Velvet Revolution: Raw Footage of Soviet Troops Leaving Czechoslovakia [1990]

On 26 February 1990, Czechoslovakian President and face of the Velvet Revolution, Václav Havel met with Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow to sign a pact on the total withdrawal of Soviet troops from Czechoslovakia. The same day, ITN crews in Czechoslovakia filmed Red Army troops as the first contingents left the country, bringing to an end the military occupation – called a “temporary deployment” by Soviet leaders – that began with the USSR’s violent suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968. This historic footage of Soviet withdrawal is presented alongside footage filmed two days before, on 24 February, of a pre-democracy rally led by Havel in Prague.