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Welcome to episode 17 of Cold War Conversations.

In 1968, today's guest was a 15-year-old at the same

school in Prague as Czech communist leader Alexander Dubchev's son. Yang Kulich provides a valuable

eyewitness account of the heady days of the Prague Spring and the subsequent

Warsaw Pact invasion. He provides some insightful views that I found challenged my understanding

of the Prague Spring. He details the situation in Czechoslovakia in the late 1960s. The Prague Spring,

his experiences as the reformers were suppressed in the late 1960s, the Prague Spring, his experiences as the reformers were suppressed in the late

1970s and his arrest by the STB, the Czech secret police. The interview starts as we talk about

the levels of censorship in Czechoslovakia before the Prague Spring. I think Adoninasha, the film director, is saying that by about 64, 65, the censorship

office no longer pursued ideology.

It was only, if you said, the Soviet Union, they would actually remove that, right?

But it was, they only looked for really vulgar insults against the Communist Party,

but they actually didn't dispute the overall ideological, subversive message of a film,

which is very interesting.

Yeah, no, that is interesting, because the impression you get sort of from,

from outside reading about things is that the

the Novotny regime was quite hard, quite hardcore, but obviously what you're saying is

...