sent to the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation in January of this year. Let's wait for the new minister to respond.

As a sign of protest against the actions of an illegal and stupid member of the "government" of the Russian Federation, I am posting this material. In order for history to be known and protected from rewriting and distortion.

The entry of troops into Czechoslovakia in 1968 did not allow the West to carry out a coup d'état in Czechoslovakia using the technology of making “velvet” revolutions and kept life in peace and harmony for more than 20 years for all the peoples of the countries of the Warsaw Pact.

A political crisis in Czechoslovakia, as in other countries of the socialist bloc, was bound to arise sooner or later after N. S. Khrushchev came to power in the USSR in 1953.

Khrushchev accused I. V. Stalin, and in fact the socialist socio-political system, of organizing mass repressions, as a result of which millions of innocent people allegedly suffered. In my opinion, Khrushchev's report at the 20th Congress in 1956 took place thanks to the grandiose victory of the Western intelligence services and their 5th column inside the USSR.

It doesn't matter what motivated Khrushchev when he launched a policy of de-Stalinization in the country. It is important that the accusation of the socialist socio-political system of organizing mass repressions deprived the legitimacy of the Soviet government. The geopolitical opponents of Russia, the USSR, received weapons with which they could crush the impregnable fortress - the USSR and other countries of the socialist camp.

By 1968, for 12 years, schools and institutes had been studying works that delegitimized Soviet power. All these 12 years, the West has been preparing the Czechoslovak society for the rejection of socialism and friendship with the USSR.

The political crisis in Czechoslovakia was connected not only with the policy of N. S. Khrushchev, which reduced the number of citizens who were ready to defend the socialist system and friendly relations with the Soviet Union, but also with the national hatred between Czechs and Slovaks fomented by anti-Soviet forces. The factor that Czechoslovakia did not fight against the Soviet Union and did not feel guilty before our country also played a significant role.

But for the sake of truth, it must be said that no less Russian blood was shed during the war through the fault of Czechoslovakia than through the fault of Hungary and Romania, whose armies, together with Germany, attacked the USSR in 1941. From 1938 and throughout the war, Czechoslovakia supplied the German troops with a huge amount of weapons, from which they killed Soviet soldiers and civilians in our country.

Gottwald, who built a prosperous socialist Czechoslovakia after the war, died the same year as Stalin in 1953. The new presidents of Czechoslovakia - A. Zapototsky, and since 1957 A. Novotny have become like N. S. Khrushchev. They essentially destroyed the country. A. Novotny was a copy of N. S. Khrushchev and with his ill-conceived reforms caused significant damage to the national economy, which also led to a decrease in the standard of living of the people. All these factors contributed to the emergence of anti-socialist and anti-Russian sentiments in society.

On January 5, 1968, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia elected the Slovak A. Dubcek instead of Novotny to the post of First Secretary of the Central Committee, but did not remove Novotny from the post of president of the country. Over time, order was restored, and L. Svoboda became the president of Czechoslovakia.

Liberals call the reign of A. Dubcek "Prague Spring". A. Dubcek immediately fell under the influence of people who, under the guise of democratization, began to prepare the country for surrender to the West. Under the guise of building "socialism with a human face", the destruction of the Czechoslovak socialist state began. By the way, socialism has always been with a human face, but capitalism, liberalism has always been with the face of the Nazis and US liberals like them, who killed the children of Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Syria and other countries that the US considered insufficient democratic. The United States and its citizens did not spare.

After the January 1968 Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, a frantic criticism of the situation in the country began. Using the criticism of the leadership voiced at the Plenum, the opposition political forces, calling for the "expansion" of democracy, began to discredit the Communist Party, power structures, state security agencies and socialism as a whole. Covert preparations for a change in the state system began.

In the media, on behalf of the people, they demanded to abolish the management of the party's economic and political life, to declare the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia a criminal organization, to ban its activities, to dissolve the state security agencies and the People's Militia. Various "clubs" ("Club 231", "Club of Active Non-Party People") and other organizations arose throughout the country, the main goal and task of which was to denigrate the history of the country after 1945, rally the opposition, and conduct anti-constitutional propaganda.

By mid-1968, the Ministry of Internal Affairs received about 70 applications for the registration of new organizations and associations. So, "Club 231" was established in Prague on March 31, 1968, although it did not have permission from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The club united over 40 thousand people, among whom were former criminals and state criminals. As the Rude Pravo newspaper noted, among the members of the club were former Nazis, SS men, Henlein, ministers of the puppet "Slovak state", representatives of the reactionary clergy.

The general secretary of the club, Yaroslav Brodsky, said at one of the meetings: "The best communist is a dead communist, and if he is still alive, then he should pull out his legs." At enterprises and in various organizations, branches of the club were created, which were called "Societies for the Protection of the Word and the Press." The organization "Revolutionary Committee of the Democratic Party of Slovakia" called for holding elections under the control of England, the USA, Italy and France, ending criticism of Western states in the press and focusing it on the USSR.

A group of employees of the Prague Military-Political Academy proposed the withdrawal of Czechoslovakia from the Warsaw Pact and called on other socialist countries to eliminate the Warsaw Pact. In this regard, the French newspaper Le Figaro wrote: "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." All these mass media, clubs and individuals speaking on behalf of the people also opposed the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance.

On June 14, the Czechoslovak opposition invited the famous American "Sovietologist" Zbigniew Brzezinski to speak in Prague with lectures in which he outlined his strategy of "liberalization", called for the destruction of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, as well as the elimination of the police and state security. According to him, he fully "supported the interesting Czechoslovak experiment."

It should be noted that Z. Brzezinski and many oppositionists were not interested in the fate and national interests of Czechoslovakia. In particular, they were ready to give up lands to Czechoslovakia for the sake of "rapprochement" with the FRG.

The western borders of Czechoslovakia were opened, border barriers and fortifications began to be liquidated. At the direction of the Minister of State Security Pavel, spies of Western countries identified by counterintelligence were not detained, but were given the opportunity to leave.

The population of Czechoslovakia was persistently instilled with the idea that there was no danger of revanchism from the FRG, that one could think about the return of the Sudeten Germans to the country. The newspaper "General Anzeiger" (FRG) wrote: "The Sudeten Germans will expect from Czechoslovakia, liberated from communism, a return to the Munich Agreement, according to which the Sudetenland was ceded to Germany in the autumn of 1938." Jiricek, editor of the Czech trade union newspaper Prace, told German television: “About 150,000 Germans live in our country. One can hope that the remaining 100-200 thousand could return to their homeland a little later.” Probably, Western money helped him forget about how the Sudeten Germans persecuted the Czechs. And the FRG was ready to seize these lands of Czechoslovakia again.

In 1968, consultative meetings were held between representatives of the NATO countries, at which possible measures were studied to bring Czechoslovakia out of the socialist camp. The Vatican stepped up its activities in Czechoslovakia. Its leadership recommended directing the activities of the Catholic Church towards merging with the movement for "independence" and "liberalization", as well as taking on the role of "support and freedom in the countries of Eastern Europe", concentrating on Czechoslovakia, Poland and the GDR. In order to create a situation in Czechoslovakia that would facilitate the withdrawal of Czechoslovakia from the Warsaw Pact, the NATO Council developed the Zephyr program. In July, a special Observation and Control Center began to operate, which American officers called the "Strike Group Headquarters." It consisted of more than 300 employees, including intelligence officers and political advisers.

The center reported information about the situation in Czechoslovakia to NATO headquarters three times a day. The remark of the representative of the NATO headquarters is interesting: “Although due to the entry of the Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia and the conclusion of the Moscow Agreement, the special center did not solve the tasks assigned to it, its activity was and continues to be a valuable experience for the future.” This experience was used during the destruction of the USSR.

The military-political leadership of the USSR and other countries of the Warsaw Pact closely followed the events in Czechoslovakia and tried to bring their assessment to the authorities of Czechoslovakia. Meetings of the top leadership of the Warsaw Pact countries were held in Prague, Dresden, Warsaw, Cierna nad Tisou. In the last days of July, at a meeting in Cierna nad Tisou, A. Dubcek was told that in case of refusal to carry out the recommended measures, the troops of the socialist countries would enter Czechoslovakia. Dubcek not only did not take any measures, but also did not bring this warning to the members of the Central Committee and the government of the country, which, when the troops were brought in, initially aroused the indignation of the Czechoslovak communists because they were not informed of the decision to send troops.

From a military point of view, there could be no other solution. The rejection of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, and even more so the entire country from the Warsaw Pact and the alliance of Czechoslovakia with NATO, put the groupings of the Commonwealth troops in the GDR, Poland and Hungary under flank attack. The potential enemy received a direct exit to the border of the Soviet Union. The leaders of the Warsaw Pact countries were well aware that the events in Czechoslovakia were NATO's advance to the East. On the night of August 21, 1968, the troops of the USSR, Bulgaria, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and Poland entered the territory of Czechoslovakia. Neither the troops of Czechoslovakia, nor the troops of NATO, nor units of Western intelligence services openly dared to oppose such a force.

Troopers landed at the Prague airfield. The troops were ordered not to open fire until they were under fire. The columns were moving at high speeds, stopped cars were pushed off the roadway so as not to interfere with traffic. By morning, all the advanced military units of the Commonwealth countries had reached the assigned areas. Czechoslovak troops remained in the barracks, their military camps were blocked, batteries were removed from armored vehicles, fuel was drained from tractors.

On April 17, 1969, instead of Dubcek, G. Husak was elected head of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, who at one time was the head of the Communist Party of Slovakia. The actions of the Warsaw Pact troops in Czechoslovakia actually showed NATO the highest level of combat training and technical equipment of the troops of the countries of the agreement.

The paratroopers captured the Czechoslovak airfields in a few minutes and began to receive weapons and equipment, which then began to move towards Prague. On the move, the guards were disarmed and the building of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was seized, and the entire leadership of Czechoslovakia was taken to the airfield in armored personnel carriers and sent first to the headquarters of the Northern Group of Forces, and then to Moscow.

The tankers clearly fulfilled the task, which in the shortest possible time took up positions according to the operation plan. Several thousand T-54 and T-55 tanks entered Czechoslovakia, and each crew knew their place on the territory of the tank unit.

In Czechoslovakia, the soldiers' most impressive and tragic feat was accomplished on a mountain road by a tank crew from the 1st Guards Tank Army, who deliberately sent their tank into the abyss in order to avoid running into children set there by picketers. Those who prepared this heinous provocation were sure of the death of children and then they would shout to the whole world about the crime of Soviet tankers. But the provocation failed. At the cost of their lives, Soviet tankers saved the lives of Czechoslovak children and the honor of the Soviet Army. This illustrative example shows the difference between the people of the liberal West, who prepared the death of children, and the people of the socialist Soviet Union, who saved the children.

The aviation of the Warsaw Pact countries, including special-purpose aviation, also distinguished itself in Czechoslovakia. Tu-16 jammers of the 226th electronic warfare regiment, which took off from the Stryi airfield in Ukraine, successfully suppressed radio and radar stations in Czechoslovakia, demonstrating the great importance of electronic warfare in modern warfare.

The West initially understood that it would not be allowed to carry out a coup of the Warsaw Pact country in Czechoslovakia, but it carried out the Cold War against the USSR with “hot spots”. In practice, Soviet troops did not conduct combat operations on the territory of Czechoslovakia. The Americans at that time waged a war in Vietnam, burning thousands of Vietnamese villages with napalm and destroying dozens of cities to the ground. They poured blood over the long-suffering land of Vietnam. But this did not prevent them from broadcasting on all radio and television channels to the USSR, the countries of Eastern Europe and the whole world that the USSR was an aggressor country.

The topic of Czechoslovakia was discussed by the Western media even several years after 1968. To give this topic an ominous color, they prepared a suicide bomber, as terrorists prepare suicide bombers today, did not spare the Czechoslovak student Jan Palach and set fire to him, doused with gasoline, in the center of Prague, exposing this as an act of self-immolation in protest against the entry of troops of the Warsaw Pact countries.

The entry of troops into Czechoslovakia was made in order to protect the security of the Warsaw Pact countries from NATO troops. But the security of the United States was not threatened by either Korea or Vietnam, located thousands of kilometers from the US border. But America waged large-scale military operations against them, killing hundreds of thousands of people of these sovereign states. But the world community prefers to remain silent about this. The Sudetenland remained part of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, their state exists within modern borders, and the nation has avoided the huge number of human casualties that always happen during a coup d'état.

"Despite the fact that there were no military operations during the entry of the troops of the Warsaw Pact countries, there were losses. Thus, during the redeployment and deployment of Soviet troops, as a result of the actions of hostile persons, 11 military personnel, including one officer, were killed; 87 Soviet soldiers were wounded and injured military personnel, including officers 19. In addition, 87 people died in catastrophes, accidents, as a result of other incidents, and also died of diseases.
In the reports and reports of that time, one can read the following lines: "The crew of a tank of 64 small infantry regiments of 55 small motor rifle divisions (foreman of extra-long service Yu.I. Andreev, junior sergeant E.N. 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. "
The rigid "do not shoot" policy put the Soviet military in the most disadvantageous position. Confident in complete impunity, the "young democrats" threw stones and Molotov cocktails at Soviet soldiers, insulted them and spat in their faces.
Standing on guard at the monument to Soviet soldiers-liberators, Yuri Zemkov, someone from the crowd of people eager to desecrate the monument to those who died in 1945 hit him in the chest with a triangular bayonet. His comrades threw up their machine guns, but, following the order, did not shoot.

As soon as the soldiers of the GDR appeared nearby, everything became calm. The Germans, without hesitation, used weapons. In our time, they prefer to remain silent about the participation of the troops of Bulgaria, Poland and the GDR in the operation. How the countries have merged in a single ecstasy of NATO and the EEC! Some have already added to the fact that the troops of the GDR did not enter Czechoslovakia. However, those who personally took part in those events recall: "The Czechs lying on the roads seriously slowed down the advance of Soviet mechanized and tank columns. Tank columns of the GDR passed without even stopping, right along those lying on the roads ...".
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"On July 22, 1968, I was drafted into the Soviet army. After some time, I was sent to the Southern Group of Forces. The training platoon in which I ended up belonged to a regiment stationed in Tekel, 30 kilometers from Budapest.
On August 20, in the evening, everyone already knew that the war would begin tomorrow. In preparation for the campaign against Czechoslovakia, large white crosses and stripes were applied to all military equipment in order to distinguish it from exactly the same Soviet-made equipment in service with the “enemy” army in the event of clashes. The commanders instructed their soldiers, set goals and tasks. The wives of officers who lived here, in the military camp, wept. Somewhere a brass band played "Farewell of the Slav". ...
A week later, a deputy commander, a major (unfortunately, I don’t remember his last name) arrived from Czechoslovakia. I was assigned to his department, to the radio workshop. Seeing me, he was amazed at my thinness and said that he would take me with him "for fattening" - the troops that entered Czechoslovakia had increased nutritional standards. The next day, early in the morning, on a medical "rafik" we set off. There were three of us - the driver, the major and me. He took with him what was supposed to be - a satchel with a standard set and an overcoat. I was given dry rations, an AKM assault rifle and three cartridge horns.
The border between the two countries was a river. We stopped near the Hungarian checkpoint and almost immediately headed over the bridge to the other side. We passed the Czechoslovak checkpoint without stopping. Behind the bridge was the Slovak city of Komarov. Here, as in all other settlements that we passed, we were met by large inscriptions, mostly in Russian. They were put on the roofs, on the fences, they were just posters. The content didn't change much. The main themes are "Russians, go home", "Invaders", "Shame!", "1938 - Hitler, 1968 - Brezhnev, Kosygin", "Russian soldier, what will you tell your mother?", "Brezhnev has gone mad", "Dubchek, Blueberry, Freedom", "Go home, Dubchek is ours"...
There was a machine gun next to me, and I thought about what I would do if some kind of situation arose. And suddenly I understand that I will shoot. Shoot someone who will threaten my life, and that it is inevitable. I don't belong to myself - since I had to put on this military uniform. I did not belong to myself in the training platoon. Did not belong then, performing outfits. And now, moving around Czechoslovakia with a submachine gun stuffed with live ammunition, all the more I do not belong to myself. I will shoot, because now I am an instrument of the state that has thrown me here. As a human being, I will shoot because I will be scared.
I looked at Czechoslovakia. Immediately, as soon as we crossed the border and found ourselves in the Slovak part of the city, I saw that, compared to impoverished Hungary, this is a rich country. This was evidenced by the decoration of houses, streets, and the clothes of passers-by. There are many cars on the roads. Skoda, Tatras, Muscovites, Volga, foreign cars. The roads are excellent, but in many places they were scarred by the tracks of past tanks.
At night, without incident, we reached the city of Brno. Our battalion was stationed at the airfield near this city. I was given a place to spend the night in Kunga.
In the morning I met my future colleagues. The mood of the milestones was good-natured. In the army, "young" is a curse. Over the past month and a half, I have tasted it to the fullest. Here I was the youngest, younger does not happen. To my surprise, I was accepted here as a person. No one insulted or belittled me. Soldiers from "other estates" normally spoke to me. Something asked, told, friendly advised. I didn't think it was possible in the army.
Service in this "war" was completely idle. We did nothing - only what is necessary to maintain life - cleaning and security. The troops were waiting to see how the political process would end. We were ordered - never to part with a machine gun and cartridges. We dined with a machine gun, went to the toilet, slept.
Our place was calm, without any excesses, about which we had heard enough then. It was said that, unlike the Soviet troops, the troops of our allies under the Warsaw Pact, who entered with us, behaved ugly - they fired too much, often without sufficient reason. I don't know how true these stories were. Of the reliable - the driver's story. Permyak, by the name of Osika - active, not quiet and not cowardly.
He was driving somewhere, there were two of him, he and the lieutenant. As luck would have it, in some small Czech town, a tire went flat. Stopped, need to change. While he was doing this, people began to approach. There were more and more of them, and now, the crowd has already surrounded the car. Something emotionally they say in their own way, shout, gesticulate. The lieutenant is trying to say something to them in Russian - "We have come to help you ...". He is not listened to, it only excites the crowd. All this time the driver changes the wheel. “I feel that my hands are shaking, and I can’t do anything about it, I’m scared, I can’t get into the hub,” he said. I put the wheel somehow, plunged into the cab, slowly drove off. The crowd all the same parted, missed. He felt that if all this had gone on longer, they would have been torn to pieces, such was the hatred of these people.
Here, someone told a similar incident with soldiers from the GDR. The first thing the Germans did when they stopped was one of the two fellow travelers took up defensive positions with a machine gun at the ready. At the slightest attempt to approach someone, shooting began, and there were no such problems.
We were told - orally and in the form of various printed materials - that we did not come here to fight. We have come to help our friends, the poor lost sheep who have gone astray. Perhaps our allies had other motives and, accordingly, other attitudes.
Once local peasants came to our commanders. Some vegetables ripened in the fields, which were closely adjacent to the troops. They ask permission to clean up. It's scary, there are soldiers with weapons around. The commanders said that it is possible, and we will help you. They called out, I answered and, together with a dozen other soldiers, went to clean up some kind of turnip. It was a political matter, we must demonstrate "good will". On this occasion, they ordered us to leave the machine gun "at home", take only the bayonet-knife, which was attached to the belt.
The peasants were good-natured and did their best to emphasize their loyalty, that "they had nothing to do with it", it was in the capital that some idiots brewed all this mess, and they should clear it up. They spoke in their own way, inserting Russian words that they knew. But there was no big problem with understanding, there were Ukrainians among us, whose language was close to the language of our interlocutors. One man said that his daughter was corresponding with a girl from the Soviet Union. " - from the memoirs of O. Khanov.
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“As a rule, none of the passers-by who occasionally came across wanted to point us in the right direction. Very often we were sent in the completely opposite direction. And once, when we drove to a suspiciously familiar square for the seventh or eighth time, the tankers got angry and began to rotate in one place , turning the new asphalt into a heap of rubble. It was necessary to see at that moment the eyes of the people standing on the square ...
On August 29, near the city of Brno, I was lucky to meet Vitya Kobylinsky. I was doubly pleased with this meeting. Firstly, because Victor was my old friend from the years of study at the technical school.
It so happened that it was on this day that Victor miraculously managed to survive. The fact is that he was catching up with his sapper battalion on a huge KrAZ, which was driven by a completely "green" skinny recruit. I must say that in that August, most of the cars were driven by not run-in, just drafted into the army, youngsters. It so happened that the units were replenished to a full combat state at the expense of reservists and young ones.
And the Czechs, in their stinking diesel Tatras and Pragues, rushed about like crazy, terrifying these boys. Many of them could not stand it and abruptly turned off the track. And it’s good if this jerk fell on a ditch or roadside. But the Czech Republic is a mountainous country. And how many guys found their death in the High Tatras...
So, Victor and his driver fell behind the unit in the Bratislava region. The car broke down. It's been two days since the problem was fixed. And they went after the battalion. They rode, asking the soldiers for directions. At the entrance to Brno, they ran into an ambush. They were fired upon with a heavy machine gun.
Vitka yelled at the boy to turn around, but the guy got scared and fell to the floor of the cab. And in the meantime, the bullets had already begun to get KRAZ. Victor had no choice but to push the trembling newbie away with and without obscenity and get behind the wheel himself. The heavily laden vehicle tore the median lawn and turned around. By belching clouds of smoke, the truck managed to save itself and its passengers. And Victor's face was still ablaze with the heat of the past battle. For a long time he could not calm down and restrain his anger at the faint-hearted driver.
On one of the endless days of the journey, a helicopter appeared above us without the traditional white stripe on its belly. Leaflets rained down on us. The column stood still. Repaired another abandoned car. There were some buildings next to the road. On the massive wooden gates, inscriptions and pieces of paper that have become familiar were full of them. Many of the inscriptions began with the word POZOR!
POZOR means "WARNING" in Czech. Not a disgrace at all. The discarded leaflets began with the same words. But it was written in Czech and the guys threw it away as soon as they picked it up. There was no need for the commander to shout. The appearance of an enemy helicopter over the column, in fact, caused considerable excitement among the officers. They even gave the command to disperse and prepare for battle.
We scattered along the sides of the road and caught the car hovering above us in the sights of machine guns. The DShK on the tank turrets came to life and stirred. Unexpectedly for everyone, the helicopter began to descend and landed in a clearing not far from our cars. Immediately, crouching down, a group of soldiers headed by the battalion commander headed towards him in short dashes. However, the helicopter crew did not show any hostility and allowed themselves to be disarmed and taken to the commander's Gazik. There they were interrogated. They convinced the leadership of the battalion that they had no hostile intentions towards us, and the leaflets were of an exclusively peaceful nature. No one called on our soldiers to go over to the side of the Czech democrats. They were released in peace.
Some Czech girls willingly made contact with our soldiers and did not show hostility. But their fate after the passage of the troops was, as a rule, sad. They were caught by local freedom fighters and, having beaten, shaved their heads. So that everyone could see what they were seen in and others were disrespectful.
And once the crew of the tank we picked up told how they unsuccessfully tried to revive their dead car for several days. They had to spend the night under armor, in a tank. So, on the second or third day of their stay near a small village, a terrified local resident ran up to them and begged them to hide their daughter, whom the local guys beat and wanted to cut her hair "to zero". He feared that they might rape her or kill her. And he entrusted her to the care of Russian soldiers. So she lived with the guys in the carriage all these days, lived with her father.
Our battalion commander was a passionate hunter. Yes, and it was tricky in Czechoslovakia not to fall ill with this ailment, having weapons in their hands and around such a quantity of fearless game. In this country there were extremely brave animals. It is possible that the hunting regulations of this country and environmental protection measures have made the game so numerous and not shy. Often hares came out of the woods and, frozen, looked at the uninvited guests. It was necessary to shout loudly or stomp your feet in order to frighten the oblique and make him run away.
In one of these desperate hunts, the battalion commander, who was shooting hares simply from his car, ran into the foresters. Naturally, the lieutenant colonel answered their demand to stop and present his hunting license with a strong Russian word. But still he had to hastily take his feet out of this place. Trouble with the local administration was not part of his plans. We, standing at the field kitchen, were surprised to see how the battalion commander's jeep flew out of the forest at high speed. As he passed us, he tossed two of the hunted animals to the cook and shouted: "Into the common cauldron! You didn't see me."
And some time later, on a small moped, a respectable, mustachioed huntsman drove up to us and asked in broken Russian if Pan Colonel had passed by in a car. We nodded happily and said that we were passing by. But they indicated the direction directly opposite to that in which our commander disappeared. Nodding in satisfaction to us, the huntsman mounted his steel horse and drove off, raising a small cloud of dust behind him. His whole appearance spoke of the inevitability and inevitability of punishment for the offender. Regardless of rank and title. Despite the difficult, practically military situation. He was the personification of order, which he probably served all his life.
A couple of hours later, our battalion commander returned. He beamed with pleasure after listening to our story about how we deceived the forester. Our dinner that day was glorious. He not only pleased us with an abundance of meat, but also with the unique aroma and taste of fresh hare.
To our surprise, in the town with the strange name Jihlava (known to all hockey fans for its Palace of Sports), we did not find the slogans and graffiti on the walls that have become familiar. The town was clean and tidy. From conversations with local gypsies, of whom a huge number live in these parts, we learned the details of this strange phenomenon. It turns out that the German commandant's office was brought into this town immediately after our units. The Germans, with their pedantry and love of order, placed paired patrols at every intersection and introduced a curfew. These guys opened fire to kill immediately after 20-00. Without warning. Everything that moved or was suspected of moving.
On the second day of his stay in the city, the commandant gathered almost the entire adult population in the city square and ordered that the city be cleared of inscriptions and other nonsense within 24 hours. Otherwise ... However, the Czechs did not need to be told what the Germans could do otherwise. They have had too bad an experience of this since 1939.
Crowds of townspeople, with buckets, rags, brushes, washing powders, solvents and other devices, worked tirelessly. And a day later the town acquired the look that surprised us so much. True, after that a delegation was equipped, which tearfully asked, and nevertheless begged the military authorities, to change the German commandant's office to a softer one - Russian. They went towards them.
On September 27, 1968, the life of the deputy commander of our battalion for the rear, Major Krivondasov, ended absurdly and tragically. With their subordinates: the chief of the fuel and lubricants, a foreman, a re-enlisted officer and the deputy commander of an economic platoon, they, having drunk a lot in honor of the anniversary, went hunting. They wanted to shoot pheasants from a motorcycle. And when, after a successful shot, they moved after the carcass, something happened that at one moment made the major's wife a widow, orphans of his two daughters and abruptly changed the fate of our battalion commander, who was forced to retire.
And here's what happened. Major Krivondasov was sitting in the back seat of the motorcycle, behind the driver. The head of fuel and lubricants was sitting in the wheelchair. It was he who turned out to be the well-aimed shooter who threw the pheasant to the ground. The motorcycle took off. At that moment, the foreman was putting the machine gun into the carriage without putting it on the safety lock. The twitching motorcycle forced the foreman's finger to involuntarily pull the trigger. There was a shot. The bullet passed through the driver's shoulder and obliquely entered the major's neck from below. And went through the head. The unfortunate body went limp and fell with all its terrible weight on the foreman who was driving the motorcycle. Then it slid off the seat and landed on the stubble. Everything was over. The sobering came instantly.
The investigation and the visiting session of the tribunal that took place later recognized the murder as unintentional and the foreman was sentenced to four years probation. He immediately signed a contract for the next four years and continued to serve. And the major went home, neatly packed in a zinc coffin. Cargo 200…" - from the memoirs of a serviceman of the 88th separate Repair and Restoration Battalion.

This is a continuation of the topic:

On the night of August 21, 1968, troops of five Warsaw Pact countries (the USSR, Bulgaria, Hungary, the GDR and Poland) entered Czechoslovakia. The operation, codenamed "Danube", aimed to stop the process of reforms taking place in Czechoslovakia, initiated by the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Alexander Dubcek - "Prague Spring".

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

Within 36 hours, the armies of the Warsaw Pact countries established complete control over Czechoslovak territory. 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.

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." In accordance with the treaty, the Central Group of Forces (CGV) was created. The headquarters of the CGV was located in the town of Milovice near Prague. 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.

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. In 1969, at the April plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Gustav Husak was elected 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 Alexander Dubcek and his entourage.

In the second half of the 1980s, the process of rethinking the Czechoslovak events of 1968 began. allied forces in Czechoslovakia was recognized as erroneous as unreasonable interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.

On December 10, 1989, after the victory of the "Velvet Revolution" (the bloodless overthrow of the communist regime as a result of street protests in November-December 1989), the President of Czechoslovakia, Gustav Husak, resigned, and a new coalition government of national accord was formed, in which the communists and the opposition received the same number of seats. A "reconstruction" of the parliament was carried out, where the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia lost its majority. On December 28-29, 1989, the reorganized parliament elected Alexander Dubcek as its chairman.