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Czechs marked the 44th anniversary of the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. A number of high-ranking politicians attended a remembrance ceremony on Tuesday at the main Czech Radio building in Prague, including speakers of both the upper and lower house and Prague mayor Bohuslav Svoboda. At least 15 people perished in front of the building as they tried to prevent Soviet troops from entering after the invasion on August 21, 1968. More than 100 people were killed across the country during the tragic days that followed the invasion.

A remembrance ceremony on Tuesday marked the 44th anniversary of the beginning of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The first days of the invasion were closely tied to the Czech Radio building in front of which bloody clashes took place and at least 15 civilians were killed.

Moravian folklore musician Jan Rokyta died on Sunday at the age of 74, the news agency ČTK reported. Jan Rokyta, a native of Jasenná near Vizovice, in the east of the country, founded the cimbalom band Technik in 1958. He collaborated with Czech Radio for several decades, and organized a number of festivals and folklore events. His band recorded more than 40 albums including Pěsničky, or Songs, sung by the writer and former dissident Ludvík Vaculík.

Who is the greatest Czech living abroad? As part of the “Czechs abroad” project, the Foreign Ministry, together with Czech Radio and Czech TV, is finding the answer to that question. The ambitious initiative also seeks to paint a more vivid picture of those Czechs who do not live in their native country – through reports, conferences and discussions. Sarah Borufka has more.

In the last years of the Cold War, Radio Prague’s English department was many times bigger than it is today and divided into several sections, devoted to different parts of the world. One of the most important was the Afro-Asian service. Africa was an important Cold War battleground and Radio Prague’s Afro-Asian service was not just telling the people of Africa about Czechoslovakia. It also covered events within Africa itself, following closely the Soviet political line. At one time the department was receiving tens of thousands of listeners’ letters

In the 1970s the Cold War was fought on many fronts. One of them was Northern Ireland, where the tension and violence that raged throughout the decade also became part of the propaganda war between East and West. At the time, Czechoslovak Radio’s correspondent in London was Karel Kvapil, who had entered the radio after the wave of sackings following the 1968 Soviet-led invasion, and later went on to become its last communist era general director. In 1977 Kvapil travelled to Belfast, to report on the Troubles. For part of his programme he spoke with

Czech Radio will launch a new largely spoken-word station later in 2012 – merging three stations – Leonardo, Rádio Česko and Czech Radio 6 – in one. The move is in part reaction to a drop in listenership and will be accompanied by restructuring at Czech Radio that will also lead to layoffs. A projected 15 – 20 percent of employees (one fifth) will be let go over the next two years, the head of Czech Radio Peter Duhan confirmed. The new station, operatively being called Czech Radio 4, will be launched either on the first of November or December of this year. Along with the changes, on Thursday the Czech Radio Council also approved a 340,000 crown bonus for the head of Czech Radio in the 2Q, minus a reported 60,000 as Czech Radio has failed to corner 21 percent of the market. Czech Radio will also launch a tender for a new logo.

In the course of 1969 and 1970 Czechoslovak Radio was transformed back into what it had been in the 1950s, a tool of hard line propaganda. In the process, over 700 radio staff were forced to leave their jobs. Those who stayed found their freedom of expression severely curtailed. To give an idea of the extent to which things had changed by August 1969 - the first anniversary of the Soviet led invasion – I will start with a short extract from Radio Prague’s broadcasts back in 1968, as the tanks rolled into the city. At the time the radio was playing

On the airwaves, 1968 ended very much as it had begun. For New Year’s Eve, Czechoslovak Radio chose the same format as the year before, with the light-hearted musical cabaret of the Semafor Theatre. But behind the scenes, the Soviet-led occupation in August had changed everything. The Soviets were only too pleased for the radio to give the impression of normality. A gradual, almost imperceptible drift back to hard-line communism was beginning. The process came to be known cynically as “normalization”, a word that was first used by Alexander Dubček himself

In the days immediately after the Soviet invasion in August 1968, staff at Czechoslovak Radio played a cat-and-mouse game with the occupying forces. For the first couple of days, they managed to continue broadcasting directly from the radio headquarters, despite the presence of tanks outside.