Foreword

The year 2008 serves as an important anniversary of the many crucial events that have shaped Czech history—the ninetieth birthday of the founding of the first Czechoslovak Republic in 1918; the seventieth commemoration of the 1938 Munich Agreement which gave the Sudetenland to Germany and de facto control of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, thereby dismembering the country and putting an end to democracy in Czechoslovakia; and the pivotal Communist coup in 1948 and the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Now, as the Czech Republic is poised to assume the presidency of the European Union during the first half of 2009, we find ourselves in a position to contemplate these historical anniversaries marked in the year 2008 and the changes that have led us to where we are today. The events that took place in Czechoslovakia in 1968 were a milestone in Czech, Slovak, European, and transatlantic history. As they had in 1938, the Czechoslovak people felt again in 1968 that the West was not prepared to fight for a strange country, and instead it let us down. I was six years old in 1968 when the tanks rolled into the country. As a young boy, I was excited to see the tanks in the streets and didn’t understand why my mom was crying and why my dad was angry. After that, I began to understand the true meaning of those tanks.

Two lessons arose from the Warsaw Pact intervention of 1968. First, intellectuals in the East and West came to realize that building socialism with a human face is not feasible. The second lesson of 1968 for the United States and the West is that the Czech Republic must not be abandoned again. This second lesson helped us gain entry into NATO in 1999 and has led to an alliance between the United States, the Czech Republic, and Central Europe that is stronger than ever before.

I thank the University of New Orleans, Center Austria, and all those involved for organizing the “Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968” conference. I am grateful to have the opportunity to mark these defining milestones in Czech history with you.