Unlke the Hungarians who actually fought bitterly against the Soviets in '56, and the Poles who certainly would have had the Sovs gone into Poland in the 1980s, the Czechs didn't offer any actual armed resistance that I'm aware of. The populace showed their feelings, but that's about it. I hate to keep on sounding as if I have something against the Czechs, but they just don't seem to care too much for things that go boom in their neighborhood. Who knows, maybe they are right! The Czechs are pretty good at bloodless resistance.

How could any such Eastern European country have stood up to the might of the USSR? Yes, they were brutally crushed, but at least they made a stand. Most of what I know about this uprising comes from the novels of Milan Kundera, especially The Unbearable Lightness of Being (read his books, all of you!), so I can appreciate the point of view of the Czech people, at least on an emotional level.

Here again were heroes in a desperate time. They lost, they had no chance, but for a shining week they stood against tyranny and were human beings.