Dubček was a committed communist, and had been First Secretary of the Communist Party of Slovakia since 1963 although he struggled to work with Antonín Novotný, the President of Czechoslovakia. Under Novotný’s control the country had experienced a slow and uneasy move towards de-Stalinisation while suffering a huge economic downturn.
Frustrated by the President’s failure to effectively restructure the country, Dubček and other reformists challenged him at a meeting of the Central Committee in October 1967. In response Novotný secretly invited the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev to visit Czechoslovakia to secure his support. However, this plan backfired when Brezhnev learned just how unpopular Novotný was and instead gave his support to those who wished to remove him from power.
Dubček replaced Novotný as the leader of Czechoslovakia on 5 January 1968 and quickly began to introduce a series of political and economic reforms. Known as ‘socialism with a human face’ this programme was intended to keep the Communist Party in control of the government while allowing some mild democratisation and political liberalisation.
As the reforms took hold, the government was faced with public demands to go even further. At the same time, the USSR and its allies in the Warsaw Pact began pressuring Dubček to bring what had become known as the Prague Spring under control. On 20 August the countries of the Warsaw Pact took matters in to their own hands and moved their armed forces into Czechoslovakia.
