10 Euros Warsaw Pact Invasion

Issued on the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, this coin commemorates one of the most politically fraught events in Slovak collective memory. Five Warsaw Pact armies — Soviet, Polish, Hungarian, East German, and Bulgarian — crossed the border on the night of 20–21 August, ending the liberalization period known as the Prague Spring. Slovakia issued its own commemorative independently of the Czech Republic, reflecting the distinct way each successor state has chosen to narrate that shared trauma.

Dubček, the Slovak-born reformer at the center of the Prague Spring, was flown to Moscow and eventually returned — briefly — before being stripped of his party position in April 1969.