The edited collection is the first attempt to take a more coherent look
at the Russian perception of the Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact
occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. The publication is
therefore a collection of interviews, memoirs and academic studies
focusing on Russian soldiers, dissidents and journalists involved in and
affected by the Soviet invasion. The book begins with a focus on the
Soviet soldiers who came to Czechoslovakia. It depicts their inner world
and the mighty machinery of the Soviet propaganda to which they were
exposed. The Archive supplement offers a fresh look at the role of KGB
and the Soviet embassy in the Czechoslovak events of August 1968 by
Russian historians Nikita Petrov and Olga Pavlenko. The second part
presents the Soviet journalists living in Prague in 1968 who supported
the Prague Spring and subsequently paid for their stance by being
deported and losing their job. The last part of the book focuses on the
kinship that the Soviet liberal intelligentsia and dissident movement,
which emerged while Leonid Brezhnev was tightening the screws in the
USSR in late 1960s, felt toward events in Prague, which for them
represented one of the last hopes for change. It begins with the study
of the Czech researcher Tomas Glanc exploring the different reactions on
Prague Spring and August 1968 invasion among the Soviet inteligentsia.
Interviews with former Soviet dissidents Lyudmila Alexeeva and Natalia
Gorbanevskaya follow. As a supplement, the diary of the ordinary Soviet
citizen Elvira Filipovich is included.
