President Vaclav Havel, marking the first free commemoration of the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion, told 100,000 Czechs that they must finish toppling the "burdensome heritage" of communist rule.
The huge crowd on Tuesday overflowed Wenceslas Square in downtown Prague, the site of confrontations 22 years ago between Soviet tanks and weeping, angry Czechoslovaks who pelted them with rocks and garbage.The Aug. 21, 1968, military intervention crushed the Prague Spring reform movement that tried to introduce communism with a human face.
Havel, the dissident playwright catapulted to the presidency by November's peaceful democratic upheaval, cautioned the crowd that reform remains unfinished.
"It is the burdensome heritage of the totalitarian system that we haven't yet come to grips with," he said. "In many communities huge bureaucratic monsters continue to rule."
But Soviet tanks no longer back them, he said, adding:
"We will have only ourselves to blame if we allow them to overpower us. It is necessary for all the people to put their noses to the grindstone. We've lost 20 years, and we cannot afford to lose another single day."
Havel's comments concentrated on the future, blasting what he called the communist legacy: inefficiency, corruption and dilettantism that he said threatened Czechoslovakia's budding democracy.
Tuesday's observances marked the first free commemoration of the invasion anniversary.