Günter Bischof - The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968

The first foreign political activities of the new ČSSR leadership could not give rise to further distrust or suspicion, at least as far as relations with the FRG were concerned. The memorandum “Reactions in the most important Czechoslovak papers to the resolutions of the January plenum of the CCKSČ” (Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia), whose author was the second secretary of the Soviet embassy in Prague, Yuri Zhuravlev, mentions the fact that “on 10 January, the KSČ’s central organ, Rudé právo , published a foreign political commentary which unmasks the fabrications and speculations of the bourgeois propaganda with reference to the changes that are supposed to have taken place in the ČSSR’s foreign policy in the wake of the January plenum.” It goes on to give a detailed summary of the most important points of this article, in particular the passage that deals with the ČSSR’s relations with the two German states:

Czechoslovakia will steadfastly adhere to its traditional political course in the German question. The alliance the ČSSR has entered into with the German Socialist state, the GDR, is a fixed and unalterable element of Czechoslovakia’s international position as is also the ČSSR’s attitude regarding West Germany. In addition to this, neither the class character nor the political system of the FRG will impede per se the development of legitimate economic or even diplomatic ties. The main reason why relations between the ČSSR and the FRG have not yet been normalized are aggressive demands for a revision of the results of the war within Europe.

The Soviet diplomat referred to an isolated lapse from correct political behavior by noting that “the imperialist aggression in the Middle East [was] not going to be considered.” 17

On the day of the publication of this article in Rudé právo , a declaration of the Czechoslovak government on the activities of neo-Nazi and revanchiste forces in West Germany was also published. The declaration sharply criticized not only the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft and the National Democratic Part of Germany (NDPD), but also the federal government and the governments of “several” NATO countries. 18Both the content and the tone of the declaration were completely in accordance with the “tough stance” vis-à-vis the FRG that had been agreed upon at the 1967 Warsaw Pact Conference in Karlovy Vary.

On the following day, 11 January, a condensed version of the declaration was published in Rudé právo . 19The paper’s version admittedly differed somewhat from the original government declaration in that it was more laconic in tone; the demands to the FRG government were less specific, and the criticism of other Western governments and of NATO was omitted altogether. A feature common to both the declaration and the Rudé právo article was the explicit provenance of the facts documenting revanchiste and right-wing extremist activities in the FRG from documents of the country’s Ministry of the Interior and the SPD-associated Friedrich Ebert Foundation. These documents contained outspoken condemnations of these activities, which did not corroborate the thesis that the activities were carried out “with the government’s consent.” On the contrary, in this manner the position at least of the junior partner in the coalition, the Social Democrats, was vindicated, if indirectly.

Soviet diplomats could not have cared less for such nuances at the time. One can form some idea of the position they held from the following passage in the transcript of a conversation between the Soviet ambassador to the FRG and his Dutch colleague, de Beys, on 26 January 1968:

De Beys asked me about our assessment of political developments in the FRG, notably of the FRG coalition government’s so-called “ Ostpolitik ” (Eastern Politics). I stressed that the policies pursued by the Kiesinger and Brandt government had unfortunately brought no changes and had basically remained the same as those of Adenauer and Erhard. As far as the principled positions vis-à-vis the Socialist countries were concerned, the FRG government continues to embrace unrealistic positions by ignoring the changes that are taking place in Europe. All this makes one cautious with regard to the true objectives of the FRG government. 20

One should beware, however, of exaggerating the importance of the contradictions between the Soviet and the Czechoslovak assessments of the party political situation in the FRG during the first phase of the Prague Spring, lasting roughly to March 1968. At the time, Prague’s ideological attitude aimed at avoiding an exclusive reliance on the leadership of the SPD; instead, it reached out also to “leftist,” “progressive” forces within this party; these were going to become steadily more important in proportion to the progress of democratization in Czechoslovakia. In a report compiled by the 4th European Department of the Foreign Ministry of the USSR on reactions of the Western press to the developments in Czechoslovakia, the following passage from Rudé právo of 19 March was reprinted without comment:

The unfolding of events in the ČSSR gives rise to certain fears in West Germany’s Social Democratic circles, particularly among right-leaning leaders. These are aware that a successful conclusion of the process that is now unfolding in Czechoslovakia could lead to some of the more conservative positions held by the Social Democrats being seriously called into question, which would result in a shift to the left of the entire SPD. 21

This is followed by a report on reactions in the Czechoslovak press. Under the heading of 16 April, a statement is quoted from a speech given by Hessian Minister of Economy and Transport Rudi Arndt at the opening of the “Czechoslovak Days in the FRG”: “In the FRG, we, too, should be working toward such a progressive development as is now underway in Czechoslovakia.” The editors of the compilation work note that “these words were put in bold print in the Prace .” 22

Such emphasis is perfectly understandable. Arndt’s statement underlines the prognosis that the Czechoslovak model will have a positive effect on the West. Whether this corresponded to the truth is another matter, yet it is probable that it made people think, including those in Moscow. The question that the Soviet envoy to the FRG, Semyon Tsarapkin, put in the course of a conversation on 14 March 1968 to someone whose competence and influence particularly in the FRG’s leftist circles was beyond doubt, namely the head of the Metal Workers Trade Union, Otto Brenner, was a well considered one. Tsarapkin asked about people “belonging to the left wing of the SPD leadership.” The answer was a thoroughly discouraging one from the Soviet viewpoint, “Brenner declared that the left wing of the SPD leadership was non-existent, despite the fact that leftist tendencies were prominent in grassroots organizations.” Brenner’s ensuing remarks painted an even more downbeat picture: “In the FRG, a new generation of ‘young careerists’ is about to assume political power.” Within the SPD leadership, a group of “young careerists” prominently including Helmut Schmidt, an opportunist in Brenner’s eyes, was “getting thoroughly entrenched.”

At the end of the conversation, Brenner passed a sort of verdict on the very party on which the Czechoslovak reformers were pinning their hopes: “As the SPD no longer considers itself as a workers’ party but as a party for everyone, the Trade Unions are called upon to assume the role of the proponent of the interests and views of the working class—not only in the economic but the political arena as well.” 23

If no perspective whatsoever was in sight that the SPD might eventually identify with the ideas of the Prague Spring, the opposite view was gaining in strength, namely that the KPČ would be unable to resist the influence of the West.