124-644: Incidents The Prague Spring ( Czech : Pražské jaro , Slovak : Pražská jar ) was a period of political liberalization and mass protest in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic . It began on 5 January 1968, when reformist Alexander Dubček was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), and continued until 21 August 1968, when the Soviet Union and most Warsaw Pact members invaded
248-861: A Foreign Ministry spokesman replied, "Nineteen years." Dubček lent his support to the Velvet Revolution of December 1989. After the collapse of the Communist regime that month, Dubček became chairman of the federal assembly under the Havel administration. He later led the Social Democratic Party of Slovakia , and spoke against the dissolution of Czechoslovakia before his death in November 1992. The Warsaw Pact invasion included attacks on media establishments, such as Radio Prague and Czechoslovak Television , almost immediately after
372-466: A UN vote was taken with ten members supporting the motion; Algeria, India, and Pakistan abstained; the USSR (with veto power) and Hungary opposed. Canadian delegates immediately introduced another motion asking for a UN representative to travel to Prague and work toward the release of the imprisoned Czechoslovak leaders. By 26 August, a new Czechoslovak representative requested the whole issue be removed from
496-655: A committee in April 1968, headed by the poet Jaroslav Seifert , to investigate the persecution of writers after the Communist takeover in February 1948 and rehabilitate the literary figures into the Union, bookstores and libraries, and the literary world. Discussions on the current state of communism and abstract ideas such as freedom and identity were also becoming more common; soon, non-party publications began appearing, such as
620-635: A distinction between phonemic /l/ and /ʎ/ which survives in Slovak. With the beginning of the national revival of the mid-18th century, Czech historians began to emphasize their people's accomplishments from the 15th through 17th centuries, rebelling against the Counter-Reformation (the Habsburg re-catholization efforts which had denigrated Czech and other non- Latin languages). Czech philologists studied sixteenth-century texts and advocated
744-506: A dozen additional counties in Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, North Dakota and Minnesota . As of 2009, 70,500 Americans spoke Czech as their first language (49th place nationwide, after Turkish and before Swedish ). Standard Czech contains ten basic vowel phonemes , and three diphthongs. The vowels are /a/, /ɛ/, /ɪ/, /o/, and /u/ , and their long counterparts /aː/, /ɛː/, /iː/, /oː/ and /uː/ . The diphthongs are /ou̯/, /au̯/ and /ɛu̯/ ;
868-715: A filthy time"), which he felt downplayed Margolius' complicity with the Stalinist regime. David Hertl on the other hand emphasised the mystery of Rudolf Margolius inclusion in the trial in his recent Czech interview program, The Youngest Hanged in the Trial with the Slánský Group was Rudolf Margolius. But Why Him, is a Mystery to Historians. ( Nejmladším oběšeným v procesu se skupinou Slánského byl Rudolf Margolius. Proč zrovna on, je ale pro historiky záhadou. ) broadcast on Czech Radio Plus, December 1, 2022. The Slánský trial
992-399: A high-profile example of civilian-based defense ; there were sporadic acts of violence and several protest suicides by self-immolation (the most famous being that of Jan Palach ), but no military resistance. Czechoslovakia remained a Soviet satellite state until 1989 when the Velvet Revolution peacefully ended the communist regime; the last Soviet troops left the country in 1991. After
1116-503: A longtime collaborator and personal friend, who was the second-in-command of the party. The others were picked to convey a clear threat to different groups in the state bureaucracy. A couple of them (Šváb, Reicin) were brutal sadists, conveniently added for a more realistic show. Those put on trial confessed to all crimes (under duress or after torture) and were sentenced to punishment. Slánský attempted suicide while in prison. The people of Czechoslovakia signed petitions asking for death for
1240-597: A low-key response to the invasion. After 1968 the U.S. recognized Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe, a development that was in the interests of the United States according to some analysts. In April 1969, Dubček was replaced as first secretary by Gustáv Husák , and a period of " normalization " began. Dubček was expelled from the KSČ and given a job as a forestry official. Husák reversed Dubček's reforms, purged
1364-470: A major scandal. Like the Italian and French Communist parties, the majority of the Communist Party of Finland denounced the occupation. Nonetheless, Finnish president Urho Kekkonen was the first Western politician to officially visit Czechoslovakia after August 1968; he received the highest Czechoslovak honours from the hands of President Ludvík Svoboda , on 4 October 1969. A schism occurred between
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#17327576428621488-403: A marasmus of censorship and trials, that this or that could happen, are simply weak people, who can live only in illusions of certainty." Czech language Czech ( / tʃ ɛ k / CHEK ; endonym : čeština [ˈtʃɛʃcɪna] ), historically also known as Bohemian ( / b oʊ ˈ h iː m i ə n , b ə -/ boh- HEE -mee-ən, bə- ; Latin : lingua Bohemica ),
1612-571: A more-restricted distinction between "hard" and "soft" consonants (see Phonology below). The term "Old Czech" is applied to the period predating the 16th century, with the earliest records of the high medieval period also classified as "early Old Czech", but the term "Medieval Czech" is also used. The function of the written language was initially performed by Old Slavonic written in Glagolitic , later by Latin written in Latin script . Around
1736-702: A potential precursor to the genocide of Jews in the Soviet bloc. He asked the United Nations to launch an investigation into the alleged genocide of Jews in the Soviet bloc. In Commentary , Peter Meyer wrote that "the Prague trial with its lurid tale of a 'Zionist conspiracy' recalled the Czarist-invented and Nazi-popularized legend of the Elders of Zion". David Ben-Gurion, speaking hypothetically in
1860-552: A rather calm period without any major events taking place in Czechoslovakia. In Czechoslovakia, especially in the week following the invasion, popular opposition was expressed in numerous spontaneous acts of nonviolent resistance . Civilians purposely gave wrong directions to invading soldiers, while others identified and followed cars belonging to the secret police . On 16 January 1969, student Jan Palach set himself on fire in Prague's Wenceslas Square to protest against
1984-514: A realistic chance of returning as a major language. However, Josef Jungmann and other revivalists used Dobrovský's book to advocate for a Czech linguistic revival. Changes during this time included spelling reform (notably, í in place of the former j and j in place of g ), the use of t (rather than ti ) to end infinitive verbs and the non-capitalization of nouns (which had been a late borrowing from German). These changes differentiated Czech from Slovak. Modern scholars disagree about whether
2108-517: A request for intervention to the Soviets. The invasion was followed by a previously unseen wave of emigration , which was stopped shortly thereafter. An estimated 70,000 citizens fled the country immediately with an eventual total of some 300,000. Until recently there was some uncertainty as to what provocation , if any, occurred to make the Warsaw Pact armies invade. Preceding the invasion was
2232-486: A sense of trust among the media, the government, and the citizens. It was under Goldstücker that the journal's name was changed to Literární listy , and on 29 February, the Union published the first copy of the censor-free journal. By August, Literární listy had a circulation of 300,000, making it the most published periodical in Europe. At the 20th anniversary of Czechoslovakia's " Victorious February ", Dubček delivered
2356-489: A slow rise from low to high, quickly dropping to low on the last word or phrase. In modern Czech syntax, adjectives precede nouns, with few exceptions. Relative clauses are introduced by relativizers such as the adjective který , analogous to the English relative pronouns "which", "that" and "who"/"whom". As with other adjectives, it agrees with its associated noun in gender, number and case. Relative clauses follow
2480-619: A so-called "Morgenthau Plan" (not to be confused with the contemporaneous Morgenthau Plan for German heavy industry) to commit espionage and sabotage against Czechoslovakia for the US in exchange for American support for Israel. Czechoslovakia was seen as especially pro-Zionist due to their armament support for Israel during the Palestine War . In actuality, most of the defendants were known to be ardent anti-Zionists. The trial of Rudolf Slánský and 13 other high-ranking Communists (11 of whom,
2604-425: A speech explaining the need for change following the triumph of socialism. He emphasized the need to "enforce the leading role of the party more effectively" In April, Dubček launched an " Action Programme " of liberalizations, which included increasing freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of movement, with economic emphasis on consumer goods and the possibility of a multiparty government. The programme
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#17327576428622728-605: A thinly disguised antisemitic campaign in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin , began in the fall of 1948. In the year before Stalin's death in 1953 another Soviet antisemitic campaign, the Doctors' Plot , began to unfold. During this period, the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee 's leadership was murdered and antisemitic purges spread to other countries in the Soviet's Eastern Bloc . The trial
2852-474: A verb; information about its subject is encoded in the verb. Enclitics (primarily auxiliary verbs and pronouns) appear in the second syntactic slot of a sentence, after the first stressed unit. The first slot can contain a subject or object, a main form of a verb, an adverb, or a conjunction (except for the light conjunctions a , "and", i , "and even" or ale , "but"). Czech syntax has a subject–verb–object sentence structure. In practice, however, word order
2976-753: Is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group , written in Latin script . Spoken by over 12 million people including second language speakers, it serves as the official language of the Czech Republic . Czech is closely related to Slovak , to the point of high mutual intelligibility , as well as to Polish to a lesser degree. Czech is a fusional language with a rich system of morphology and relatively flexible word order . Its vocabulary has been extensively influenced by Latin and German . The Czech–Slovak group developed within West Slavic in
3100-447: Is a major source about the trial. L'Aveu (1970), a film based on London's book, was directed by Costa-Gavras and starred Yves Montand and Simone Signoret . The Slánský trial is also a key element of the book Under a Cruel Star . A memoir by Heda Margolius Kovály , the book follows the life of a Jewish woman, starting with her escape from a concentration camp during World War II, up until her departure from Czechoslovakia after
3224-636: Is a member of the West Slavic sub-branch of the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. This branch includes Polish , Kashubian , Upper and Lower Sorbian and Slovak . Slovak is the most closely related language to Czech, followed by Polish and Silesian . The West Slavic languages are spoken in Central Europe. Czech is distinguished from other West Slavic languages by
3348-481: Is a need to shoot, we will shoot. We have already been through times when there was a need to shoot people – people who were even closer to us." This last comment referred to an earlier moment in Israel's recent history where he first warned and then approved firing on the right-wing paramilitary group Irgun . A majority of the cabinet opposed Ben-Gurion's view, including Golda Meir and Pinhas Lavon . Lavon observed in
3472-571: Is a recognized minority language in Slovakia, Slovak citizens who speak only Czech may communicate with the government in their language in the same way that Slovak speakers in the Czech Republic also do. Immigration of Czechs from Europe to the United States occurred primarily from 1848 to 1914. Czech is a Less Commonly Taught Language in U.S. schools, and is taught at Czech heritage centers. Large communities of Czech Americans live in
3596-422: Is also relevant to the declension patterns of nouns, which vary according to whether the final consonant of the noun stem is hard or soft. Voiced consonants with unvoiced counterparts are unvoiced at the end of a word before a pause, and in consonant clusters voicing assimilation occurs, which matches voicing to the following consonant. The unvoiced counterpart of /ɦ/ is /x/. The phoneme represented by
3720-432: Is flexible and used to distinguish topic and focus , with the topic or theme (known referents) preceding the focus or rheme (new information) in a sentence; Czech has therefore been described as a topic-prominent language . Although Czech has a periphrastic passive construction (like English), in colloquial style, word-order changes frequently replace the passive voice. For example, to change "Peter killed Paul" to "Paul
3844-576: Is one of the EU's official languages and the 2012 Eurobarometer survey found that Czech was the foreign language most often used in Slovakia. Economist Jonathan van Parys collected data on language knowledge in Europe for the 2012 European Day of Languages . The five countries with the greatest use of Czech were the Czech Republic (98.77 percent), Slovakia (24.86 percent), Portugal (1.93 percent), Poland (0.98 percent) and Germany (0.47 percent). Czech speakers in Slovakia primarily live in cities. Since it
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3968-575: Is realized as its voiceless allophone [r̝̊], a sound somewhere between Czech r and š . The consonants /r/, /l/, and /m/ can be syllabic , acting as syllable nuclei in place of a vowel. Strč prst skrz krk ("Stick [your] finger through [your] throat") is a well-known Czech tongue twister using syllabic consonants but no vowels. Each word has primary stress on its first syllable , except for enclitics (minor, monosyllabic, unstressed syllables). In all words of more than two syllables, every odd-numbered syllable receives secondary stress. Stress
4092-619: Is the subject of the documentary A Trial in Prague , directed by Zuzana Justman (2000, 83 min). On 22 March 2018, it was announced that insolvency administrators discovered 8.5 hours of original footage from the trial at a factory near Prague. The film was heavily damaged, and restoration is expected to take several years, to be paid for by the Ministry of Culture . Le Procès – Prague 1952 , an 1hr 10min French documentary film by Ruth Zylberman for ARTE France & Pernel Media had
4216-499: Is unrelated to vowel length; both long and short vowels can be stressed or unstressed. Vowels are never reduced in tone (e.g. to schwa sounds) when unstressed. When a noun is preceded by a monosyllabic preposition, the stress usually moves to the preposition, e.g. do Prahy "to Prague". Czech grammar, like that of other Slavic languages, is fusional ; its nouns, verbs, and adjectives are inflected by phonological processes to modify their meanings and grammatical functions, and
4340-494: The Bratislava Declaration . The declaration affirmed unshakable fidelity to Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism , declared an implacable struggle against "bourgeois" ideology and all "anti-socialist" forces. The Soviet Union expressed its intention to intervene in any Warsaw Pact country if a "bourgeois" system—a pluralist system of several political parties representing different factions of
4464-567: The Brezhnev Doctrine . On the night of 20–21 August, Eastern Bloc armies from four Warsaw Pact countries—the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Poland and Hungary—invaded the ČSSR. That night, 165,000 troops and 4,600 tanks entered the country. They first occupied the Ruzyně International Airport , where air deployment of more troops was arranged. The Czechoslovak forces were confined to their barracks, which were surrounded until
4588-487: The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in April, Dubček announced a political programme of " socialism with a human face ". At the time of the Prague Spring, Czechoslovak exports were declining in competitiveness, and Dubček's reforms planned to solve these troubles by mixing planned and market economies . Dubček continued to stress the importance of economic reform proceeding under Communist Party rule. Freedom of
4712-571: The East German Communist Party and the Icelandic Socialist Party because of the latter's disapproval of the invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia, causing relations between Iceland and East Germany to deteriorate. The Portuguese communist secretary-general Álvaro Cunhal was one of few political leaders from western Europe to have supported the invasion for being counter-revolutionary , along with
4836-733: The Kralice Bible between 1579 and 1593 (the first complete Czech translation of the Bible from the original languages) became very important for standardization of the Czech language in the following centuries as it was used as a model for the standard language. In 1615, the Bohemian diet tried to declare Czech to be the only official language of the kingdom. After the Bohemian Revolt (of predominantly Protestant aristocracy) which
4960-622: The Leskovec-Dresden Bible , also dates to this period. Old Czech texts, including poetry and cookbooks, were also produced outside universities. Literary activity becomes widespread in the early 15th century in the context of the Bohemian Reformation . Jan Hus contributed significantly to the standardization of Czech orthography , advocated for widespread literacy among Czech commoners (particularly in religion) and made early efforts to model written Czech after
5084-747: The Luxembourg party and conservative factions of the Greek party . Most countries offered only vocal criticism following the invasion. The night of the invasion, Canada, Denmark, France, Paraguay, the United Kingdom, and the United States requested a meeting of the United Nations Security Council . At the meeting, the Czechoslovak ambassador Jan Mužík denounced the invasion. Soviet ambassador Jacob Malik insisted
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5208-702: The Warsaw Pact countries invasion of 1968 . Kovály's husband, Rudolf Margolius , a fellow Holocaust survivor, was one of the 11 men executed during the Slánský trial. More encompassing information is available in the more recent book Hitler, Stalin and I , an interview of Heda Margolius Kovály by Helena Třeštíková published in 2018. Martin Wein was critical of the positive image of Margolius in Kovály's book and in other media ( Igor Lukes described him as "a clean man in
5332-566: The hardliners grew concerned about the reforms, which they feared might weaken the position of the Bloc in the Cold War . At a meeting in Dresden, East Germany on 23 March, the leaders of the "Warsaw Five" ( USSR , Hungary , Poland , Bulgaria and East Germany ) questioned the Czechoslovak delegation over the planned reforms, suggesting any talk of "democratization" was a veiled criticism of
5456-742: The high medieval period, and the standardization of Czech and Slovak within the Czech–Slovak dialect continuum emerged in the early modern period. In the later 18th to mid-19th century, the modern written standard became codified in the context of the Czech National Revival . The most widely spoken non-standard variety , known as Common Czech, is based on the vernacular of Prague , but is now spoken as an interdialect throughout most of Bohemia . The Moravian dialects spoken in Moravia and Czech Silesia are considerably more varied than
5580-551: The new constitution accordingly adopted the name change from "Czechoslovak Republic" to "Czechoslovak Socialist Republic". The pace of de-Stalinization, however, was sluggish; the rehabilitation of Stalinist-era victims, such as those convicted in the Slánský trial , may have been considered as early as 1963, but did not take place until 1967. In the early 1960s , Czechoslovakia underwent an economic downturn. The Soviet model of industrialization applied poorly to Czechoslovakia since
5704-406: The voiced velar fricative consonant (/ɣ/) and consistent stress on the first syllable. The Bohemian (Czech) language is first recorded in writing in glosses and short notes during the 12th to 13th centuries. Literary works written in Czech appear in the late 13th and early 14th century and administrative documents first appear towards the late 14th century. The first complete Bible translation ,
5828-505: The "capitalist classes"—was ever established. After the conference, the Soviet troops left Czechoslovak territory but remained along its borders. As these talks proved unsatisfactory, the Soviets began to consider a military alternative. The Soviet policy of compelling the socialist governments of its satellite states to subordinate their national interests to those of the Eastern Bloc (through military force if needed) became known as
5952-528: The 1968 Prague Spring , an era of political liberalization. This conference was unique because it symbolized Kafka's rehabilitation in the Eastern Bloc after having been heavily criticized, led to a partial opening up of the regime and influenced the relaxation of censorship . It also had an international impact as a representative from all Eastern Bloc countries were invited to the Conference; only
6076-528: The 7th century, the Slavic expansion reached Central Europe, settling on the eastern fringes of the Frankish Empire . The West Slavic polity of Great Moravia formed by the 9th century. The Christianization of Bohemia took place during the 9th and 10th centuries. The diversification of the Czech-Slovak group within West Slavic began around that time, marked among other things by its use of
6200-580: The Czechoslovak Communist regime, they had command responsibility for crimes committed by it. Wein further commented that the three reprieved defendants all came from an upper-class background, while all of the middle-class and working-class defendants were executed. He hypothesizes that this was because if an upper-class person was a traitor to the Communist Party, he was not a traitor to his class. According to Stephen Norwood ,
6324-545: The KSČ Rudolf Slánský was the alleged leader of the conspirators. All fourteen defendants were found guilty of crimes that they did not commit. Eleven of them were sentenced to death and executed; the remaining three received life sentences. After World War II, Czechoslovakia initially enjoyed limited democracy . This changed with the February 1948 coup , carried out by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia without
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#17327576428626448-820: The Kremlin's approval. Mao Zedong saw the Brezhnev Doctrine as the ideological basis for a Soviet invasion of China, and launched a massive propaganda campaign condemning the invasion of Czechoslovakia, despite his own earlier opposition to the Prague Spring. Speaking at a banquet at the Romanian embassy in Beijing on 23 August 1968, the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai denounced the Soviet Union for "fascist politics, great power chauvinism, national egoism and social imperialism", going on to compare
6572-630: The Leadership of the Anti-State Conspiracy Centre Headed by Rudolf Slánský") was a 1952 antisemitic show trial against fourteen members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), including many high-ranking officials. Several charges, including high treason, were announced against the group on the grounds of allegedly conspiring against the Czechoslovak Republic . General Secretary of
6696-415: The Romanian Communist Party , already a staunch opponent of Soviet influences and a self-declared Dubček supporter, gave a public speech in Bucharest on the day of the invasion, depicting Soviet policies in harsh terms. Albania withdrew from the Warsaw Pact in opposition, calling the invasion an act of " social imperialism ". In Finland, a country under some Soviet political influence, the occupation caused
6820-499: The Security Council's agenda. Shirley Temple Black visited Prague in August 1968 to prepare for becoming the US Ambassador for reformed Czechoslovakia. However, after the 21 August invasion, she became part of a U.S. Embassy-organized convoy of vehicles that evacuated U.S. citizens from the country. In August 1989, she returned to Prague as U.S. Ambassador, three months before the Velvet Revolution that ended 41 years of Communist rule. The United States, West Germany and NATO maintained
6944-492: The Slánský trial was the "clearest illustration yet of state-sponsored antisemitism in the Soviet bloc" and "a secularized version of the Spanish Inquisition's racialized antisemitism", because it insisted on that Jewish origin was an indelible defect which would pass to all descendents (similar to the guilt of Jewish deicide ). Artur London , one of the survivors of the trial, eventually moved to France, where he published his memoirs in 1968. His book L'Aveu ("The Confession"),
7068-412: The Soviet Union did not send any representative. This conference had a revolutionary effect and paved the way for the reforms while making Kafka the symbol of the renaissance of Czechoslovak artistic and intellectual freedom. As the strict regime eased its rules, the Union of Czechoslovak Writers ( Czech : Svaz československých spisovatelů ) cautiously began to air discontent. In Literární noviny ,
7192-463: The Soviet Union's goal was "to deflect the world's attention from the sordid execution of the innocent [Slánský trial defendants] in Prague". The Israeli-American scholar Martin Wein observed that although Slánský was not guilty of the charges he was forced to admit, he was guilty of mass murder as a high-level functionary in the Communist government. In Wein's opinion, because all of the defendants (except Simone and Margolius) occupied high positions in
7316-434: The Soviet border. The Soviets were represented by almost the full Politburo that met for the first time outside the territory of the Soviet Union; also the Czechoslovak delegation included the full membership of the Presidium, but the main agreements were reached at the meetings of the "fours" – Brezhnev, Alexei Kosygin , Nikolai Podgorny , Mikhail Suslov – Dubček, Ludvík Svoboda , Oldřich Černík , Josef Smrkovský . At
7440-446: The Soviet model. The Polish Party leader Władysław Gomułka and János Kádár were less concerned with the reforms themselves than with the growing criticisms levelled by the Czechoslovak media, and worried that the situation might be "similar to...the 'Hungarian counterrevolution' ." Some of the language in the Action Programme may have been chosen to assert that no "counterrevolution" was planned, but Kieran Williams suggests that Dubček
7564-431: The Warsaw Pact actions were "fraternal assistance" against "antisocial forces". The British government strongly condemned the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, although it cautiously avoided making any diplomatic moves that may have provoked a Soviet counter-response and a jeopardisation of détente . The United Kingdom's foreign policy toward the Soviet Union was minimally impacted in the long-term, and quickly reverted to
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#17327576428627688-420: The Warsaw Pact and promised to curb "anti-socialist" tendencies, prevent the revival of the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party and control the press more effectively. The Soviets agreed to withdraw their armed forces still in Czechoslovakia after manoeuvres in June and permit the 9 September Party Congress . On 3 August representatives from the "Warsaw Five" and Czechoslovakia met in Bratislava and signed
7812-454: The alleged traitors. Apropos of the conspiracy theories of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion , prosecutors claimed that a "Zionist-Imperialist" summit had taken place in Washington DC in April 1947 with President Harry S. Truman , undersecretary of state Dean Acheson , former treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. , David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharret in attendance. The prosecution charged that defendants were acting in accordance with
7936-448: The communist leaders from the secret police or prisons where they were held. Most importantly, this new self-called freedom and the introduction of television into the lives of everyday Czechoslovak citizens moved the political dialogue from the intellectual to the popular sphere. Initial reaction within the Communist Bloc was mixed. Hungary 's János Kádár was highly supportive of Dubček's appointment in January, but Leonid Brezhnev and
8060-434: The conservative revivalists were motivated by nationalism or considered contemporary spoken Czech unsuitable for formal, widespread use. Adherence to historical patterns was later relaxed and standard Czech adopted a number of features from Common Czech (a widespread informal interdialectal variety), such as leaving some proper nouns undeclined. This has resulted in a relatively high level of homogeneity among all varieties of
8184-483: The country to suppress the reforms. The Prague Spring reforms were a strong attempt by Dubček to grant additional rights to the citizens of Czechoslovakia in an act of partial decentralization of the economy and democratization . The freedoms granted included a loosening of restrictions on the media , speech and travel . After national discussion of dividing the country into a federation of three republics, Bohemia , Moravia – Silesia and Slovakia , Dubček oversaw
8308-452: The country was already quite industrialized before World War II while the Soviet model mainly took into account less developed economies. Novotný's attempt at restructuring the economy, the 1965 New Economic Model , spurred increased demand for political reform as well. The liberalization of 1960s enabled a partial reclaiming of the political and cultural legacy of the First Czechoslovak Republic and its figures such as Tomáš Masaryk , which
8432-441: The day to allow for a "day of reflection" for the editorial staffs. Writers and reporters agreed with Dubček to support a limited reinstitution of the censorship office, as long as the institution was to only last three months. Finally, by September 1968, the Czechoslovak Communist Party plenum was held to instate the new censorship law. In the words of the Moscow-approved resolution, "The press, radio, and television are first of all
8556-456: The decision to split into two, the Czech Socialist Republic and Slovak Socialist Republic . This dual federation was the only formal change that survived the invasion. The reforms, especially the decentralization of administrative authority, were not received well by the Soviets, who, after failed negotiations, sent half a million Warsaw Pact troops and tanks to occupy the country. The New York Times cited reports of 650,000 men equipped with
8680-400: The defendants admitted their guilt and requested death. On the last day of the trial, Rudolf Slánský , General Secretary of the KSČ, and other leading party members were pronounced guilty. Eleven, including Slánský, were hanged at Pankrác Prison in Prague on 3 December, and three (Artur London, Eugen Löbl and Vavro Hajdů) were sentenced to life imprisonment . The state prosecutor at
8804-427: The dialects of Bohemia. Czech has a moderately-sized phoneme inventory, comprising ten monophthongs , three diphthongs and 25 consonants (divided into "hard", "neutral" and "soft" categories). Words may contain complicated consonant clusters or lack vowels altogether. Czech has a raised alveolar trill , which is known to occur as a phoneme in only a few other languages, represented by the grapheme ř . Czech
8928-579: The direct assistance of the Soviet Union . According to literature scholar Peter Steiner, the one-party Communist state had to find or conjure up imaginary enemies from within to justify its continuing existence; this was the motive for show trials . After the 1948 Tito–Stalin split , a sequence of high-level political trials against alleged Titoist and Western imperialist elements were held in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Albania, but these trials were not overtly antisemitic. The anti-cosmopolitan campaign ,
9052-432: The discussion that an attempt to detain members of Maki would result in greater, not lesser influence for the party. The cabinet, by a vote of 13–7, voted for an alternate proposal which permitted "the employment of all means at the government's disposal, in the framework of the existing law and of laws yet to be passed, to deny Maki the opportunity to take public action, without declaring it an organization that exists outside
9176-405: The easily separable affixes characteristic of agglutinative languages are limited. Czech inflects for case, gender and number in nouns and tense, aspect, mood , person and subject number and gender in verbs. Parts of speech include adjectives, adverbs , numbers, interrogative words , prepositions , conjunctions and interjections . Adverbs are primarily formed from adjectives by taking
9300-516: The end of August. When the weeklies Reporter and Politika responded harshly to this threat, even going so far as to not so subtly criticize the Presidium itself in Politika , the government banned Reporter for a month, suspended Politika indefinitely, and prohibited any political programs from appearing on the radio or television. The intellectuals were stuck at an impasse; they recognized
9424-477: The final ý or í of the base form and replacing it with e , ě , y , or o . Negative statements are formed by adding the affix ne- to the main verb of a clause, with one exception: je (he, she or it is) becomes není . Because Czech uses grammatical case to convey word function in a sentence (instead of relying on word order , as English does), its word order is flexible. As a pro-drop language , in Czech an intransitive sentence can consist of only
9548-596: The government's increasing normalization, but they were unsure whether to trust that the measures were only temporary or demand more. For example, still believing in Dubcek's promises for reform, Milan Kundera published the article "Cesky udel" (Our Czech Destiny) in Literarni listy on 19 December. He wrote: "People who today are falling into depression and defeatism, commenting that there are not enough guarantees, that everything could end badly, that we might again end up in
9672-403: The initial tanks rolled into Prague on 21 August 1968. While both the radio station and the television station managed to hold out for at least enough time for initial broadcasts of the invasion, what the Soviets did not attack by force they attacked by reenacting party censorship. In reaction to the invasion, on 28 August 1968, all Czechoslovak publishers agreed to halt production of newspapers for
9796-461: The instruments for carrying into life the policies of the Party and state." While that was not yet the end of the media's self-called freedom after the Prague Spring, it was the beginning of the end. During November, the Presidium, under Husak, declared that the Czechoslovak press could not make any negative remarks about the Soviet invaders or they would risk violating the agreement they had come to at
9920-591: The invasion of Czechoslovakia to the American war in Vietnam and more pointedly to the policies of Adolf Hitler towards Czechoslovakia in 1938–39. Zhou ended his speech with a barely veiled call for the people of Czechoslovakia to wage guerrilla war against the Red Army. The next day, several countries suggested a United Nations resolution condemning the intervention and calling for immediate withdrawal. Eventually,
10044-438: The invasion, Czechoslovakia entered a period known as normalization (Czech: normalizace , Slovak: normalizácia ), in which new leaders attempted to restore the political and economic values that had prevailed before Dubček gained control of the KSČ. Gustáv Husák , who replaced Dubček as First Secretary and also became President , reversed almost all of the reforms. The Prague Spring inspired music and literature including
10168-494: The language. Czech is spoken by about 10 million residents of the Czech Republic . A Eurobarometer survey conducted from January to March 2012 found that the first language of 98 percent of Czech citizens was Czech, the third-highest proportion of a population in the European Union (behind Greece and Hungary ). As the official language of the Czech Republic (a member of the European Union since 2004), Czech
10292-844: The last two are found only in loanwords such as auto "car" and euro "euro". In Czech orthography, the vowels are spelled as follows: The letter ⟨ ě ⟩ indicates that the previous consonant is palatalized (e.g. něco /ɲɛt͡so/ ). After a labial it represents /jɛ/ (e.g. běs /bjɛs/ ); but ⟨mě⟩ is pronounced /mɲɛ/, cf. měkký ( /mɲɛkiː/ ). The consonant phonemes of Czech and their equivalent letters in Czech orthography are as follows: Czech consonants are categorized as "hard", "neutral", or "soft": Hard consonants may not be followed by i or í in writing, or soft ones by y or ý (except in loanwords such as kilogram ). Neutral consonants may take either character. Hard consonants are sometimes known as "strong", and soft ones as "weak". This distinction
10416-585: The law." Defense of the American Jewish Soviet spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg surged in November and December 1952 and was organized by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union —confirmation of which occurred with the publication of KGB documents obtained by Alexander Vassiliev in 2011. Proponents of clemency argued that the Rosenbergs were actually "innocent Jewish peace activists". According to American historian Ronald Radosh ,
10540-473: The lead prosecutor said, were "of Jewish origin") began on 20 November 1952. They were charged with being Titoists and Zionists . Those tried with Slánský were Bedřich Geminder , Otto Šling , André Simone , Karel Šváb , Otto Fischl , Rudolf Margolius , Vladimir Clementis , Ludvik Frejka , Bedřich Reicin , Artur London , Eugen Löbl [ cs ; de ] , Josef Frank and Vavro Hajdů [ cs ] . The trial lasted eight days. Many of
10664-504: The letter ř (capital Ř ) is very rare among languages and often claimed to be unique to Czech, though it also occurs in some dialects of Kashubian , and formerly occurred in Polish. It represents the raised alveolar non-sonorant trill ( IPA : [r̝] ), a sound somewhere between Czech r and ž (example: "řeka" (river) ), and is present in Dvořák . In unvoiced environments, /r̝/
10788-556: The maintenance of good relations with Western countries and cooperation with the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc nations. It spoke of a ten-year transition through which democratic elections would be made possible and a new form of democratic socialism would replace the status quo. Those who drafted the Action Programme were careful not to criticize the actions of the post-war Communist regime, only to point out policies that they felt had outlived their usefulness. Although it
10912-433: The meeting Dubček defended the proposals of the KSČ's reformist wing while pledging commitment to the Warsaw Pact and Comecon . The KSČ leadership, however, was divided between vigorous reformers (Smrkovský, Černík, and František Kriegel ) and hardliners ( Vasil Biľak , Drahomír Kolder , and Oldřich Švestka ) who adopted an anti-reformist stance. Brezhnev decided on compromise. The KSČ delegates reaffirmed their loyalty to
11036-461: The most modern and sophisticated weapons in the Soviet military catalogue. A massive wave of emigration swept the nation. Resistance was mounted throughout the country, involving attempted fraternization , sabotage of street signs, defiance of curfews, etc. While the Soviet military had predicted that it would take four days to subdue the country, the resistance held out for almost eight months until diplomatic maneuvers finally circumvented it. It became
11160-414: The noun they modify. The following is a glossed example: Chc-i want- 1SG navštív-it visit- INF universit-u, university- SG . ACC , na on kter-ou which- SG . F . ACC chod-í attend- 3SG Sl%C3%A1nsk%C3%BD trial The Slánský trial (officially Proces s vedením protistátního spikleneckého centra v čele s Rudolfem Slánským English: "Trial of
11284-460: The overwhelming evidence against them and because of their shame and guilt. Many Czechoslovak citizens were in favor of harsh measures against the supposed traitors. Czech poet Ivan Skála [ cs ] called for "a dog's death for [such] dogs" ( Czech : Psovi psí smrt! ). After the deaths of both Stalin and Gottwald in March 1953, the harshness of the persecutions slowly decreased, and
11408-465: The party of its liberal members, and dismissed from public office professional and intellectual elites who openly expressed disagreement with the political transformation. (Many of those purged would later become the dissidents of Czechoslovak underground culture , active in Charter 77 and related movements which eventually met success in the Velvet Revolution .) Husák worked to reinstate the power of
11532-406: The police and strengthen ties with the rest of the Communist bloc. He also sought to re- centralize the economy, as a considerable amount of freedom had been granted to industries during the Prague Spring. Commentary on politics was forbidden in mainstream media, and political statements by anyone not considered to have "full political trust" were also banned. The only significant change that survived
11656-526: The press opened the door for the first look at Czechoslovakia's past by Czechoslovakia's people. Many of the investigations centered on the country's history under communism, especially in the instance of the Stalinist -period. In another television appearance, Goldstücker presented both doctored and undoctored photographs of former communist leaders who had been purged, imprisoned, or executed and thus erased from communist history. The Writers' Union also formed
11780-540: The renewed suppression of free speech. The generalized resistance caused the Soviet Union to abandon its original plan to oust the First Secretary. Dubček, who had been arrested on the night of 20 August, was taken to Moscow for negotiations. There, under heavy psychological pressure from Soviet politicians, Dubček and all the highest-ranked leaders but František Kriegel signed the Moscow Protocol . It
11904-582: The return of the language to high culture . This period is known as the Czech National Revival (or Renaissance). During the national revival, in 1809 linguist and historian Josef Dobrovský released a German-language grammar of Old Czech entitled Ausführliches Lehrgebäude der böhmischen Sprache ('Comprehensive Doctrine of the Bohemian Language'). Dobrovský had intended his book to be descriptive , and did not think Czech had
12028-657: The scholar Eduard Goldstücker became chairman of the Union of Czechoslovak Writers and thus editor-in-chief of Literární noviny , which under Novotný had been filled with party loyalists. Goldstücker tested the boundaries of Dubček's devotion to freedom of the press when on 4 February he appeared in a television interview as the new head of the union. During the interview he openly criticized Novotný, exposing all of Novotný's previously unreported policies and explaining how they were preventing progress in Czechoslovakia. Goldstücker suffered no repercussions, Dubček instead began to build
12152-441: The spoken language. There was no standardization distinguishing between Czech and Slovak prior to the 15th century. In the 16th century, the division between Czech and Slovak becomes apparent, marking the confessional division between Lutheran Protestants in Slovakia using Czech orthography and Catholics, especially Slovak Jesuits, beginning to use a separate Slovak orthography based on Western Slovak dialects. The publication of
12276-465: The states of Texas , Nebraska and Wisconsin . In the 2000 United States Census , Czech was reported as the most common language spoken at home (besides English ) in Valley , Butler and Saunders Counties , Nebraska and Republic County, Kansas . With the exception of Spanish (the non-English language most commonly spoken at home nationwide), Czech was the most common home language in more than
12400-412: The status quo that existed prior to the Prague Spring following the brief period of intense criticism. One of the nations that most vehemently condemned the invasion was China, which objected furiously to the so-called "Brezhnev Doctrine" that declared the Soviet Union alone had the right to determine what nations were properly Communist and could invade those Communist nations whose communism did not meet
12524-617: The threat of a counter-attack was assuaged. By the morning of 21 August Czechoslovakia was occupied. Romania and Albania refused to take part in the invasion. Soviet command refrained from drawing upon East German troops for fear of reviving memories of the Nazi invasion in 1938. During the invasion 72 Czechs and Slovaks were killed (19 of those in Slovakia), 266 severely wounded and another 436 slightly injured. Alexander Dubček called upon his people not to resist. Nevertheless, there
12648-835: The trade union daily Práce (Labour). This was also helped by the Journalists' Union, which by March 1968 had already persuaded the Central Publication Board, the government censor, to allow editors to receive uncensored subscriptions to foreign papers, allowing for a more international dialogue around the news. The press, the radio, and the television also contributed to these discussions by hosting meetings where students and young workers could ask questions of writers such as Goldstücker, Pavel Kohout , and Jan Procházka and political victims such as Josef Smrkovský , Zdeněk Hejzlar, and Gustáv Husák . Television also broadcast meetings between former political prisoners and
12772-426: The trial in Prague was Josef Urválek . A Czech worker sent to attend the trial reported that the defendants did not display any emotion. He wondered why they were not afraid for their lives. On 14 December 1952, a few days after the execution, Zdeněk Nejedlý , Minister of Education, denied rumors that the confessions had been obtained with torture or drugs. Instead, the defendants admitted to their crimes because of
12896-429: The trial was released in 1953; Steiner described it as "an utterly indigestible book, crammed with so many names, dates, and particulars that I had a hard time finishing it and remembering all the details." Raphael Lemkin considered the trial an example of judicial murder and, along with the fabrication of evidence to claim Jewish doctors were plotting to kill Soviet officials (the spuriously alleged Doctors' Plot ),
13020-400: The union's previously hard-line communist weekly, members suggested that literature should be independent of the Communist Party doctrine. In June 1967, a small fraction of the union sympathized with radical socialists, especially Ludvík Vaculík , Milan Kundera , Jan Procházka , Antonín Jaroslav Liehm , Pavel Kohout and Ivan Klíma . A few months later, at a meeting of Party leaders, it
13144-424: The upper classes. Modern standard Czech originates in standardization efforts of the 18th century. By then the language had developed a literary tradition, and since then it has changed little; journals from that period contain no substantial differences from modern standard Czech, and contemporary Czechs can understand them with little difficulty. At some point before the 18th century, the Czech language abandoned
13268-577: The victims of the trial quietly received amnesty one by one, including those who had survived the Prague Trial. Later, the official historiography of the Communist Party was rather quiet on the trial, vaguely putting blame on errors that happened as a result of a " cult of personality ." Many other political trials followed on, sending many innocent victims to jail and hard labour in the Jáchymov uranium mines and labour camps. The full transcript of
13392-527: The wake of both the Doctors Plot trial and the Slánský trial, considered suppressing Maki , the Israeli communist party. In internal discussions, Ben-Gurion suggested he would favor this even to the point of throwing communist activists in concentration camps, though he spoke of this as being a potential response rather than an imminent necessity. "If there is a need to build camps, we will do it. If there
13516-421: The work of Václav Havel , Karel Husa , Karel Kryl and Milan Kundera 's novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being . The process of de-Stalinization in Czechoslovakia had begun under Antonín Novotný in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but had progressed more slowly than in most other states of the Eastern Bloc . Following the lead of Nikita Khrushchev , Novotný proclaimed the completion of socialism , and
13640-406: The world premiere at FIPADOC International Documentary Festival, Biarritz, France on January 18, 2022. The new documentary made from the Slánský trial film and audio archives found by chance in 2018 in a warehouse in the suburb of Prague served as a starting point for the film. The director tells the trial through the descendants of three of the condemned: the daughter and grandson of Rudolf Slánský ,
13764-547: The ČSSR government, but the Soviet Press printed an unsigned request—allegedly by Czechoslovak party and state leaders—for "immediate assistance, including assistance with armed forces". At the 14th KSČ Party Congress (conducted secretly, immediately following the intervention), it was emphasized that no member of the leadership had invited the intervention. More recent evidence suggests that conservative KSČ members (including Biľak, Švestka, Kolder, Indra, and Kapek) did send
13888-685: Was agreed that Dubček would remain in office and a programme of moderate reform would continue. On 25 August citizens of the Soviet Union who did not approve of the invasion protested in Red Square ; seven protesters opened banners with anti-invasion slogans. The demonstrators were brutally beaten and arrested by security forces, and later punished by a secret tribunal; the protest was dubbed "anti-Soviet" and several people were detained in psychiatric hospitals. A more pronounced effect took place in Romania, where Nicolae Ceaușescu , General Secretary of
14012-413: Was based on the view that "Socialism cannot mean only liberation of the working people from the domination of exploiting class relations, but must make more provisions for a fuller life of the personality than any bourgeois democracy." It would limit the power of the secret police and provide for the federalization of the ČSSR into two equal nations. The programme also covered foreign policy, including both
14136-547: Was decided that administrative actions against the writers who openly expressed support of reformation would be taken. Since only a small group of the union held these beliefs, the remaining members were relied upon to discipline their colleagues. Control over Literární noviny and several other publishers was transferred to the Ministry of Culture, and even some leaders of the Party who later became major reformers—including Dubček—endorsed these moves. As President Antonín Novotný
14260-686: Was defeated by the Habsburgs in 1620, the Protestant intellectuals had to leave the country. This emigration together with other consequences of the Thirty Years' War had a negative impact on the further use of the Czech language. In 1627, Czech and German became official languages of the Kingdom of Bohemia and in the 18th century German became dominant in Bohemia and Moravia, especially among
14384-497: Was ideologically suppressed in the Stalinist era as bourgeois nationalist and liberal capitalist . This reclamation can be seen in the success of publications such as Tomáš G. Masaryk (1968) by Milan Machovec . In May 1963, some Marxist intellectuals organized the Liblice Conference that discussed Franz Kafka 's life, marking the beginning of the cultural democratization of Czechoslovakia which ultimately led to
14508-529: Was killed by Peter" the order of subject and object is inverted: Petr zabil Pavla ("Peter killed Paul") becomes "Paul, Peter killed" ( Pavla zabil Petr ). Pavla is in the accusative case , the grammatical object of the verb. A word at the end of a clause is typically emphasized, unless an upward intonation indicates that the sentence is a question: In parts of Bohemia (including Prague ), questions such as Jí pes bagetu? without an interrogative word (such as co , "what" or kdo , "who") are intoned in
14632-682: Was losing support, Alexander Dubček, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Slovakia , and economist Ota Šik challenged him at a meeting of the Central Committee of the Party. Novotný then invited the Secretary General of the Communist Party of Soviet Union , Leonid Brezhnev , to Prague that December, seeking support; Brezhnev, however, was surprised at the extent of the opposition to Novotný and so he rather supported his removal. Dubček replaced Novotný as First Secretary on 5 January 1968. On 22 March, Novotný resigned and
14756-764: Was orchestrated (and the subsequent terror staged in Czechoslovakia ) on the order of Moscow leadership by Soviet advisors, who were invited by Rudolf Slánský and Klement Gottwald , with the help of the Czechoslovak State Security personnel following the László Rajk trial in Budapest in September 1949. Klement Gottwald, president of Czechoslovakia and leader of the Communist Party, feared being purged and decided to sacrifice Slánský,
14880-594: Was perhaps surprised at, but not resentful of, Soviet suggestions. In May, the KGB initiated Operation Progress, which involved Soviet agents infiltrating Czechoslovak pro-democratic organizations, such as the Socialist and Christian Democrat parties. The Soviet leadership tried to stop, or at least limit, the changes in the ČSSR through a series of negotiations. The Soviet Union agreed to bilateral talks with Czechoslovakia from 29 July to 1 August at Čierna nad Tisou , near
15004-510: Was replaced by Ludvík Svoboda , who later gave consent to the reforms. Early signs of change were few. In an interview with KSČ Presidium member Josef Smrkovský published in the Party newspaper Rudé Právo with the title "What Lies Ahead", he insisted that Dubček's appointment at the January Plenum would further the goals of socialism and maintain the working class nature of the Party. However, right after Dubček assumed power,
15128-485: Was scattered resistance in the streets. Road signs in towns were removed or painted over—except for those indicating the way to Moscow. Many small villages renamed themselves "Dubček" or "Svoboda"; thus, without navigational equipment, the invaders were often confused. On the night of the invasion the Czechoslovak Presidium declared that Warsaw Pact troops had crossed the border without the knowledge of
15252-400: Was stipulated that reform must proceed under KSČ direction, popular pressure mounted to implement reforms immediately. Radical elements became more vocal: anti-Soviet polemics appeared in the press on 26 June 1968, and new unaffiliated political clubs were created. Party conservatives urged repressive measures, but Dubček counselled moderation and re-emphasized KSČ leadership. At the Presidium of
15376-560: Was the federalization of the country , which created the Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic in 1969. In 1987, the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged that his liberalizing policies of glasnost and perestroika owed a great deal to Dubček's "socialism with a human face". When asked what the difference was between the Prague Spring and Gorbachev's own reforms,
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