The "Summer of Belgrade" showed the weakness of the Iron Curtain. In 1968...

Tito: the dictator smashed the protests 
without the soviet "help"

The Spring of Prague, in Czechoslovakia, was a landmark specially because it was the first wave of protests against the communist power, then represented by the Soviet Union. But just after that there were another protests in East Europe, that was under the domination of the soviets: in July, in Yugoslavia, there were a lot of protests that could be known as the Summer of Belgrade (the capital of the country, that does not exist anymore, like Czechoslovakia).

Protests started in Belgrade in the night of July the 2nd and were the first manifestation of this kind since the Second World War. Students from the Belgrade University went into a strike that lasted one week, asking for social justice (something that you could not imagine at that time, since the soviets used to say that their regime was a synonimous of "social justice"). They also distributed copies of the banned magazine "Student" and protested against the economic reforms.

The protests started to spread in the country. But the eternal "president" Josip Tito was quick and showed all his political hability: went to TV and said in a speech that the students were right. Even more, negotiated with students and said that would attend some of their demands.

This posture put the country in peace again. Tito did not do what he promised to -- students were pulled out of the universities and also from the communist party. But with the "help" of the police, there were no reply for the protests. And it was not necessary to appeal to the soviet troops that, in Czechoslovakia, smashed the protest with tanks.

So, the Summer of Belgrade did not succeed. But it was also an important signal that in 1968 there was no country out of the wave of protests, even in the "soviet world". In other words, the Iron Curtain (the designation for the soviet empire) was weaker than 1968!