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Soviet Army soldiers sit on their tanks in front of the Czechoslovak Radio station building in central Prague during the first day of Soviet-led invasion to then Czechoslovakia August 21, 1968DECIN, Czech Republic-Vera Machutova woke one August night in 1968 to the thunder of Soviet tanks surging through this Czech city on the East German frontier.With the invasion on the night of August 20-21, Moscow crushed the Prague Spring, a bid by Czechoslovak reformists to establish "socialism with a human face". At a cost of at least 108 lives, it put its Warsaw Pact ally back on a hardline path, where it stayed until the 1989 Velvet Revolution toppled one-party rule.Forty years later, with the Czech Republic now a democracy within NATO and the European Union, Machutova is troubled by the conflict in Georgia, whose army was routed last week by Russian forces that pushed deep inside its territory.What is similar, she said, is the clear message from Moscow that it will not accept a dramatic political shift in a country in sees as part of its sphere of influence -- what Russia calls its "near abroad"."It was a huge blow for us, and it changed everything. If it wasn't for the Russians, our lives would have been completely different," said Machutova, now 61. "And in Georgia, it's basically the same. They are invading another country."The two invasions differ on many points, not least because Georgia, an eager ally of the West, made the first move in the latest crisis by trying to retake its breakaway, pro-Russian region of South Ossetia by force on August 7.But some in the West see the crisis as a throwback to the Cold War, one that analysts say has actually been building for years but nevertheless caught Washington flat-footed and shone a spotlight on the weakness of the Euro-Atlantic alliance."Russian forces need to leave Georgia at once," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last week.
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