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

In this way, positions were made quite clear immediately after the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Moscow had informed Vienna of the reasons that had motivated it to make this move and had given assurances that Austria was not going to be affected by it in any way. Vienna, in turn, had explicitly repeated its commitment to a strict course of neutrality several times vis-àvis the Soviet Union in the days following the invasion of Czechoslovakia.

All the clarifying talks with the Soviet ambassador notwithstanding, the Austrian government mandated its envoy to Moscow, Walter Wodak, on the same day, 23 August, “to register formal protest with the Foreign Ministry on account of repeated violations of Austrian sovereignty.” 35It is said to have taken Wodak three days before he was granted an appointment at the Soviet Foreign Ministry. Waldheim was also mandated to protest formally on behalf of the federal government to the Soviet ambassador, but, as Waldheim put it in an interview later, the latter “did not turn up at my office for three days—under the pretext of having fallen ill.” 36For this reason, the official protest was not entered until 26 August. The Soviet Foreign Ministry representative is said to have expressed regret at the border incidents and to have asserted that care would be taken “to prevent a repetition of such incidents.” 37

Three days later, the tone on the part of the Soviet embassy became much more direct. In a démarche made by the Soviet embassy counselor, the diplomat conceded on one hand that “the Soviet Union was gratified to take note of the official statements issued by the Austrian federal government” but criticized the fact that “the Austrian press as well as radio and TV had shown themselves to be partisan in a thoroughly non-objective and tendentious manner, which was incompatible with the standards of a neutral country. They had in fact become mouthpieces of the counterrevolution in the ČSSR.” 38Ambassador Podtserob had been informed two days before by the president of Parliament, Alfred Maleta, that “there [was] going to be a meeting involving the Federal Chancellor, the Vice-Chancellor, the Minister for the Interior, and [ORF] Program Director Gerd Bacher.” The Soviet envoy conveyed to the Ballhausplatz that the Soviet Union was aware of the concept of freedom of the press; at the same time he made it clear, if almost apologetically, how important it was for the Austrian government to keep an eye on the “line taken by the mass media.” 39

The Ballhausplatz reached the conclusion that the démarche was not meant “as a protest against Austria’s state authorities” and that it was obvious that the Soviet side “had been intent from the start to avoid any hostility or acrimony in their dealings with Austrian authorities.” This was also the reason why Austria had deliberately waived the opportunity to focus on negative reports on Austria that were appearing in the Soviet press. 40

In the afternoon of the same day, Kurt Waldheim invited the Soviet ambassador to the Foreign Ministry, where they discussed a recent Literaturnaya Gazeta article in which Austria was accused of turning a blind eye to the presence of North Atlantic Treaty Organization special commandos on its territory. 41Waldheim had been alerted to the article only a few days before by the U.S. ambassador. 42He assured Podtserob once more that Austria was not tolerating any activities on its soil that were incompatible with its neutrality. Austria, as Waldheim told the diplomat, “appreciated friendly relations with the Soviet Union very much and was doing its utmost to keep them from being tarnished.” 43In the conversation he repeatedly queried the purpose of the Literaturnaya Gazeta article. Podtserob replied that the journal apparently had contact to credible sources and added that the Gazeta was published by the Union of Soviet Writers, which was neither the mouthpiece of a party organization, nor of any other state institution of the USSR. As opposed to reports in Austria’s media on the Soviet Union, the article in question had been “a very moderate reaction.” Waldheim subsequently repeatedly clapped his hands together and remarked that its freedom made the press immune against government influence. Off the record, he confided to the Soviet ambassador “that he had repeatedly talked to newspaper editors… and had instructed them to take into account in their reports on events in Czechoslovakia the limits imposed by Austria’s neutrality. These people, however, were not accountable to the Austrian government; they were de facto independent.” Waldheim agreed with Podtserob “that the actually existing freedom of the press had limits, which were imposed by Austria’s obligations resulting from the State Treaty.” It is not surprising that the Soviet sources contain no clues as to whether the Soviet ambassador actually submitted an apology to Waldheim for the conduct of the Soviet government. 44

The Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB) leveled a great number of charges against Austria in 1968: twenty-two radio transmitters, arms, and money had been smuggled into Czechoslovakia from Austria, sometimes in ambulances; German and U.S. elite commandos (Green Berets) had stopped off at Salzburg’s Schwarzenberg Barracks before being smuggled into the ČSSR in the guise of tourists; 500 Austrian plainclothes policemen were active in Czechoslovakia; Austrian agents had infiltrated the ČSSR People’s Army; Western intelligence services had made Vienna their base for operations directed against the Eastern Bloc; since the Prague reformers opened the borders with the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and Austria, there was a daily influx of up to 40,000 so-called tourists; there had been more than 370,000 in spring 1968, many of whom, according to an angry Brezhnev, undertook liaison missions. 45

The KGB took for granted the active role played by the Austrian secret service in countermeasures against the invasion of the ČSSR. From the end of World War II, Eastern and Western secret services had been using Austria as a hub for their operations; in 1968, there was a significant increase in their activities, notably on the part of the KGB, which was tracking and observing more and more Austrians. A case in point is Simon Wiesenthal, who had blown the cover of several ex-Nazis working in German Democratic Republic (GDR) government agencies. The Soviet news agency TASS claimed that the Austrian military secret service was active, primarily against the ČSSR. These claims were rebutted by Federal Chancellor Klaus and Foreign Minister Waldheim. 46

How important Vienna was as a secret-service hub in 1968, particularly for Eastern secret services, is demonstrated by the high degree of infiltration of Austria’s secret services. 47Forty-seven members of the Staatspolizei were suspected of engaging in espionage on behalf of foreign secret services, and many arrests led to convictions. The first to be arrested were Josef A., Johann A., and Norbert K. Josef A., an editor of the Federal Press Agency, had been recruited in Vienna by a Prague secret service officer and correspondent of the ČSSR news agency ČTK. Private detective Johann A., a former civil servant, had passed on the records of the interrogations of Czechoslovak refugees to a Communist Party organization. All three were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. The same was true of the press spokesman for the minister of the Interior Franz Soronics, Alois E., who had spied both for the German Bundesnachrichtendienst and for the Czechoslovak secret service. A parliamentary commission of inquiry was set up to shed light on his connections, and he was sentenced to three and a half years of hard labor in 1969.