Audio: Story of Soviet dissidents who stood up against Red Armys invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968

On August 25th, 1968, just four days after Russian tanks rolled through Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring reform movement, eight brave Russians staged a daring protest on Moscow’s Red Square, unfurling banners that read “Hands off Czechoslovakia!” and “Shame to the Invaders!”. They were quickly surrounded by communist police, beaten up and arrested. Most of them spent years locked up in prison, labour camps or in psychiatric institutions. This recounted in Midday a book by Natalia Gorbanevskaya — the original manuscript script of Midday was smuggled by Jana Klusakova into then-Czechoslovakia and who secretly arranged for it to be published in West Germany. In 2013 a Czech theatre ensemble staged a performance inspired by that protest, based on the book written by one of the protesters –Natalia Gorbanevskaya.

Natalia Gorbanevskaya was one of the eight Soviet protestors who wrote a book called Midday with the testimony of some of others

photo: Filip Jandourek