August 20 Birthday
On August 20, 1968, 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia to end the Prague Spring — Alexander Dubček's attempt to create "socialism with a human face." The invasion was bloodless in most places — Czech citizens stood in front of tanks and argued with soldiers. In all, 108 Czechs died. Dubček was arrested, taken to Moscow, and forced to sign the Moscow Protocol, renouncing his reforms. The invasion ended the belief that communism could reform itself. The Brezhnev Doctrine held that no socialist country would be allowed to deviate from the Soviet model. It held until 1989. Leon Trotsky was killed by Ramón Mercader, a Spanish communist who had infiltrated Trotsky's circle under a false identity. Mercader struck Trotsky in the head with an ice axe. Trotsky fought back, then collapsed. He survived for a day and died at sixty. He had been in exile since 1929, after Stalin expelled him from the Communist Party. His writings, produced in Mexico, critiqued Stalin's betrayal of the revolution. He predicted that the Soviet Union would either be overthrown by a workers' revolution or degenerate into a bureaucratic tyranny. It did the latter. People born on August 20 fall under the zodiac sign of Leo. The birthstone is Peridot and the birth flower is Gladiolus. Historical events on August 20 include 1968: Soviet-led Warsaw Pact forces invade Czechoslovakia (end of Prague Spring), 1940: Leon Trotsky assassinated by Soviet agent in Mexico City, 1975: Viking 1 spacecraft launched to Mars. Famous people born on August 20 include Benjamin Harrison (1833), H.P. Lovecraft (1890), Amy Adams (1974).