Czech student Jan Palach commits suicide by self-immolation in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in protest against the Soviets' crushing of the Prague Spring the year before.

The Czechs, or the Czech people, are a West Slavic ethnic group and a nation native to the Czech Republic in Central Europe, who share a common ancestry, culture, history, and the Czech language.

Jan Palach was a Czech student of history and political economics at Charles University in Prague. His self-immolation in 1969 at age 20 was a political protest against the end of the Prague Spring resulting from the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 by the Warsaw Pact armies.

Self-immolation is the act of setting oneself on fire. It is mostly done for political or religious reasons, often as a form of protest or in acts of martyrdom, and known for its disturbing and violent nature.

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan area is home to approximately 2.3 million people.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until it dissolved in 1991. During its existence, it was the largest country by area, extending across eleven time zones and sharing borders with twelve countries, and the third-most populous country. An overall successor to the Russian Empire, it was nominally organized as a federal union of national republics, the largest and most populous of which was the Russian SFSR. In practice, its government and economy were highly centralized. As a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), it was the flagship communist state. Its capital and largest city was Moscow.