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Russian president Boris Yeltsin on Thursday sent a telegram to the
Congress of Intellectuals of the Russian Federation, marking the 30th
anniversary of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet and Warsaw pact
tanks back in August 1968.
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The Prague Spring in 1968 was "an attempt to escape from ideological
dogmatism and lies," says Yeltsin in the telegram. A declaration by
Russian intellectuals who met on Thursday to show regret for their
country's invasion in 1968 says that, "People believed that it was
possible to build socialism with a human face, but even half-hearted
attempts to introduce reforms gave cause for concern to those who were
striving to preserve the totalitarian regime". The document goes on to say that, "We must draw a lesson from that. In 1991 Russians who fight the cause of democracy showed that no force is able to stop a nation's longing for freedom." The head of the Congress of Russian Intellectuals, Sergei Filatov, read the telegram from Yeltsin, which said among other things that "it is symbolic that in Moscow, where the decision to send in troops was made, these kind of meetings are now taking place to shed light on the events of the Prague Spring. Today, a new, democratic Russia is building its active foreign policy on the principle of mutual respect." |
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