[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 141 (Friday, October 9, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1980]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                       HONORING ALEXANDER DUBCEK

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. JOHN L. MICA

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, October 8, 1998

  Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, during the six months March-August 1968 the 
world witnessed a revolutionary drama which began in Bratislava, now 
the capital of Slovakia, and ended in Prague. The world's audience was 
fascinated especially by the leading player, a Slovak, Alexander 
Dubcek. Within that short time, Dubcek became a well-known symbol for 
his reform efforts in the totalitarian centralist Czechoslovakia in 
which Slovakia was treated as no more than a region. Dubcek's reforms 
became known as the ``Prague Spring'' although they would equally 
deserve the title ``Dubcek Spring''. His reforms involved the free 
speech, economic experimentation, open borders and open debate over the 
country's political future. Dubcek was faced by Stalinist with the same 
courage, as he had faced the Nazi fascists in the Slovak National 
Uprising in 1944 in which Alexander was wounded and his brother Julius 
was killed. It was not just by chance that the Spring 1968 started in 
Slovakia. In the first and last post World War II democratic elections 
in Czechoslovakia in 1946, the clear winner in Slovakia had been the 
Democratic Party, while in the larger Czech part of the country it had 
been the Communist Party that finally grabbed the overall power.
  However, during the night of August 20-21, 1968 Dubcek's revolution 
was crushed by more than 600,000 troops with 7,000 tanks from the 
Warsaw Pact countries--Soviet Union, Bulgaria, East Germany, Hungary 
and Poland. For more than twenty years Dubcek remained under constant 
state security scrutiny. In spite of his ordeal, he always believed 
that people were essentially good and he never gave up hope. With the 
start of the Velvet Revolution in 1989, Dubcek reemerged at the Slovak 
National Uprising Square in Bratislava and Wenceslas Square in Prague, 
convincing thousands of demonstrators that their Revolution would 
succeed.
  Few people know that Dubcek's parents came to settle in the United 
States. They lived in Chicago for more than five years in the second 
decade of this century but returned to Slovakia shortly before 
Alexander's birth on November 27, 1921. Alexander literally had his 
very beginning in the U.S. It is also rather symbolic that the American 
University in Washington, DC, was among the first in the world to award 
Dubcek with an honorary Doctorate in April 1990, in the Spring 
immediately following the Velvet Revolution.
  The moral and ideological impact of the ``Dubcek Spring'' spilled 
beyond the borders of his country, infiltrating the whole of the former 
Soviet Bloc. His message was that even the harshest dictatorship cannot 
prevent men of courage and honesty to reach far ahead of their time and 
keep their true conviction despite years of oppression. The Dubcek 
Spring started a process crowned by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 
new democratic perspective for Central and Eastern Europe.
  Alexander Dubcek and Vaclav Havel became known as the two symbols of 
the Velvet Revolution with great international prestige, opening the 
doors to the world for their respective Republics. By a fatal irony, on 
September 1, 1992, the day when the new Constitution of the Slovak 
Republic was adopted, Dubcek was gravely injured in a car accident and 
he died just a month before the independent Slovakia was born. 
Unfortunately, he died when he was the most needed by his mother 
country.
  This year the 30th anniversary of the ``Dubcek Spring'' is 
commemorated in many countries of the world. The American University, 
jointly with the Embassy of the Slovak Republic, organized a series of 
events in which the guest of honor was Dr. Paul Dubcek, Alexander's 
son. I had the honor and pleasure of accompanying him through the U.S. 
Capitol and introducing him to such distinguished Congress Members as 
the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Jesse 
Helms, and the Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, 
Congressman Benjamin Gilman. I had the opportunity to witness that the 
name of Dubcek still echoed in the ears of America's leaders.
  It is my honor to recognize Alexander Dubcek and also symbolically 
pay tribute to hundreds of thousands of Slovak Americans who not only 
provided a key contribution to the American industrial revolution--
working hard in coal mines, factories and steel mills of America's 
past. But also to the Slovak Americans who now lead American business, 
industry and science.
  Alexander Dubcek, the man symbolizing what a giant contribution of a 
small country at the heart of Europe can provide to the rest of the 
world, definitely has his place among the great historic leaders of 
world democracy.

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