Prague
Telegram on the Twentieth Anniversary of Liberation
(May 8, 1965)

Comrade Antonín Novotný, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and President of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic,
Comrade Bohuslav Laštovička, Chairman of the National Assembly of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic,
Comrade Jozef Lenárt, Prime Minister of the Government of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic:

On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the liberation of Czechoslovakia, we extend our warm congratulations to you and to the fraternal Czechoslovak people.

In 1945, under the leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and with the aid of the Soviet Union, the Czechoslovak people drove out the German fascist occupiers and won national independence and the liberation of the motherland. We are glad to see that, after liberation, the Czechoslovak people smashed the bourgeois schemes for restoration and achieved successes in the cause of socialist revolution and socialist construction.

The peoples of China and Czechoslovakia share a profound fraternal friendship. To safeguard and strengthen this friendship accords with the common aspirations of our two peoples. We are deeply convinced that the peoples of China and Czechoslovakia will unite closely with the peoples of the other countries of the socialist camp and wage a common struggle against the policies of aggression and war pursued by U.S.-led imperialism, against West German militarism and revanchism, in support of the just struggle of the Vietnamese people to resist the United States and save their country, and for the victory of world peace, national liberation, people’s democracy, and socialism.

We wish the Czechoslovak people new successes in the cause of socialist construction, and may the fraternal friendship between the peoples of China and Czechoslovakia grow ever more consolidated and developed.

Mao Zedong
Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
Liu Shaoqi
Chairman of the People’s Republic of China
Zhu De
Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China
Zhou Enlai
Premier of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China

May 8, 1965