Commentary
By this time, the armies of five Warsaw Pact countries had occupied Czechoslovakia. We present an excerpt from an authentic broadcast that immediately followed after the reading of the statement of the supreme body of the Communist Party, which met during the night. The next morning’s broadcast emphasised that the occupation was illegal, but that citizens primarily had to remain calm and even go to work in the morning. A few hours later, however, people tried to prevent the occupation of the radio building in the centre of Prague by building barricades, throwing stones at tanks, and talking with the soldiers. You can see how and to what extent the calls for calm were heeded in the clip Almost Hopeless. Around eleven o’clock in the morning, the building was occupied, but broadcasting was restored from a variety of secret studios around the country and from Prague again after the situation calmed down at the beginning of September. The broadcasts from the period of occupation were a very emotional issue for many people at the time, not for their content, but because the broadcasts were associated with the shock of the night of the occupation and the strong impressions of the days to follow. It therefore also plays a role in the Our Occupation clip.
