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

17. See Oldřich Tůma et al., eds., Srpen ’69. Edice dokument ů (Prague: Maxdorf, 1996); Oldřich Tůma, “Ein Jahr danach. Das Ende des Prager Frühlings im August 1969,” ZfG 46 (1998): 720–32.

18. See also R. G. Pikhoya, “Chekoslovakiya, 1968 god. Vzglyad iz Moskvy. Po dokumentam TsK KPSS,” Novaya i noveyshaya istoriya 6 (1994): 3–20, and in Novaya i noveyshaya istoriya 1 (1995): 34–48.

19. Vondrová and Navrátil, Mezinárodní souvislosti československé krize 1967–1970 , 277.

20. For Dubček’s views as voiced in conversations, letters, and other texts dating from the spring and summer of 1989, see Alexander Dubček, Od totality k demokracii. Prejavy, články a rozhovory, výber 1963–1992 (Bratislava: Veda, 2002), 293–313.

On 18 August 1968, Aleksandr Tvardovsky, the Russian poet and editor of the literary journal Novy Mir , spent hours at his dacha near Moscow with his short-wave radio. He listened to the news broadcast about Czechoslovakia by Western stations, among them Radio Liberty, Voice of America, and Deutsche Welle. He also listened to the open letter “2,000 Words to Workers, Farmers, Scientists, Artists, and Everyone,” composed by the Czech writer Ludvík Vaculík, which concluded: “This spring, as after the war, we have been given a great chance. Again we have the chance to take into our own hands our common cause, which for working purposes we call socialism, and give it a form more appropriate to our once-good reputation and to the fairly good opinion we used to have of ourselves.” 1

These words resonated powerfully in Tvardovsky’s soul. He wrote in his diary on the next day: “I would have signed [a similar letter], regarding our situation. And I would have written an even better one.” During the tense Soviet-Czechoslovak talks at Čierná nad Tisou in early August, Tvardovsky, for the first time in his life, spent hours glued to his short-wave radio. He felt euphoric when he learned that the Czechoslovak reformists enjoyed national support and would not bend to Soviet pressure: “I never imagined I could feel such joy at this discomfiture, political and moral, of my country in the eyes of the whole world.” At the same time, as Tvardovsky admitted, there was a great polarization of opinions in the Soviet Union regarding the Prague Spring. “What a multitude of people in our land has been listening to all this: some feel great compassion and sympathy, yet others feel tense, apprehensive, and are full of hatred. They think: ‘These Czechs allow themselves too much!’” 2

Understanding Soviet responses to the Prague Spring sheds light on inner divisions, feelings, ambiguities, hopes, and fears that existed in Soviet society at the time. Recent studies reveal the “spillover effect” of the events in Czechoslovakia on the USSR. Yet the resonance of the Prague Spring with Soviet society cannot be fully understood in the synchronic perspective. Nor can it be correctly explained as a one-sided impact or emanation of the Czech events on the Soviet body politic and the social-intellectual scenery. A much more adequate perspective, as this essay will argue, is a diachronic one that explains various Soviet attitudes to the Prague Spring as the products of previous Soviet internal arguments and struggles over the issues of de-Stalinization, liberalization, and the possibility of a reformed communism “with a human face.”

The main argument of this chapter is that the Soviet experience of deStalinization (which preceded the Czech developments) had produced passions, hopes, and fears as well as lessons and memories that would produce fundamental divisions in Soviet society’s reaction to the Prague Spring and the Soviet intervention of 1968. This chapter focuses on the Russian part of Soviet society and the central Soviet elites located in Moscow and other Russian cities. The responses, lessons, and memories in the non-Russian parts of the USSR, especially in the western borderlands, were markedly different and have been studied elsewhere. 3This chapter draws on the growing body of archival research as well as the numerous sources this author was able to study for his large-scale project on the role of intellectuals in Soviet society. 4First, Soviet de-Stalinization as it developed is explored. Then the focus shifts to the divisions and options Soviet de-Stalinization created, and the reasons why de-Stalinization and the movement for liberalization and reformed communism had such a limited and abortive nature in Soviet society and elites are discussed. Next, the ambiguous social developments and ideological trends in Moscow in the years preceding the Prague Spring are examined. A brief address of the lack of protest in the Soviet Union after the invasion follows. Finally, the short-term and long-term fallout of the aborted Czech experiment for Soviet polity and society is considered.

It is important to recognize two facets of Soviet de-Stalinization: first, institutional and ideological de-Stalinization (from above), carried out by the Kremlin leadership, and second, the social, intellectual, and even spiritual de-Stalinization (from below) that took place in the minds, hearts, and souls of individual Soviet citizens. Both processes interacted and affected Soviet society. Both began at the moment of Stalin’s death, yet they did not develop in unison. The first attempts of the post-Stalin leadership (by the likes of Lavrenty Beria and Georgi Malenkov) in 1953 to raise the issue of the “cult of personality” of Stalin did not resonate much with the party elites or with society at large (with the notable exception of the gulag). Some departures from Stalinism in 1953–1955, such as amnesties and rehabilitations, reconciliation with Josip Tito, and withdrawal from Finland and Austria, evoked more confusion than approval among Soviet citizens. A very narrow stratum of cultural elites, educated public, and students participated in the cultural Thaw, yet even among these many remained genuine admirers of Stalin and his international and domestic legacy.

Therefore, Nikita Khrushchev’s Secret Speech of February 1956 produced a profound, unprecedented shock among the elites and the general public. That speech made irreversible the end of such key features of Stalinism as mass terror and permanent war mobilization. The speech unleashed de-Stalinization from below, yet it also produced powerful resistance in society. The Kremlin authorities, especially Khrushchev himself, were largely unaware of the Pandora’s box they opened. They did not prepare the propaganda apparatus for enormous tasks facing them in the new situation after the speech was read to millions of party and nonparty members. In fact, only in July the Politburo issued clarification to the party propagandists that interpreted Stalinist crimes as deviations dictated by the prewar circumstances. As a result, for months after the Secret Speech, people were left with their own perceptions and interpretations. Khrushchev’s attempts to avoid the public discussion of his speech and to divert public attention to other topics were counterproductive. 5

From March to November 1956, spontaneous de-Stalinization occurred among students and young scientists, above all among those in the educational, cultural, and scientific institutions of Moscow and scientific-technical labs outside the capital, all of them linked to the military-industrial complex. There were attempts to reform the Komsomol, to search for “truth” and “sincerity” in literature, to forge new cultural and intellectual identities, and even sporadic collective actions to defend basic rights. Many students in Moscow, Leningrad, Sverdlovsk, Gorky, and other university centers of Russia tried to find out more about the Polish and Hungarian Revolutions. Some even sympathized with the Hungarian rebels and criticized the Soviet invasion of Hungary. In Leningrad in late November and early December, some students plotted to hold a rally in support of Hungary. Mikhail Molostvov, student of philosophy at Leningrad State University, wrote an essay entitled “Status Quo,” demanding glasnost and an end to the tyranny of the bureaucracy. Victor Trofimov and Boris Pustyntsev, both students of the Herzen Institute, were motivated by the same ideas and organized a secret group of “Decembrists.” A young party official and professor at Moscow State University, Lev Krasnopevtsev modeled his idea of organizing a revolutionary underground organization among junior faculty and graduate students on the Hungarian events. Hungary, he recalled later, “turned us upside down.” 6