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

The term “center” had a bloody meaning in the party language of the Communists. The accused during the Moscow show trials that took place in Moscow from 1936 onwards were defined according to “centers.” The first show trial against the old Bolsheviks was directed against the “TrotskyZinoviev center”; in January 1937, the “illegal so-called Soviet-hostile Trotskyist parallel center” was condemned. 13

The composition of the “illegal center” in Prague in 1968 was unknown to Florin in terms of its personnel. The “open center” consisted of the economic reform planner Šik, the director of television Jiří Pelikán, the chairman of the Writers’ Association Eduard Goldstücker, and the author Pavel Kohout. The differences in the new KSČ leadership were expressed by Florin in the conspiracy constructions of the Stalinist show trials. The victims of the show trials in Prague at the beginning of the 1950s were to be rehabilitated at that precise moment.

On 15 March, Soviet general secretary Brezhnev invited Dubček to Dresden for an economics conference of the ruling Communist parties. 14The Central Committee of the SED met prior and parallel to the Central Committee of the CPSU in order to establish their position. 15The report of the Central Committee apparatus on developments in the ČSSR was regarded internally as prescribed terminology and named critical points of the reform process in the neighboring country: the removal of censorship and the publicly recognizable differences within the party leadership. Josef Smrkovský, Šik, and Goldstücker were characterized as revisionists. According to comments he made in an interview with WDR, Smrkovský’s stated goal was to unite democracy and socialism. For the SED, the demand for “democratization” was the banner under which the antisocialist forces were to be gathered; a tactical concealment of the actual aim, that is, the overthrow of socialism. Prior to Dresden, the SED was already convinced that in Prague the old social democratic revisionism was ideologically and politically stepping out in new clothes. 16Two days before the 5th Central Committee Congress, Rudolf Helmer 17had already communicated to a counselor from the Soviet embassy in East Berlin an event that was important for Moscow, which the counselor noted as follows: “He stressed that they have no secrets from their Soviet comrades and that, as he was aware, the principal judgment and the access to events in the ČSSR on the part of the leaderships of the CPSU and the SED were consistent with each other.” 18

Ulbricht used this Central Committee Congress to evaluate the SPD’s new eastern policy and to link it with the changes in Prague. For the SED boss, this new eastern policy was a strategy of ideological “maceration of the socialist countries with new methods and demands and that under the slogan of security in Europe, the slogan of the ‘new eastern policy.’” For Ulbricht, the Social Democratic Party of Germany ( Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands or SPD) sought with this policy to find “ways of infiltrating the GDR, of unrolling the GDR from within, in order to transfer the West German system of state monopoly capitalism with its Federal Armed Forces to the whole of Germany”; the aim of German unity was for him “the main point of difference with the Social Democrat leadership.” 19Ulbricht mistrustfully recorded all contact between the SPD and KSČ during the spring.

The intervention in August began with a confrontation in March in Dresden. The leadership of the CPSU, the PUWP, the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, the BCP, and the SED reproached the delegation of the KSČ, led by Dubček, that a counterrevolutionary process had been established in the ČSSR. The Communist Party of Romania was consciously not invited. Dubček accepted the invitation, knowing in advance what the topic would be, but the other KSČ officials traveling with him were under the mistaken impression that the conclave would deal with economic issues. 20Ulbricht as host then announced the real topic of the conference. 21He requested of Dubček information regarding the plans of his Central Committee and the preparation of the KSČ’s Action Program. He stressed the self-evident right of every Communist Party to determine its own policies, but his party was entirely isolated. “Thus, developments in a socialist country and the resolutions of a sister party can have far-reaching consequences for every other party and also the situation in Europe. Our mutual mortal enemy, imperialism, does not sleep.” Before entering into the order of business, Brezhnev declared: “The discussion will be very serious; …I would, therefore, suggest not keeping the minutes.” Dubček agreed, but Ulbricht allowed a record to be made.

For the time being, Dubček had to explain the policies of his party without any preparation. 22Following his comments, the confrontation began. Brezhnev presented his assessment of events in the ČSSR and explained bluntly that the meeting in Dresden was not about discussing reforms with the KSČ, but about coordinating a mutual evaluation of developments in the ČSSR. Four parties toed the line laid down by Brezhnev. The question posed to the KSČ delegation was would it yield to this verdict and alter its course?

Brezhnev’s keyword in describing the situation in the ČSSR was “counterrevolution,” which was organized by “an entire group or entire center” in public life in the ČSSR. He asked Dubček directly what he understood “democratization” or “liberalization” to mean. “Have you not had democracy thus far?” For him, the “main processes” of the preceding few weeks were: “Public attacks against the Central Committee” and “defamation” of all the “achievements” of the previous twenty-five years “that will be printed in West Germany, in America, in Austria, everywhere.” “Attacks against the leading cadre of the Party, against the government, against the Ministry of Defence, against the Ministry of the Interior…. It’s all being denigrated.” He demonstrated what the consequences might be by citing Foreign Minister Václav David: “For twenty years he led the struggle against imperialism in alliance and agreement with us… but he was also pelted with dirt in order to create a basis for the ‘independent foreign policy.’”

The antisocialist background to all these campaigns seemed for Brezhnev to be no secret: he saw this in the tendencies of a “Czech socialism.” In order to emphasize this judgment on the danger of a domestic system change, he followed on with the question, “Yes, what will come next?”

What did the enemy want? That was the key question in the struggle against “counterrevolution.” The “enemy acted skillfully, very tactfully and organized. We cannot claim that one single center is being established today in Czechoslovakia. Perhaps there are several centers.” 23But all events—this must be stressed—are consummated in intellectual circles, in youth circles, but not in the sphere in which one could find strong support for the Presidium and the Central Committee, in order to fight against the counterrevolution. That is, namely, the working class. 24

The concern over the potential change of sides on the part of the ČSSR, which was already hinted at in the question regarding an autonomous foreign policy, was repeated as a question pertaining to the Warsaw Pact. Why was the view being disseminated: “Our people do not know what the contents of the Warsaw Pact are, but if our people did know it, our people would very quickly withdraw from the treaty. As though it was a gagging treaty in the event of a war.”

In the Dresden debate on the autonomy of Socialist states and their Communist parties as well as on how binding the Warsaw Pact was, Soviet prime minister Aleksei Kosygin positioned himself unequivocally. The discussions in the Czechoslovak media on the role of the Communist Party and relations with the Soviet Union were not only followed worldwide, they “not only concern the entire socialist camp,” but affected the whole Communist movement. With this, Kosygin formulated the keynote of the later so-called Brezhnev Doctrine of the limited sovereignty of the Socialist states. For him, the Dresden meeting served to support the KSČ in the struggle against the “counterrevolution.” Addressing Dubček directly, he said that here “the support for Czechoslovakia in the struggle for a Socialist and Communist Czechoslovak country was forged,… for the business of Czechoslovakia is our mutual business and we do not surrender this business to our enemy, whatever it might cost us!” Brezhnev’s comments on the—from the point of view of the Communists—negative reports in the ČSSR media were accentuated by Kosygin: they found themselves “in the hands of the enemy.”