Australian Left Review
Article Title
Czechoslovakia - Two Years After
Abstract
TWO YEAR , AFTER the Warsaw Pact Invasion. Two years after 1968 beet me yet another momentous historical date for the sophisticated Czechs and Slovaks. Dates such as 1415, 1620, 1848, 1918, 1938, 1945 1948. . . Czechs know their history, and no-one who cannot appreciate the momentous significance of such dates as these to those people living in ‘the cockpit of Europe’ can appreciate their mood in 1970. For there are those of us whose emotional identification with certain concepts of government and certain ideological dogmas lead us to behave like leftwing Chamberlains: Czechoslovakia is a long way off, we know little about it, it’s a small country — and what’s all this prattle about sovereignty and nationalism anyway? We’re internationalists, aren’t we?