Dubcek Back in Soviet Union, Free of Chains
MOSCOW — Twenty-two years after being hauled to the Soviet Union in chains, Czechoslovak reformist hero Alexander Dubcek returned to Moscow on Friday to be feted as an official guest.
Dubcek, now 70 and chairman of the Federal Assembly, was invited by the Soviet Parliament.
His visit as an honored guest instead of a prisoner comes just six months after he bounced back from political obscurity in the peaceful “Velvet Revolution” that ousted the Communist government.
Many of Dubcek’s reforms as Czechoslovak party leader were seen as the basis of Gorbachev’s perestroika program, which inspired change throughout Eastern Europe.
But Moscow was slow to condemn the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, denouncing it only in December after all of its Warsaw Pact allies had done so.
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