Monday, August 20, 2007

Today in History: All you need is love. And anti-tank rockets.

1967 was the Summer of Love in the US, with hippies trying a bit of 'shroom-tinged communism in the trendier parts of San Francisco.

In 1968, the Czechs tried for a bit less communism and a bit more Western-style freedom, only without quite so many drugs or non-bathing hippies and more fun consumerism.

The Soviets were not amused.

On the night of August 20th, the tanks of five Warsaw Pact nations rumbled across the Czech border, shot up a few people, parked a toady of Moscow in the driver's seat, and shut down the borders (but only when they realized that about 70,000 people had split.)

So remember, kids: All you need is love!

And an RPG.

5 comments:

  1. Not as much drugs, but not none. Stanislav Grof was doing some very serious LSD research, and some of the material which was synthesised for him was reaching the public.

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  2. They shot the flower child and less than 40 years later the Soviet Union was history.

    Mike

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  3. The Russians also shot and threw a few dudes out windows and coronerized them as "suicides". A kid I went to school with overseas was one who's family escaped across the border.

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  4. The bullet holes are still on the buildings in Prague. The filler that they used dried to a different color than the walls.


    jeff

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