Sakharov Network

In1989, the European Parliament honoured Alexander Dubcek (1921-1992), one of the moving spirits behind the process of renewal and change in the former Eastern Bloc and the leading figure in the reform movement which became known as the "Prague Spring".
His aim of giving Socialism a "human face" was shattered on 21 August 1968 by the Warsaw Pact tanks. Dubcek was accused of treason, stripped of office and expelled from the Communist party of Czechoslovakia; he spent the years up to 1985 as an ordinary worker. In 1988 he returned to political life as a civil rights activist.
After the revolution in Czechoslovakia, Dubcek was elected President of the Federal Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia. As one of the figures who aslo kept hope alive for the Soviet dissidents in their long struggle for glasnost, as Andrei Sakharov described him in his speech of welcome to the award ceremony, Dubcek expressed the wish that 'as a result of the Prague Spring the great symphony of the European community spirit will continue to resound in 1990 and in all the years to come'.