Milos Forman, the director who took the film "One flew over the cukoo's nest", died aged 86. He has lived as an American citizen for a long time, but was originaly from Czechoslovakia and fled to US during the end of Prague Spring; a series of liberalization reform introduced to Czechoslovakia by Alexander Dubček from January 1968 until the suppression by the Soviet-led invasion in August 1968.
After declaring its independence in 1918 during the aftermath of the First World War and the collapse of the Habsburg Empire, Czechoslovakia initially had a thriving, autonomous, sonstitutional democracy. However, the country was sacrificed to Nazi Germany after they signed the Munich Agreement on 1938. After the war, rather than having its constitutional democracy restored, a Soviet-endorsed Communist dictatorship was installed and the citizens fell behind the Iron Curtain.
The economy underwent a major decline through the years of communist rule, and this was when Dubček came to power. He was a politician maintaining loyalty to the Soviet Union but favoring reformed socialism through democratization and ecnomic reform. Under the slogan of "socialism with a human face", he reestablished personal liberties of people by granting greater freedoms of press, travel, assembly and greatly limited the power of the secret police. Externaly, he also opened relations with Western countries and other nations of the Soviet bloc, opened trade routes, allowed private enterprise and proposed a transition plan to democratized socialism.
Tragically, this process was ended by force. During the night of August 20th, 1968, 200,00 Societ and Warsaw Pact troops and 2,000 tanks were sent to occupy the land and suppress the movement (Pictures from the Guardian). The non-violent resistence of the Czechoslovakian people ended with 186 citizens being killed and 362 seriously wounded. After the invasion, Dubček and others were arrested and sent to Moscow, and all the reforms of the Prague Spring was repealed.
Although it may have not ended up successfully, the ashes of the Prague Spring influenced the ultimate democratization of Czechoslovakia in 1989. One was the legacy of the dissident movement. With the intellectuals no longer in the part of government, the movement no longer focused on reforming the government, but instead overthrowing it. It was in this context that a student named Jan Palach set himself on fire on 1969 to protest the censorship of free speech. The second legacy was widespread disillusionment with Communist ideals, which was the force that drove the public into action.
These dissidence and disillusionment came together in the 1989 Velvet Revolution, which finally eliminated Communism from the nation. It was January 1989 when dissidents staged a mass protest to mark the twentieth aniversary of Jan Palach's self-immolation. The arrests of the leaders of this event led to further protests. The public continued with daily protests of increasing magnitude calling "we ask you people of '68 tojoin us students of '89". At the end, the Socialist regime resigned in the face of these mass demonstrations of the people it had oppressed, and the people saw the restoration of their democratic republic.
Refference:
Stoneman, A. J. (2015). Society for History Education Socialism With a Human Face: The Leadership and Legacy of the Prague Spring Socialism With a Human Face: The Leadership and Legacy of the Prague Spring. Source: The History Teacher, 49(1), 103–125. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24810503