Abstrakt
The aim of this chapter is to analyse the crisis in the mutual relations between Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia caused by the Warsaw Pact intervention from August 1968 and the following change of Czechoslovak leadership in April 1969.We aim to show that for both Prague and Belgrade the nature of this relationship was an extraordinarily important issue which had implications in their internal politics, as well as for their position on the international stage. The chronological framework for our analysis is the period between April 1969 when Gustáv Husák replaced Alexander Dubček on the position of the head of the Communist party of Czechoslovakia (CPC) and October 1973 when Husák visited Josip Broz Tito in Yugoslavia in an official capacity.
This meeting on the highest Party level meant that the Yugoslavs had recognised Husák's leadership which put a symbolic end to the crisis. In this period a pattern had been created for the relationship which would be followed by both political elites more or less until the end of the 1980s.