In Prague, the year 1968 began with a bold attempt to reform and liberalize its creaking Soviet communist regime from within, 50 years later, authoritarianism is again on the rise in Eastern Europe.

FOR DECADES after the Second World War, the Cold War between the U.S. and the USSR loomed as the central fact of world politics--an international conflict between apparently polar opposite systems: ...

Editor’s Note: Daniel Kumermann is a former foreign affairs journalist, Czech Ambassador to Israel (1999-2003), Consul General in Los Angeles (2006-2011), and signatory of the Charter 77 human rights ...

David Newell-Smith documented the lives of ordinary Czechs in Prague as they embraced First secretary Dubček’s liberalising political reforms. Less than a month later, on 21 August 1968, Warsaw Pact ...

A new book and companion exhibition highlight a Czech photographer's stunning snapshots of the Soviet invasion of Prague. Josef Koudelka/Magnum PhotosWenceslas Square, Prague, 1968 One afternoon in ...

Alexander Dubcek, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, on his arrival at the Central Committee building, Sept.12,1968. S & G/ EMPICS Archive ...

This year, NPR is looking at the events of 1968 that continue to shape our world. Fifty years ago today, Czechoslovakia's parliament under duress approved a treaty sanctioning the occupation of the ...

One afternoon in early September, the Czech photographer Josef Koudelka was administering a bottle of cognac to a group of well-wishers at the Pace/MacGill Gallery, two placid, spacious rooms on the ...