The Ukrainian Security Service's State Archive has passed electronic copies of 311 documents related to the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia as part of cooperation between the Security Service and the Czech Institute for Totalitarian Regimes Studies and the State Security Archive.
The documents include almost 1,000 pages reflecting people’s perception of the 1968 events in Ukraine and Czechoslovakia, the Ukrainian Security Service said.
The documents present information and special reports and reports by the State Security Committee of the Ukrainian Socialist Republic and the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party. They all were declassified only recently.
They also include statements and remarks by people living in Ukraine and Czechoslovakia about the events, correspondence of Ukrainians and Czechoslovaks, and reports on behavior of certain individuals.
The documents reveal that official Soviet claims that "an overwhelming majority of the people approve of these measures by the Soviet power" radically contrasted their actual perception by Czechoslovaks. One of the memos cites foreign tourists saying that most locals were quite hostile to the Soviet forces.
