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.
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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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