I was too young at the time, and have no recollection of those events.

But I was a student in 1968, and happened to visit Prague both before and after the Soviet invasion. I wish someone as knowledgeable as you are would manage to present us with this level of analysis about these parallel events in Czechoslovakia.

We were young, eager to go where no one would go, behind the Iron Curtain. In the student cafeteries, a fork and a knife would replace the hammer and sicle emblem. Russians were considered as slightly more than barbarous tribes coming from far away plains. I remember very well what happened to my Central European cousins, during the Revolution and after it had been crushed and the place mopped up.

This has been a profundly formating experience, and I have kept ever since a deep attraction towards Central and Eastern Europe.