PragueALL spring, as Margaret and Helena had worked hard for their final examinations, they had shared the hopes of the Czechs and Slovaks for peaceful change in their country. The ‘Prague Spring’, it was called.
The new leader of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, Mr Dubcek, became a familiar face in newspapers and on the television as he and his government tried to introduce what he called ‘Communism with a human face.’
The press in Czechoslovakia was freed from control by the state and the Communist Party. Public debate was allowed. Reform was in the air. Mr Dubcek and the Czechoslovaks never spoke or thought of leaving the Warsaw Pact, controlled by the Soviet Union, or of becoming a neutral country. Many people thought that it was because of those dreams that Hungary’s uprising had b
