Forty-eight years ago, on August 20-21, 1968, the Soviet Union launched an invasion of Czechoslovakia with help from Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland.
Known as Operation Danube, it involved some 250,000 troops. More than 500 civilians were wounded in the invasion and more than 100 Czechs and Slovak civilians were killed. The invasion was an attempt by the Soviets to halt the Prague Spring that was facilitated by Alexander Dubcek’s liberalization policies. Other nations that were asked to join the operation included East Germany, and refusals came from Romania and Albania.
NATO turned a blind eye to the invasion, with the U.S. still involved in the Vietnam War and U.S. hopes for Moscow’s cooperation on the SALT arms reduction program.
Reactions from the Ukrainian community were swift following the invasion. Dr. Lev E. Dobriansky, chairman of the National Captive Nations Committee and president of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, called on the United States to voice outrage at the United Nations and elsewhere and to seek U.N. intervention in Czechoslovakia. The Washington branch of the Organization for the Defense of Four Freedoms for Ukraine participated in a demonstration that attracted some 250 people to protest the “treacherous aggression.” Among them were Czechs, Slovaks and Ukrainians.
In a letter to the U.N. General Secretary U Thant, the World Congress of Ukrainian Students (known by its Ukrainian acronym CESUS) said that in this year of human rights, “we have just witnessed the stamping out of human freedom in a small and defenseless country and seen its sovereignty trampled down by the Red Army.” The letter also asked the U.N. to unmask the “true nature of Moscow’s objectives” and demanded the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from Czechoslovakia.
The Ukrainian Canadian Committee (now known as the Ukrainian Canadian Congress) sent a telegram to the U.N. Secretary General on August 21 expressing shock and “deep indignation” of half a million Canadians of Ukrainian origin at the “new violation of national and human rights.” The telegram also called on all nations of the world to “unite and take immediate action in defense of human freedom.”
A similar telegram was also sent by the World Congress of Free Ukrainians, (today known as the Ukrainian World Congress) headed by Dr. Basil Kushnir, who was also president of the UCC. “More than 2 million Ukrainians living outside Ukraine join the world in protesting and condemning the military occupation of Czechoslovakia by Soviet Russia.”
Similar messages were sent to U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk by the Czechoslovak-Polish-Ukrainian Council of Friendship in Chicago.
The Weekly’s editorial of that same issue noted:
“Moscow’s latest act of aggression, the brutal invasion of Czechoslovakia, has vividly and painfully shown the nations of the world the true nature of Soviet Russia’s imperialist aims. This illegal and immoral conquest of Czechoslovakia has opened the eyes of the world to the Kremlin’s suppressionist spirit.”
“Now the people of the world can give credence to the documents of [Vyacheslav] Chornovil and [Ivan] Dzyuba and others about the arrests, secret trials and groundless convictions of Ukrainian intellectuals. They know now what we have been telling them for years: the Soviet Union is a ‘prison of nations,’ not a federation of free and independent republics.
“Moscow has made a fatal error in its unprovoked attack on a small defenseless nation. The sympathies of the world are with the Czechoslovaks and undoubtedly extend to all the freedom-seeking captive nations.”
Source: “Ukrainian reaction to invasion: Shock, indignation and outrage; leaders demand withdrawal of troops from Czechoslovakia,” The Ukrainian Weekly, August 31, 1968.