The Prague Spring is one of the defining moments in modern Czech history, consistently evoked in film and literature as the most powerful example of the struggle of ordinary people - particularly young people - to find cultural and social liberation in the face of harsh Soviet oppression.
In 1945, Czechoslovakia went from one dictatorship to another when Russian troops liberated the country from Nazi control. From 1948 onwards, Czechoslovakia existed as a communist state suffocated by censorship and oppression of the Soviet regime. However, a period of liberalisation and reform in the 1960s gave hope that things might be about to change, until one terrible night in August 1968 when Soviet tanks rolled through the streets of Prague, crushing any hope of further progress.
