Czechoslovak Radio, 21 August 1968

Czechoslovak Radio building, Vinohradská · Prague, Czech Republic · 1968-08-21

On the morning of 21 August 1968 Czechoslovak Radio on Vinohradská kept broadcasting as Warsaw Pact tanks closed in, calling on citizens not to resist with force. Crowds built barricades from buses outside; fifteen people died defending the building whose broadcasts they were trying to keep on air. Bullet scars are still visible on the facade, and a memorial lists the names.

The record

Coordinates are given at landmark level. A landmark-level coordinate points at the structure; a city-level one points at the settlement, not at a parcel.

Finding photographs

Every one of these is a search, not a guess: the event is documented, so the pictures exist somewhere. Start here.

• Wikimedia Commons — freely licensed images, with the licence stated on every file. This is the only source we republish from.
• The reference article — its own illustrations, and its citations to archives.
• Image search filtered to reusable licences — useful for tracing which institution holds a picture.
• National and municipal archives of Czech Republic, and the picture desks of newspapers published there at the time.

Check the licence before you reuse anything. A photograph being online, or being old, does not make it free; in most countries a 1960s press photograph is still in copyright.

Footage

Newsreel and archive film of events like this often survives. Search YouTube for this event If you find good footage, send us the link and we will attach it to this page.