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

When the Soviet Politburo reconvened on 21 March, the assembled leaders expressed dismay that political liberalization in Czechoslovakia was continuing and that orthodox members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) were in danger of being removed from the scene altogether. 7Likening the situation to the changes that occurred in Hungary just before the 1956 revolution, Brezhnev claimed that events in Czechoslovakia were “moving in an anti-Communist direction” and that many “good and sincere friends of the Soviet Union” had been dismissed. He also noted that the Prague Spring was beginning to spark ferment among Soviet “intellectuals and students as well as in certain regions” of the USSR, notably Ukraine. Brezhnev’s misgivings were echoed by other Politburo members, including Soviet prime minister Aleksei Kosygin, who insisted that the Czechoslovak authorities were “preparing to do what was done in Hungary” in 1956. The Ukrainian party leader, Petro Shelest, also stressed the potential for violence to erupt in Czechoslovakia and to spill over into Ukraine—a development that in his view would determine “not only the fate of socialism in one of the socialist countries, but the fate of the whole socialist camp.” Aleksandr Shelepin and Mikhail Solomentsev spoke in similarly ominous tones about the effect of the Prague Spring on Soviet students and intellectuals. They joined Shelest in urging the Soviet Union to prepare to take “extreme measures,” including “military action.” This proposal was strongly endorsed by Andropov, who argued that “we must adopt concrete military measures” as soon as possible. 8

The growing unease in Moscow was reinforced by the much harsher complaints expressed in other East Bloc capitals, especially Warsaw and East Berlin. From the outset, the Polish leader Władysław Gomułka and the East German leader Walter Ulbricht were determined to counter the “growth of inimical, anti-socialist influences” along their borders. The two men feared that events in Czechoslovakia would prove “contagious” and would create political instability in their own countries. As early as mid-January, when a high-level Soviet delegation led by Brezhnev paid an unofficial visit to Poland and East Germany, both Gomułka and Ulbricht expressed disquiet to their Soviet counterparts about recent developments in Czechoslovakia. 9Gomułka reiterated his concerns in a private conversation with Dubček a few weeks later in the Moravian city of Ostrava, warning that “if things go badly with you [in Czechoslovakia], we in Poland, too, will find hostile elements rising against us.” 10In subsequent weeks, Gomułka’s and Ulbricht’s views of the Czechoslovak reform program took on an increasingly alarmist edge; and before long, both of the East European leaders were calling, with ever greater urgency, for intervention by Warsaw Pact troops to halt the Prague Spring.

The concerns expressed by Polish and East German leaders, combined with the disquiet that senior officials in Moscow were beginning to feel, induced the CPSU Politburo to give high priority to the “Czechoslovak question.” 11From mid-March 1968 on, the issue was constantly at the top of the Politburo’s agenda. The transcripts of the Politburo sessions and the records of other high-level CPSU bodies, as well as materials from Brezhnev’s personal papers ( lichnyi fond ), reveal that the CPSU general secretary consulted and worked closely with his colleagues on all aspects of the crisis, thereby ensuring that responsibility for the outcome would be borne collectively. Unlike in December 1967, when Brezhnev resorted to “personal diplomacy” during a sudden visit to Prague as the pressure for political change in Czechoslovakia was coming to a head, the growing “threat” in Czechoslovakia by the spring of 1968 gave him an incentive to share as much of the burden as possible with the rest of the Politburo and Secretariat. In particular, he ensured that his two top colleagues (and potential rivals), Aleksei Kosygin and Nikolai Podgornyi, were prominently involved in all key decisions and negotiations, linking them in an informal troika (with Brezhnev) that represented—and often acted on behalf of—the full Politburo. Much the same was true of Brezhnev’s reliance on two other senior Politburo members: Mikhail Suslov, who oversaw ideological matters; and Petro Shelest, whose responsibilities in Ukraine did not prevent him from playing a key role during the crisis.

At the same time, Brezhnev was careful not to get bogged down by lowerlevel bureaucratic maneuvering. Throughout the crisis the CPSU Politburo, led by Brezhnev, exercised tight control over Soviet policy. The Politburo eventually set up a high-level “commission on the Czechoslovak question,” consisting of Podgornyi, Suslov, Arvı-ds Pel’she, Aleksandr Shelepin, Kirill Mazurov, Konstantin Rusakov, Yuri Andropov, Andrei Gromyko, and Aleksei Epishev. The commission kept a daily watch on events in Czechoslovakia, functioning as an organ of the Politburo that was directly accountable to Brezhnev. (Six of the nine members of the commission, including Podgornyi and Suslov, were full or candidate members of the Politburo, and the three other commission members had been taking an active part in the Politburo’s deliberations on Czechoslovakia.) 12The commission’s updated findings and recommendations were regularly brought before the full Politburo for consideration. Brezhnev himself carefully guided the Politburo’s proceedings and took direct responsibility for bilateral contacts with Dubček.

Throughout the spring and summer of 1968, analogies with the violence in Hungary in 1956 remained salient in the Soviet Politburo’s deliberations about the Prague Spring, despite the lack of any violent unrest in Czechoslovakia. When Dubček and other reform-minded Czechoslovak officials spoke with Soviet leaders, they tried to convince them that the situation was not at all like Hungary twelve years earlier:

[T]he current events [in Czechoslovakia] are not a repetition of the events of 1956 in Hungary. In Hungary the popular masses rose up against the party and Central Committee, whereas in Czechoslovakia the masses are speaking out only against the conservatives and the group around [the hard-liner Antonín] Novotný and are supporting the [KSČ], the Central Committee, and friendship with the Soviet Union. 13

These assurances, in the absence of concrete steps demanded by the Soviet authorities, failed to mollify leaders in Moscow. Although Soviet officials acknowledged that no violent upheavals were occurring in Czechoslovakia (“at least not yet”), they argued that this was purely because “the American and West German imperialists” had “shifted tactics” and were “resorting to a new, step-by-step approach.” The extensive evidence now available in Western and former East Bloc archives makes clear that, contrary to these allegations of “imperialist” involvement, Western governments were in fact not masterminding or even doing much to help out the Prague Spring. The reform program in Czechoslovakia was devised from within.

For Soviet leaders, however, the allegations served a clear purpose. By repeatedly accusing the U.S. and West German governments of conspiring with “reactionary” forces in Czechoslovakia, they sought to discredit the Prague Spring. They argued that Western governments had been chastened by the experience in 1956 (when Soviet troops forcefully quelled the Hungarian Revolution) and were therefore now adopting a subtler approach. At a closed party gathering in April 1968 the Soviet Politburo member Petro Shelest explained this alleged shift in Western tactics:

In Hungary in 1956 the imperialists urged the local reactionaries to embark on an armed attack to seize power, whereas in Czechoslovakia they are trying to establish a bourgeois order by “peaceful means.” That is, they are trying gradually to change the situation so that the reactionaries can gradually seize one position after another…. [The anti-Soviet elements in Czechoslovakia] do not dare to speak out openly in support of anti-Communist and anti-Soviet demands. They understand [from the decisive Soviet response in 1956] that this game is over once and for all. The enemies provide cover for themselves with demagogic statements about “friendship” with the Soviet Union, while at the same time sowing doubts about some sort of “inequality” and about the pursuit of a special, “independent” foreign policy. They are also trying to undercut the leading role of the [Communist] Party. 14