Explain why relations between the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia changed in the later 1960’s
On the 20th of August 1968, troops and tanks from the Soviet Union and other members of the Warsaw pact invaded Czechoslovakia. This brought an immediate change in relations between the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia and was due to increasing opposition to communism within Czechoslovakia, leading to reforms under Dubcek, and the reactions of Moscow to these reforms.
The first reason for a change in relations was the growth of opposition in Czechoslovakia to Soviet control. This was due to what the Soviet Union had done in 1948, they murdered Jan Masaryk. Once Jan was killed the elections were rigged and they put Antonin Novotny in power from 1957. Antonin was very unpopular amongst the Czech’s as he was a hard-line communist who followed closely in the Soviet Union’s footsteps and wouldn’t introduce reform no matter what the Czech’s wanted. He was very slow to flow Khrushchev’s destalinization policy but he took much longer to release political prisoners who were jailed because of Stalin. This all caused more people to oppose the Soviet Union.