{"id":988,"date":"2008-06-24T21:24:59","date_gmt":"2008-06-24T20:24:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=988"},"modified":"2008-06-24T21:24:59","modified_gmt":"2008-06-24T20:24:59","slug":"prague-spring-revolution-or-reform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=988","title":{"rendered":"Prague Spring: revolution or reform?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the summer of 1968, I was 20 and becoming very interested in international politics. I followed with interest and excitement the attempts by the Czechoslovak Communists to reform their political structures and I was desperately saddened and angered by the invasion of the Warsaw Pact forces which brutally crushed these efforts at reform. I did not know then that years later I would marry a woman whose father was Czech and visit the country over 20 times.<br \/>\nThis evening, I was at the Czech Embassy in London to hear a lecture by Dr Oldrich Tuma entitled &#8220;The Prague Spring After 40 Years: Anti-Communist Revolution Or Campaign To Reform Communism?&#8221; The answer to the question appears to be: both. The liberalisation process started as the latter but, as people took control of developments away the Communist Party, it became something of the former &#8211; which is what scared the Soviet leadership and brought about the occupation.<br \/>\nBefore attending the lecture, I had coffee and a chat with my close Slovak friend Ivan Sloboda. I took him to a place he had never seen before: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cafediana.com\">Cafe Diana<\/a> which is just opposite the Czech and Slovak Embassies and very close to where Princess Diana used to live. Although i am constitutionally a republican (but certainly not politically a Republican!), I find this cafe fascinating because the walls are covered from top to bottom with photographs of Diana.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the summer of 1968, I was 20 and becoming very interested in international politics. I followed with interest and excitement the attempts by the Czechoslovak Communists to reform their political structures and I was desperately saddened and angered by the invasion of the Warsaw Pact forces which brutally crushed these efforts at reform. I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}