Czech Party Condemns ’68 Soviet Invasion

The Czechoslovak Communist Party under new leader Karel Urbanek today repudiated the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion that crushed the Prague Spring attempt to introduce liberal reforms in the country.

Vasil Mohorita, a member of the ruling Politburo, said: “We believe that the intervention in our territory of five countries of the Warsaw Pact in 1968 was not justified and the decision to do it was wrong.”

The decision, taken at a Politburo meeting, follows the collapse of the party’s authority and the loss of its political monopoly under pressure from Czechoslovakia’s Civic Forum opposition movement.

Civic Forum spokesman Jiri Dienstbier dismissed the initiative. “What am I supposed to say when someone after 20 years disapproves of something which has been self-evident and common knowledge in this country for the last 20 years,” he said.

The Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia felled reformist Communist leader Alexander Dubcek in 1968 and installed a Stalinist regime that survived until the current popular revolt in the Eastern Bloc nation.

Mohorita told a news conference that the Politburo’s condemnation of the invasion was part of a reform program it approved to try to refurbish the party’s image.