Czechoslovakia 1918-1968

Without any narration, it's the soundtrack that is left to be the voice of this potted history of Czechoslovakia as it was annexed by Hitler, freed by the Soviets, had a brief time of relative peace and prosperity and then, in 1968, their erstwhile rescuers - as poignantly illustrated by a cartoon here - returned with their tanks and guns, only this time they were there to stay. It's barely a quarter of an hour long, so barring a few significant images of the early days and the Nazis, it really focuses with an impressive array of archive on the invasion and of the protesters determined to hold onto their hard-fought freedoms in the face of overwhelming military superiority. You don't need to be fully appraised of this nation's history to get the gist here, and with the score changing from the oppressive to the jollier before reverting to something downbeat, we appreciate better how pictures speak a thousand words.

Robert Fresco's and Denis Sanders's "Czechoslovakia 1968" looks mainly at Czechoslovakia's history from its founding through the Warsaw Pact invasion that eviscerated the political liberalization. Consisting entirely of footage with no dialogue, it shows the country's days as a predominantly agricultural society, and then the Nazi occupation, and then Soviet takeover. A good trick that the documentary uses is to slow the background music right before the 1968 invasion.

Beyond this, the events shown in the documentary need to get seen in the context of everything that happened in 1968. The Vietnam War dominated the international scene, and the liberalization in Czechoslovakia - commonly known as Prague Spring - reflected the hippie movement and anti-war movement in the US. The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy caused much of the Civil Rights Movement to collapse. There was also the student uprising in Paris that the DeGaulle government crushed. One of the most important events was the demonstration outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, protesting the election of the pro-war Hubert Humphrey. In fact, Richard Daley called in the Illinois National Guard at almost the same time that Soviet tanks entered Prague.

And then there were the Olympics in Mexico City. A number of students saw that the world's attention would be focused on the city, and so they wanted to draw attention to political issues in Mexico (in particular the government's ban on protests). When they converged in Tlatelolco, the Mexican army opened fire on them. Despite the government's hope that this would suppress anything political at the games, John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised their fists to draw attention to racism in the US, and Věra Čáslavská looked down while the Soviet anthem played to protest the invasion of her country.

And finally, Nixon got elected president. Nineteen sixty-seven had seen the Summer of Love, and then the following year ended the era of idealism. Alexander Dubček's reforms gave way to full-scale authoritarianism. It's for these reasons that I often say that the Eastern and Western Blocs had more in common than most people admit.

Anyway, it's a good documentary. What happened in the world in 1968 must never get forgotten.