sample images by stefan tyszko / 30prague russian invasion of prague 3/5/02

Family wait for a train to the West.
In the aftermath of the invasion, as one commentator and eyewitness, Jan Culik, put it, Czechoslovakia was thrown into a timeless, isolated, hysterical neo-Stalinist mode and remained motionless in this state of non-being until 1989. By the early Seventies, thousands of ordinary Czechs had lost their jobs for refusing to obey a diktat sanctioning the invasion, half a million lost their party membership and around 150,000 fled the country. Many classic works of fiction and even music, such as Beethoven’s Fidelio, were banned, and travel abroad was disallowed.