Stars Do Not Lie

The Czech nation is well known for coping with bad news and events with a unique sense of folk humour. It wasn’t any different after the occupation in 1968, when people didn’t hesitate to write mocking slogans on the walls and in the streets and distribute anti-Soviet leaflets and resolutions. Some of these documents later got to the hands of State Security and Public Police. Such is also the case of the pictures that brave photographers took in the streets, often near the points of tank guns. A few weeks after the August 1968 events, this material could be a pretence for investigation by the State Police. We have chosen from our archival collections several interesting pictures taken in the streets of Prague (collection A 34 / 2nd Main Directorate of the Security Corps, inv. no. 2663) and some leaflets and resolutions (collection A 34, inv. no. 2649). These include quite a remarkable material – a horoscope expecting the intervention, created allegedly fifty days before the occupation and sent to the military magazine Signal whose editorial board, however, declined to publish it.