August 21

August 21st will always be a day to remember by all Czechs. Yesterday was the 45th anniversary of Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 which had ended the Prague Spring democratization movement and initiated many years of communist "normalization".
I remember the Soviet tanks and troops quite vividly (I was 6 years old) but it took me another twenty plus years to understand that summer.

Source: Radio Free Europe

There are more interesting photos from 1968 here.

What I of course cannot remember is the year when ironically fathers of these Russian soldiers came to our country in 1945 to liberate it from the Nazi rule. Luckily, I have a family chronicle, written by my grandfather and grandmother and digitized by my uncle, so I can share a couple of pictures:

Red Army soldiers in Brno Reckovice, 1945

My mom and uncle playing on a German armored vehicle wreck, 1947

Let's hope there will be more bikes and fewer tanks in this world in the future.