It was a protest by eight demonstrators against the invasion of Czechoslovakia on the night of 20–21 August 1968 by the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies, crushing the Prague Spring, the challenge to centralised planning and censorship by communist leader Alexander Dubček.

Lawyers for the defense (all Communist Party of the Soviet Union members appointed and paid for by the State) demonstrated that the protestors had acted without criminal intent,[4] but the protesters on trial all received sentences of up to several years imprisonment or exile and in two cases they were sent to psychiatric prison hospitals.

In his "Attorney's waltz" singer and rights activist Yuliy Kim claimed that the sentences had been decided before the trial.

[5] In another song, "Ilyich", Kim mentions Yuri Andropov's and Leonid Brezhnev's anger at the demonstration, and refers to three of the protestors by name -- Pavel Litvinov, Natalya Gorbanevskaya and Larisa Bogoraz.

[7] During the conflict in South Ossetia, August 2008, the former president of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel, expressed his sympathies for the protesters of 1968.

[10] On 25 August 2013, the 45th anniversary of the demonstration, Gorbanevskaya and several of her friends recreated the original protest,[11] again featuring the "For your freedom and ours" banner.

They were soon arraigned and released pending court appearance on charges of failing to secure prior permission for a political rally,[12] a misdemeanor under current Russian law.