Moscow - Russia yesterday marked the 30th anniversary of the crackdown on Czechoslovakia's "Prague Spring" reform movement, an event commentators say set the tone for the last generation of Soviet totalitarian rule.
Poets, activists and former dissidents gathered at a Moscow cinema to recall the events of August 1968 when Soviet and allied troops crushed attempts by Czechoslovakia's government to ease Communist rule and allow greater personal freedom.
President Boris Yeltsin, in a telegram to yesterday's gathering, described the doomed Czechoslovak reform movement as "an attempt to escape from ideological dogmatism and lies".