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In the course of 1968 the Soviet Union made it increasingly clear that it disapproved strongly of the Prague Spring reforms. Yet, despite mounting tensions with Moscow, the Soviet led invasion on the night from August 20-21 1968, came as a huge shock. Today we are going to hear some of the broadcasts from that fateful day. We start with Radio Moscow, with an official Soviet version of events.

Czech Radio is taking part in the first World Radio Day, announced by UNESCO at the end of last year. The occasion is intended to draw attention to the importance of radio, improve access to it and support innovation in the area of new media. Czech Radio’s national, regional and specialised stations have been broadcasting a number of specialised programmes, debates, interviews and reports for the day, which is intended to be an annual event. February 13 was chosen in order to mark the founding of United Nations Radio in 1946.

The fortunes of journalist Jan Bednář were only beginning to unfold when he was kicked out of the School of Economics after signing the anti-communist Charter 77 and compelled to work as a night watchman for several years. The son of a dissident imprisoned for publishing samizdat literature, the regime was glad to be rid of him when he applied to leave the country in the early 80s. He went to England and was able to complete his studies in politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford University, from where he proceeded to join the Czechoslovak service

By the mid 1960s political control over many aspects of cultural and social life in Czechoslovakia had relaxed considerably. This was the height of the “New Wave” in Czechoslovak cinema, in theatre socialist realism had long gone out of fashion and in music the swinging sixties were well under way. But it wasn’t just through the music it was playing that Czechoslovak Radio tried to keep pace with the changes. One programme that broke the traditional mould was launched in 1966 and was called “The 33 Questions of Marcel Proust”. These were questions

Even after the death of Stalin in the Soviet Union and Klement Gottwald in Czechoslovakia the 1950s remained a period of high political tension between East and West. The Cold War was at its height; with it came the arms race and the space race. Here is Czechoslovakia’s president Antonín Novotný, in a New Year radio address on January 1 1958:

In From the Archives this week we carry on where we left off at the end of August in our chronological journey through the Czech Radio archives. We had reached the point just after the end of World War Two; after the initial euphoria, the hard work of rebuilding the country began: not least at the Czechoslovak Radio building itself, which had been shot to pieces in the Prague Uprising and received a direct hit from a German aerial torpedo.

Because August 21 is the fortieth anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the radio played such a central role in the events of those dramatic days, in this edition of From the Archives we shall be hearing the memories of one of the key journalists involved in those dramatic events. Jiří Dienstbier was one of Czechoslovak Radio’s star reporters at the time. Later he was to become one of the best-known dissidents of the ‘70s and ‘80s, and after the Velvet Revolution he was the country’s first post-communist foreign minister.

It was five years ago this week that our much-loved colleague, Olga Szántová, died at the age of 71. As a child she had spent most of World War II in New York, which was where she picked up her perfect East-Side English. Olga became one of the most familiar voices of Radio Prague’s English broadcasts during the political thaw of the 1960s, and she was also among the radio journalists who managed to carry on broadcasting secretly during the Soviet invasion of 1968, as several recordings from the time still bear witness.

Today in Mailbox we read from our listeners’ comments on Radio Prague’s 75th anniversary and reveal the identity of our August mystery lady. Listeners quoted: Tracy Andreotti, Harold Yeglin, Stan Schmitt, Colin Law, Hans Verner Lollike, Mary Lou Krenek, Ian Morrison, Richard Chen, Charles Konecny, Henrik Klemetz, Jayanta Chakrabarty, David Eldridge.

Radio Prague is celebrating its 75th birthday. The country’s foreign service was established in 1936 at the instigation of the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry and first went on air on August 31st of the same year. Although severe budget cuts led to the termination of the station’s shortwave broadcasts as of this year, Radio Prague is still providing listeners with daily news, current affairs and reports about the Czech Republic with its main platform now the Internet. The station broadcasts daily half-hours on satellite in six languages and offers podcasting and reception via mobile phone.