Indestructible ties of friendship

(The following appeared in the September 10, 1968, edition of Pravda and has been translated and condensed from the Russian.)

The strands of many centuries of friendship link the peoples of the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. This friendship took on new qualities after the Great October Revolution, which played an enormous role in the destinies of the peoples of the world, including the Czechoslovak peoples. Czechoslovakia's liberation from the yoke of the fascist invaders by the Soviet Army, alongside which the Czechoslovak patriots of General L. Svoboda's corps fought, opened up the road of independent socialist development before the working class and all the working people of the republic. ...

The working people of Czechoslovakia are justifiably proud of their great socialist gains, achieved in 20 years of people's rule under the leadership of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. At the same time, mistakes and shortcomings occurred in deciding practical tasks involving the construction of socialism in the C.S.R. These were justly criticized in the C.C.P. This criticism was appropriate in party life, but advantage was taken of it by enemies of socialism in the country, remnants of the routed exploiter classes and right-revisionist and counterrevolutionary elements relying on the support of imperialist reaction. Profiting by the temporary weakening of party leadership over the country's public and state life and abusing the conditions of socialist democracy, they launched an offensive against the C.C.P and against the socialist system in an attempt to turn the country onto the path of restoration of capitalism and separation from the socialist commonwealth.

The conspiracy of counterrevolutionary forces, supported from the outside by imperialist reaction, created a direct threat to socialism in the C.S.R. In these conditions, the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, loyal to their internationalist duty and their obligations as allies and to the principles set forth in the statement of the Bratislava conference, adopted the decision to extend aid -- including the introduction of armed forces onto the republic's territory -- to the fraternal Czechoslovak people in defense of their socialist gains.

Our troops in Czechoslovakia want only one thing -- to preserve and strengthen the great friendship of our peoples, to keep inviolable Czechoslovakia's freedom, independence and sovereignty as a socialist state. It is on this Marxist-Leninist internationalist foundation that the relations between our countries are based, it is this that constitutes the gist of the outcome of the recent Soviet-Czechoslovak negotiations in Moscow, which confirmed the friendship and fraternity of the Communist Parties and peoples of the Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic...

Despite the active resistance of rightist, counterrevolutionary forces, the results of the Moscow talks have been accepted by the Czechoslovak Communist Party and the Czechoslovak people as the only correct path for overcoming the difficulties created by the activity of the enemies of socialism, for further constructing socialist society in the republic under the C.C.P's leadership and for strengthening the domestic and foreign positions of the C.S.R., an inalienable link of the world socialist system.

Soviet people fully approve the measures taken by the C.P.S.U. Central Committee and the Soviet government to extend aid to Czechoslovakia in carrying out the jointly adopted decisions and in normalizing the situation in the C.S.R.; this normalization includes a resolute rebuff to the counterrevolutionary elements and the imperialist reaction connected with them.

We are confident that Soviet-Czechoslovak friendship will remain unshaken through all tests. Soviet people wholeheartedly wish the Czechoslovak Communists, the glorious working class, the cooperative peasantry and the working intelligentsia of the C.S.R. the swiftest possible overcoming of difficulties and confident and firm progress under the banner of Marxism-Leninism, along the socialist path.