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From Socialist Worker, No. 87, 9 September 1968, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
WE DID ONE CONCERT in Czechoslovakia on August 20 and as we were close to the Polish border they said come up and have a look.
While we were there the Polish customs people were very friendly and invited us over. There were a crowd of people and the choir on the bridge gave a little impromptu concert.
This was at about 6 o’clock and the Russians came over at 12. They must have been chasing us home as we did not get back to Prague till gone midnight.
The next morning people were crying and speaking volubly in Czech. One man said “Occupation Russia”. I thought it was a bit wild, that he must have had a nightmare.
Then our interpreter came and said in rather stilted English: “A terrible disaster has befallen our country. The Russians have invaded us.”
Many Czechs had had grave doubts about the agreement signed in Bratislava. There was a general feeling of complete distrust of Russia and East Germany.
The people were solidly behind Dubcek and to mention his name was almost like magic. We didn’t meet a single criticism of the new line but most people had doubts that the Russians would let them carry it out.
The local radio station was taken over very quickly and, almost as quickly, the free radio started operating. The suggestion that the CIA had fitted this up is absolute nonsense. They were Czech army transmitters for the most part.
Aerials were thrown up. You would see them from houses and the next day they were gone, they were somewhere else. Until the Russians got tracking equipment, it was very difficult for them to see where they were broadcasting from.
There were lovely stories of how the railway workers were hindering supplies. Free radio workers asked for one train to be delayed because it was carrying radar detecting equipment.
They would say on the radio: “The train only proceeded five miles today comrades! Hurrah!” Everywhere you went you saw Czechs with transistors squashed against their ear.
The Russians looked youngsters, 18 or 19, and were quite bewildered. The wife of one of our interpreters heard that the Russians were in her village. She rushed back and found tanks in the square.
With absolute indignation she asked why they were there. They said they did not know they were coming. They thought they were still on manoeuvres and they did not know why they had come.
She wasn’t content with that and searched around until she found an officer, who said they had come to save them from the West Germans. The insinuation was that “the reactionary group” or whatever they called Dubcek’s government were actually going to open the doors to the West Germans. This really incensed the Czechs. They of all people!
Their memories of the Nazis will take a long time to fade and this made them think that the Russians were up to a much dirtier game than they had ever imagined.
Everywhere, slogans and posters, every tree, every lamppost, every shop window, private window, on the sides of buses. Every single bus, even in the big towns was smothered in slogans – our bus too!
There was chalking and even daubing on the tanks. Russian tanks came trundling through with “Viva Dubcek” and “Svoboda” which is also the Czech word for “liberty”.
They equated the actions of the Russians with the Nazis. They painted the red star with the swastika in the centre instead of the hammer and sickle, with “Brezhnev = Hitler” and “1938 Nazis, 1968 USSR.”
To a people receiving invading troops, viewed at this stage, it was exactly the same. They were using the slogans to impress the Russians rather than themselves.
A student from Swansea who was staying in Prague asked to come back with us. She was staying with a doctor of law who was a member of the district Communist Party committee. They were meeting secretly. They disguised themselves in ordinary workers’ clothes and went along to the factory and met in the canteen. He thought it was only a question of time before he was arrested.
We went to pick the girl up and the Russians made no attempt to stop us. We were smothered in Czech flags and we also had one of those carrier bags with a Union Jack. Someone must have had a premonition that it would come in useful!
We tore this up and stuck it on the window as well. I didn’t feel particularly secure behind a Union Jack, but it consoled the youngsters.
No-one we spoke to felt able to return to the pre-January days of Novotny. But now they could see no end to the intense restrictions, the restrictions on travel, on speech, on censorship.
They made speeches and talked in almost identical terms in condemnation of what had happened and the complete lack of justification for it. They appealed to us to tell the truth when we got back. It was very moving.
Eric Porter, a member of the National Union of Teachers, was in Czechoslovakia with the London Cooperative Youth Choir at the time of the Russian invasion.
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