With all the anniversaries this year – end of WWI and birth of new states, the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in ’68 – it’s easy to lose sight of some. Fortunately, I’ve not been able to lose sound of this one, as Public Radio has broadcast any number of flashbacks on his life and creativity.
 
As a teenager, I listened to West Side Story repeatedly enough to really get the social justice message of the lyrics – by Stephen Sondheim with Bernstein’s score, and of course the latter was totally on board with the themes on racism, addiction, poverty, and violence. I was a marching band kid with plenty of exposure to classical and other music through piano lessons, school, and my parents’ record collection. The latter also contained the red-jacketed West Side Story, whose content was racier than they probably realized. Anyway, I really went for the mix of jazz, Latino, and modern.
 
I finally saw WSS onscreen in college, but my next major “encounter” with Bernstein came when I, still delirious over the fall of East Bloc communism, saw clips of his conducting Beethoven’s 9th at the Berlin Wall on New Year’s 1990. I’d recently come to appreciate that work, thought this paean to humanity the perfect way to celebrate the reunion of East and West, and so was enthralled with Bernstein once again.
 
Then I departed for Europe for the first time, headed to Czechoslovakia by way of Vienna, to teach English in this newly free part of Europe. As the plane began descending, CNN came on the projection screen and announced Bernstein’s death. I couldn’t help but feel their was some significance to it all, that Bernstein’s “end” and my new beginning were interconnected.
 
So here’s to you, Leonard Bernstein: may you continue to inspire those seek to unite with music – and by countless other means!

​“Normalization”
The occupation was denounced by a Communist Party congress as the tanks were prowling. But within days, Dubcek was forced to sign “Moscow Protocols” reversing much of his reforms. While he was allowed to remain in power for several months more, he and Svoboda were eventually replaced with hard-liners.
 
Then followed a period of “normalization,” a return to a stricter, more old-fashioned socialism. A third of Party members were purged. Intellectuals were forced to renounce the declarations they’d signed, censorship was restored. Dubcek briefly worked a diplomatic stint in Turkey—where he would be out of the way—but soon after was expelled from the Communist Party and went to work for the Forestry Department.
 
Despair overwhelmed much of the populace. No one captured the sensation better than Czech folk singer Karel Kryl, who composed Bratricku, zavirej vratka (“Little Brother, Close the Gate”) the day after the invasion. Kryl soon put out an entire album in this despondent mood, which was banned shortly after appearing on store shelves in early 1969. (You can see my performance and translation, created especially for this anniversary, below.) Kryl soon emigrated to West Germany, where he began working for Radio Free Europe.
 
Other artists who left include film director Milos Forman, who came to the U.S. and went on to direct Hair, Amadeus, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, among other hits. Author Milan Kundera moved to Paris. And the list goes on.
 
Of course, others stayed behind. Playwright Vaclav Havel was kicked out of the writers’ union after ’68, meaning he could no longer publish. At one point he worked in a brewery, which inspired his play Audience. He agitated for human rights, especially as a founding member of Charter 77, which called on the government to observe its obligations under the Helsinki Accords. His activities landed him in prison – and made him the country’s leading dissident.
 
Just two days after the tanks came rolling in, singer-actor Marta Kubisova recorded a song written for a TV series which had begun the previous year. “Song for Marta,” It was aired on the radio in a playlist that had been previously determined – with the note that it had nothing to do with events of the time. Yet it brimmed with the sentiments of the population: “May peace remain with this country. May hatred, envy, fear, grudge, and strife cease.” The song’s near-quote from educator-clergyman-philosopher John Comenius had a strong enough note of self-determination that it quickly became a form of quiet resistance against the occupation: “When your lost rule over things returns to you, people, it returns to you.”
 
Yet Kubisova was banned from public performance and, much like Havel, went on to relatively menial work. Kryl’s songs were copied, passed around, and sung quietly by rebellious students – who didn’t dare rebel too openly in what was now one of the East Bloc’s most repressive regimes, by many assessments topped only by Romania and Albania.
 
Revolution
In November 1989, Havel was the center of attention at meetings held in theaters to discuss the positions dissidents were to take in ongoing negotiations with the government – until the Communist Party leadership resigned in December. Marta Kubisova sang her song from a balcony overlooking Prague’s Wenceslas Square. Dubcek returned from obscurity and joined Havel to the cheers of demonstrators, whose numbers had grown to hundreds of thousands.
 
By coincidence, while all this was going on, Karel Kryl returned to Czechoslovakia for his mother’s funeral. On December 3, just four days after the Party had agreed to renounce its “leading role,” he appeared onstage at the “Concert for All Decent People.” It was a surprise to the crowd, who hadn’t been aware of his arrival in country. With teary eyes they sang along, songs they’d played to themselves quietly at home for years, and swayed, many with sparklers in hand.
 
My experience
I saw the film version of Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being while in college, and that gave me a sense of the air of freedom, of open debate, that came with the Prague Spring. But I got a much deeper experience (obviously) when I went to Czechoslovakia in autumn 1990. One of my students gave me a home-copied cassette of the Little Brother album. And soon I was having late-night discussions people who’d kept mum about politics for two decades. One friend had nearly defected while traveling to Italy with a folk-dance ensemble – but balked when reminded of the likely repercussions for family members back home.
 
With Dubcek back on the political scene, I had a chance to see him in Slovakia in 1992 when he was campaigning with the Socialists. I didn’t care what party, just wanted to see the humble giant of a man. But I sang in a choir that had a performance elsewhere the day he came to town. The group had shown great friendship to me, a foreigner, and I felt duty-bound to keep the date. Besides, I thought, I’ll be back soon enough, and I can see Dubcek then. The following spring, while studying in the U.S., I got the news that he’d died in a car crash.
 
My first encounter with Russian misconceptions of ’68 came in St. Petersburg, when I was taking language courses in summer 1995. One Saturday afternoon, I visited the nearby Peterhof palace with Czech friends. Outside the gates we met a WWII veteran wearing a jacket loaded with medals and ribbons from his service. He heard us speaking Czech and wanted to express his solidarity with fellow Slavs. “We really wanted to help you.” My friends just looked on blankly, too polite to tell him that’s not how they saw it.
 
That encounter lends a lot of truth to one scene in the film version of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. A Russian official tells Czech character Tereza the invasion was to protect her people. “Protect us from what?” is her incredulous response. This exchange, oddly, is not found in the novel; it was, rather, apparently inspired by Kundera’s introduction to his play Jacques and His Master (Kundera hated the movie version of Unbearable and has refused to allow any more cinematic renditions of his works), in which the author relays his experience of leaving the country. He was driving through Southern Bohemia, when his car was stopped by a Russian officer who explained to him that the Russians loved the Czechs—if only they could appreciate it!

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Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, the memory of which is marked by images of Soviet tanks lining the streets of Prague and angry but unarmed Czech protestors thronging to challenge them.

1968 was a turbulent year, with its student uprisings in Paris, the assassinations of Rev. King and Robert Kennedy, and anti-war demonstrations in the U.S., including those outside the Democratic convention in Chicago. But the story of Czechoslovakia in that year is unique in its blend of hope, a spirit of freedom, renewal and youth, as well as eventual tragedy, defeat and bitterness.

See the Moody Blues' performance in Prague on the eve of the invasion below.

The Prague Spring
Following years of disappointing economic performance, and increased national tensions between Slovaks and Czechs, Slovak politician Alexander Dubček replaced Antonín Novotný as Czechoslovak Communist Party first secretary in early January 1968. Dubček, a relative unknown, soon initiated a program of “Socialism with a Human Face.” Censorship was relaxed, a move welcomed by the Czech and Slovak public, especially intellectuals and artists. 25 June saw the release of all political prisoners and the rehabilitation of victims of Stalinism. On the following day, 26 June, the National Assembly passed a law abolishing censorship; this was followed the very next day by the publication of “The Two Thousand Words,” a manifesto of support for Dubček’s liberalizing efforts, penned by leading author Ludvík Vaculík and signed by 70 leading writers, artists, and other public figures. Numerous similar declarations were made by other academics and intellectuals.

Yet storm clouds were gathering. Warsaw Pact maneuvers were held on Czechoslovak territory in June as an apparent warning by Brezhnev; when the exercises were concluded on 2 July, the Kremlin refused to withdraw all its troops. In late July, the Soviet leader called for a meeting with Dubček, and the two met in a small railway station in an East Slovak border town. This was followed a few days later, on 4 August by the Bratislava Declaration, in which Dubček seemed to have backed down to his “superior” on matters of press censorship. Brezhnev nevertheless berated Dubček one more time over criticism of the Party in the press, as revealed in a telephone transcript (finally released fifteen years ago). In that extended conversation, Brezhnev is both threatening and condescending to the president of his satellite state.

Invasion and resistance
During the night of 20-21 August, partly in response to an “invitation” from Czechoslovak Communist Party hard-liners, Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev sent in approximately 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops from Hungary, Poland, Rumania, and the Soviet Union, along with 2,000 tanks. Dubček was arrested and sent to Moscow. While the Soviet leader allowed Dubček to return and to remain in power for several months, the period of liberalization was over. In September, the “Brezhnev Doctrine” was declared, namely, that the Soviet Union had the right to invade other socialist countries if it felt threatened.

The world tends to remember the invasion most starkly for the images of the invasion, of Soviet tanks lining Wenceslaus Square while throngs of unarmed, flag-waving civilians attempted to stand them off. The focal point of the resistance was at the top of the square, at the equestrian statue of St. Wenceslaus, the patron saint of Bohemia to whom many Czechs, though not particularly religious, look for inspiration. To assert their national sovereignty, protestors marched through the streets chanting “Dubček – Svoboda,” the latter being the president of the country elected in March, whose name means “freedom” in Czech.

Another prominent scene is the defense of the radio station by the Czech civilians. Trucks, buses, and trolley cars were amassed at the approach to the building, and gasoline was set ablaze to thwart the troops’ advance. Still the tanks prevailed.

In the ensuing weeks, one of the Czechoslovaks’ most cunning tricks was to switch road signs to confuse invaders. They also used satirical messages such as “Last performance of Circus Brezhnev. Do not irritate his animals! Do not feed them, either!” Other messages were aimed at demoralizing the occupying soldiers: (in Russian) Natasha is sleeping with Kolya—signed, Your mother. The most common graffiti of the invasion period was РУССКИЕ ДОМОЙ! or “Russians Go Home!”
Often, the Czechs and Slovaks attempted to engage Russian soldiers in conversation, rather like Vietnam-era protestors confronting rifle barrels with daisies. Thanks to Slavic-language affinity and nearly 20 years of a Russian language requirement in education, communication wasn’t so difficult. But occupying soldiers were shocked at the objection they faced, having been sold on the notion they were engaging in a form of liberation, "brotherly assistance."
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TOMORROW: reflections on the aftermath of the invasion.
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This entry is really just a warm-up to the actual anniversary of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion which began during the night of Aug. 20-21 fifty years ago. I've translated the quintessential Czech protest song about the events, am performing it publicly tonight, and will post video on Tuesday, along with other remembrances of the tragedy.

For now, here are pics from that August.