BC-DX 841 04 Jan 2008 Private Verwendung der Meldun

potential members. After Yugoslav events the North Atlantic Pact doesn't
seem to be only about defending its member states. So to majority of
Russians that old explanation about the need for self-defense sounds very
true and real today. That's why this time the sad anniversary of 1968
isn't covered in the Russian media as much at it was 10 years ago.
The world might be set for some major upheavals unless we learn to
understand the reality of each other's deep fears and emotional traumas...
(Sergei Sosedkin-IL-USA, dxld Aug 22)
Peter Rehak on The Prague Spring's End: An eyewitness account.
National Post, Peter Rehak was The Associated Press correspondent in
Prague when the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries invaded
Czechoslovakia on Aug. 21, 1968.
(Dan Goldbloom-USA, dxld Aug 21)
According to today's Spiegel Int., Operation Danube meant that "27
divisions of Soviet Russians, Poles, Hungarians and Bulgarians... marched
into the small state of Czechoslovakia." Wikipedia adds that "contrary to
popular belief, East German forces were actually not involved, as
Brezhnev... didn't want to bear any resemblance to the 1938 German
occupation of Czechoslovakia."
Some people interested in history made efforts to find out about this
"popular belief" (its source would be interesting). It is true that
Nationale Volksarmee troops had been put on alert and moved into the
Erzgebirge mountains[on the German-Czechoslovakia border], and it was
subject of a controversial debate whether or not they (or just a single
soldier) crossed the border. Some people said they did, but they were
unable to provide any evidence for their claim.
Due to linguistic similarities, Poland played an important role in radio
broadcasting into Czechoslovakia as part of "the normalization campaign"
after the invasion. Surprisingly, R. Polonia maintained the Czechoslovak
radio service until 1990 or 1991.
Even much longer, they kept it until a few years ago when it had been
eliminated due to budget constraints, together with Lithuanian if I recall
correct.
I don't think Bulgarians were ever involved with broadcasting into CSSR.
Did GDR, Hungary and Romania broadcast in Czech and Slovak around that
time?
The GDR did so, from August 1968 until February 1969. Mostly (but
apparently with the exception of a short period) these transmissions were
presented as "broadcasting station Vltava" and not identified as a
"product" of GDR radio.
However, they were transmit on a known RBI frequency, 1430, for this
purpose moved from the Berlin-Koepenick transmitter to Wilsdruff for
groundwave coverage into Czechoslovakia. The transmissions usually
originated in studio K4, so were not produced under really conspirative
circumstances, but a special measure had been taken on the technical side:
For the purpose an especially hard dynamics compression had been carefully
set up, and in the main control room then engineers could tell that it's
the Vltava feed just by a look at the levels, because on Vltava it looked
as if the light marker got stuck, trembling in a small window of two,
three Decibels (I could also say: it looked like on certain commercial
stations today).