On the night of August 20, 1968, the Soviet Army and the armies of other communist countries (East Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria) invaded Czechoslovakia with an overwhelming force of 200,000 troops and 5,000 tanks to crush the democratization process that was under way there. This brought to an abrupt end the aspirations of the Czechoslovak people to restore and rebuild their country on democratic principles. Dozens of Czech and Slovak citizens protesting the invasion were killed and hundreds severely wounded in the streets of Prague and other cities. 

On January 16, 1969, Jan Palach, a student at the Charles University in Prague, set himself on fire not far from the statue of St. Wenceslas in a protest against the occupation, and died few days later from severe burns that he suffered.

The era that followed is now known as “normalization”. It was characterized by forced restoration of the state monopoly of the Communist party in the occupied country, and mass emigration and persecution of the opponents of the regime. But the seeds of change were sewn, and the stage was set for the Velvet Revolution of 1989 to win the country back its freedom.