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

The two different movements that had powered the Czechoslovak Spring of 1968, the reformist and the socially more Catholic “protodemocratic” one that embraced society in its entirety, were briefly united in the struggle against the military intervention. This struggle was admirable in a way, and it succeeded temporarily in upsetting the political miseen-scène of the intervention and forced the Kremlin to improvise. This improvisation made a calculating use of the leading reformers and the practically unlimited trust that was placed on them by the Czech and Slovak societies. After 21 August the KSČ, with a few insignificant exceptions, massively supported the countrywide resistance. However, this situation did not last long, and after the signing of the Moscow Protocols and the accession to power in Czechoslovakia of the pragmatists, opportunists, and the orthodox Communists, the party found itself once again in opposition to mainstream society.

Relying on the presence of foreign troops, it managed to consolidate the regime for another two decades. The protagonists of the reforms came to realize at different times (if they did not opt for the shortcut of switching sides, which some of them managed to do with remarkable bravura) that a reform of the Communist system was doomed to failure and that their attempts at reform and the tactics with which they had tried to establish contact with a society whose control eluded them had actually paved the way for a much more radical change. Some of them understood this immediately after 21 August, others later, when they found themselves in the ranks of the dissenters, in exile, or even in prison, where Gustáv Husák’s normalization regime had put them. Some did not arrive at what was for them a bitter insight until November 1989—and this presumably applied to Dubček. 20

The defeat that was inflicted on the Czechoslovak society between August 1968 and 1969 took a long time to be reversed. Yet there is no doubt that in the history of the long, drawn out failure and eventual collapse of the Communist regime, the events of 1968 played a key role. The years 1968 and 1969 made a significant contribution to the emancipation of the Czech and Slovak societies from communism, particularly as regards the younger generation. In the terms of power politics, the regime had been consolidated again, but it had lost those roots in society that would have been necessary for a genuine revitalization.

Translated from German into English by Otmar Binder, Vienna.

1. Photos depicting Dubček can be found online at http://www.68.usd.cap.cz(accessed 8 May 2008).

2. Throughout 1981, General Jaruzelski kept on recalling Dubček’s fate, which, according to the testimony of his memoirs, had great influence on his own decisions. See Wojciech Jaruzelski, Mein Leben für Polen (Munich: Piper, 1993); Wojciech Jaruzelski, Hinter den Türen der Macht: Der Anfang vom Ende einer Herrschaft (Leipzig: Militzke Verlag, 1996).

3. The recording is available for download at http://www.68.usd.cap.cz/content65/93/lang,cz/(accessed 8 May 2008). The text of the address has been published in Jitka Vondrová and Jaromír Navrátil, eds., Komunistická strana Československa. Kapitulace. srpen—listopad 1968 , vol. 9, no. 3, Prameny k dějinám československé krize (Prague: Ústav pro Soudobé Dějiny, 2001), 120–24.

4. See Antonín Benčík, Utajovaná pravda o Alexandru Dubčekovi: Drama muže, který předběhl svou dobu (Prague: Ostrov, 2001).

5. On the role played by the students, see Milan Otáhal, Studenti a komunistická moc v českých zemích, 1968–1989 (Prague: Dokořán 2003).

6. See Jiří Hoppe, ed., Pražské jaro v médiích: Výběr z dobové publicistiky , vol. 11, Prameny k dějinám československé krize (Prague: Ústav pro Soudobé Dějiny AV ČR, 2004), 114–19.

7. On the attempted revival of the Social Democratic Party, see Přemysl Janýr, Neznámá kapitola roku 1968: Zápas o obnovení činnosti Československé sociální demokracie (Prague: Ústav pro Soudobé Dějiny AV ČR, 1998); Jiří Hoppe, “Die Wiedererlebung von Politik und bürgerlicher Gesellschaft: die tschechischen Sozialdemokraten im Jahre 1968,” ZfG 46 (1998): 710–19.

8. On the emancipation of the society, see inter alia Vilém Prečan, “Lid, veřejnost, občanská společnost jako aktér Pražského jara 1968,” in Proměny Pražského jara 1968–1969 , ed. Jindřich Pecka and Vilém Prečan (Prague: Ústav pro Soudobé Dějiny AV ČR, 1993), 13–36; Vilém Prečan, “Seven Great Days: The People and Civil Society during the ‘Prague Spring’ of 1968–1969,” in La Primavera di Praga , ed. Francesco M. Cataluccio and Francesca Gori (Milan: F. Angeli, 1990), 165–75; Petr Pithart, “La dualité du Printemps tchécoslovaque: Société civile et communistes réformateurs,” in Le Printemps tchécoslovaque 1968 , ed. Francois Fejto (Brussels: Éd. Complexe, 1999), 77–86; Petr Pithart, Osmašedesátý (Prague: Rozmluvy, 1990); H. Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976).

9. For details on the preparations of the reforms and the roots of the “Prague Spring” in the Communist Party and society, see above all Karel Kaplan, Kořeny československé reformy 1968 , I. Československo a rozpory v sovětském bloku , II. Reforma trvale nemocné ekonomiky (Brno: Doplněk, 2000); Karel Kaplan, Kořeny československé reformy 1968 , III. Změny ve společnosti , IV. Struktura moci (Brno: Doplněk, 2002); see also Karel Kaplan, “Die Wurzeln der 1968er Reform,” in Karner et al., Beiträge .

10. See also the minutes of the most important KSČ bodies in spring 1968 in Jitka Vondrová et al., eds., Komunistická strana Československa. Pokus o reformu (říjen 1967–květen 1968) , vol. 9, no. 1 (Prague: Doplněk, 1999).

11. Zdeněk Mlynář, Mráz přichází z Kremlinu (Prague: Mladá fronta, 1990); in German translation, Zdeněk Mlynář, Nachtfrost: Das Ende des Prager Frühlings (Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1988).

12. See Vondrová et al., Komunistická strana Československa , 320–59; for excerpts in English, see Jaromír Navratíl et al., eds., The Prague Spring 1968: A National Security Archive Documents Reader (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1998), 92–95.

13. Zdeněk Mlynář, Československý pokus o reformu 1968: Analýza jeho teorie a praxe (Cologne: Index, 1975).

14. On the process of Soviet decision making with regard to the intervention, see Mikhail Prozumenshchikov, “Inside the Politburo of the CPSU: Political and Military Decision Making to Solve the Czechoslovak Crisis,” in this volume; Václav Kural et al., eds., Československo roku 1968 (Prague: Parta, 1993); Jan Pauer, Prag 1968, Der Einmarsch des Warschauer Paktes: Hintergründe, Planung, Durchführung (Bremen: Ed. Temmen, 1995), 34–228; Kieran Williams, The Prague Spring and Its Aftermath: Czechoslovak Politics, 1968–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Jiři Valenta, Soviet Intervention in Czechoslovakia, 1968: Anatomy of a Decision (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991).

15. For more details, see Manfred Wilke, “Die DDR in der Interventionskoalition,” and Pawel Piotrowski, “Polen und die Intervention,” in Karner et al., Beiträge .

16. See Jitka Vondrová and Jaromír Navrátil, eds., Mezinárodní souvislosti československé krize 1967–1970, Červenec—srpen 1968 , vol. 4, no. 2 (Brno: Doplněk, 1996), 164–66, 172–81; RGANI, F. 89, op. 76, d. 75, pp. 1–18, telephone conversations of L. I. Brezhnev with A. Dubček, 13 August 1968, reprinted in Navrátil et al., The Prague Spring 1968 , 343–56; and in German and Russian in Karner et al., Dokumente , #57.