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

41. “‘Izvestiya’ i tanki v Prage,” Izvestiya , 22 August 1998.

42. The Directorate “A” of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB at the Council of Ministers of the USSR had the function to carry out “active measures,” above all disinformation and moves to discredit Western politicians, the politics of the West, and so forth.

43. Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievskii, KGB: Istoriya vneshnepoliticheskikh operatsii ot Lenina do Gorbacheva (Moscow: Nota Bene, 1992), 489. See also Donald P. Steury, “Strategic Warning: The CIA and the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia,” in this volume.

44. Istochnik, 5–6/1993, 96–118; Istochnik, 1/1994, 62–71.

45. RGANI, F. 3, op. 72, d. 179, 68, Politburo resolution of the CC CPSU 86 (51), “On the Anti-Soviet statements of the Moscow Correspondent of the Czechoslovak Radio, L. Dobrovskii,” 19 June 1968.

46. RGANI, File of the Resolutions of the Secretariat of the CC CPSU, Resolution of the Secretariat of the CC no. 2141-A, n.d.

47. RGANI, file of the resolutions of the Secretariat of the CC CPSU, report by Andrei A. Gromyko and Yuri V. Andropov no. 2141-A (vch. 5778), 9 October 1968, “On the Expulsion from the USSR of the Correspondent of the Czechoslovak Radio, Dobrovský.” On the report the remark: “Notified of this remark—the assistant of Comrade Andropov, Laptev, and the assistant of Comrade Gromyko, Kovalenko, 18 October ’68.”

48. RGANI, F. 2, op. 3, d. 8, stenographic minutes of the Plenum meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union [hereinafter cited as CPSU], 17 July 1968.

49. RGANI, F. 2, op. 3, d. 8, stenographic minutes of the Plenum meeting of the CPSU, 17 July 1968.

50. Pravda , 26 September 1968.

51. Pravda , 26 September 1968.

52. Sergei Mitrofanovich Kovalev (24 September 1913–7 December 1990) was born in Miloslavichi in the district of Mogilyov and began his studies in 1935 at the Institute of History, Philosophy, and Literature in Moscow, where he graduated after five years and went on to the Higher Party School of the CC CPSU. On graduation, he took up a post in July 1941 in the Propaganda Department of the CC VKP (b). After the war, he was made secretary of the regional committee of the VKP (b) in Kursk. From February 1951, he served as director of Gospolitizdat (a state-owned publishing house for political literature) and a member of the Central Board of the Printing Industry, Publishing and Book Trade of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. In 1954, he defended his thesis on the topic “The Communist Education of the Workers.” In September 1954, he was dismissed from his post of director of Gospolitizdat. From 1960 to 1965, he worked as editor of the periodical Problemy mira i sotsializma ( Problems of the World and of Socialism ), from 1965 to 1971 was a member of the editorial committee of the propaganda section of Pravda , from 1971 to 1980, acted as first deputy of the editor in chief of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia , and from 1980 was a professor at the Academy of Social Sciences of the CC CPSU. His most important publications are the following: Kommunisticheskoe vospitanie trudyashchikhsya (1960); O kommunisticheskom vospitanii (1966); O cheloveke, ego poraboshchenii i osvobozhdenii (1970); Formirovanie sotsialisticheskoi lichnosti (1980); and Samovospitanie sotsialisticheskoi lichnosti (1986). In September 1973, he was awarded the “Order of the Red Banner of Labor” on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday.

53. Sergei M. Kovalev, O natsional’noi gordosti sovetskikh lyudei (Moscow: Gos. izdvo polit. lit-ry, 1950).

54. RGANI, file of the resolutions of the Secretariat of the CC CPSU, Politburo resolution of the CC CPSU 86 (1), 14 June 1968.

55. RGANI, F. 5, op. 60, d. 469, pp. 94–95, letter of the KGB of the Foreign Ministry of the USSR to the CC CPSU, Nr. 2437-z, 21 October 1968.

56. RGANI, F. 2, op. 3, d. 130, pp. 1–26, speech by L. I. Brezhnev at the session of the Plenum of the CC CPSU, 31 October 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente , #122.

57. RGANI, F. 2, op. 3, d. 9, p. 139.

58. RGANI, F. 2, op. 3, d. 9, p. 139.

59. RGANI, F. 2, op. 3, d. 9, p. 140.

60. RGANI, F. 2, op. 3, d. 9, p. 141.

61. “Ne zakladyvat’ miny,” Izvestiya , 21 August 1998.

62. “Ne zakladyvat’ miny,” Izvestiya , 21 August 1998.

63. RGANI, F. 2, op. 3, d. 10, stenographic minutes of the Plenum meeting of the Central Committee of the CPSU, 9 September 1968.

64. The resolution to allow Andropov to go on leave from 1 September 1968 was passed on 23 May 1968 by the Politburo CC CPSU (82/XVI).

65. RGANI, F. 5, op. 60, d. 60, letter from Semyon Tsvigun to the Central Committee of the CPSU Nr. 2159-s, 13 September 1968.

66. RGANI, F. 5, op. 60, d. 37, pp. 45–48, Report No. 2404-z.

67. RGANI, F. 5, op. 60, d. 301, pp. 331–33, Report No. 2502-z.

68. RGANI, F. 5, op. 60, d. 492, pp. 158–60, Report No. 2680-z.

69. RGANI, F. 5, op. 60, d. 493, pp. 253–54, Report No. 2848-z.

70. RGANI, F. 89, op. 25, d. 72, pp. 56–60, 62–63.

71. AP RF, F. 3, op. 80, d. 453, Politburo resolution of the CC CPSU 105 (24), 17. 10. 1968.

72. “‘Izvestiya’ i tanki v Prage,” Izvestiya , 22 August 1998.

73. AP RF, F. 3, op. 80, d. 453, p. 87. Report No. 534-A.

74. GARF, F. 7523, op. 105, d. 118, pp. 58–65.

75. John Barron, KGB: The Secret Work of Soviet Secret Agents (New York: Bantam, 1974), 548; Lutz Priess et al., Die SED und der “Prager Frühling” 1968: Politik gegen einen “Sozialismus mit menschlichem Anlitz” (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1996).

Tuesday, 20 August 1968, at 11 p.m. CET, the Soviet ambassador in Prague, Stepan Chervonenko, called on the president of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (ČSSR), Ludvík Svoboda, to inform him that the troops of the Soviet Union, Poland, Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and Hungary were about to cross the borders of Czechoslovakia. He read out a text prepared by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CC CPSU) and handed the Czechoslovak president an appeal to the people of the ČSSR drafted by the Soviets in Svoboda’s name. 1

Chervonenko said later that, while Svoboda did not welcome the invasion, he at least firmly promised that he “would never sever the links tying Czechoslovakia to the Soviet Union.” 2Before Svoboda was informed of the invasion, Czechoslovak minister of defense Martin Dzúr had been contacted by the Supreme Command of the Warsaw Pact troops involved in the intervention. Instead of immediately informing Prime Minister Oldřich Černík, Dzúr had issued an order to the Czechoslovak People’s Army (ČSLA) not to leave their barracks and not only to refrain from offering resistance to the invading troops, but to provide assistance to them if necessary. 3

To what extent this move was actively supported by Svoboda, the de facto supreme commander of the ČSLA, remained unclear for a long time. 4Svoboda did, however, give Dzúr the explicit order, independently of Dzúr’s own activities, to avoid all bloodshed. 5

Before the final decision in favor of an intervention was taken by the Politburo of the CPSU, a last attempt was to be made to find a “political settlement” together with Alexander Dubček and the leadership of the KSČ on the basis of the Dresden demands. 6At the end of July, bilateral negotiations took place in the Slovak town of Čierná nad Tisou near the CzechoslovakSoviet border and contrary to the expectations of the Kremlin they ended on an upbeat note. We now know that a meeting of the “Warsaw Five” in Moscow had already been in the pipeline during the run-up to the meeting in Čierná nad Tisou. This was cancelled at short notice by the Politburo of the CC CPSU, all of whose members had collectively traveled abroad for the first and only time in the history of the Soviet Union to be present at Čierná nad Tisou. 7Dubček was given his “very” last chance. Immediately after the bilateral meeting in the east of Slovakia, the “Warsaw Five” met with the KSČ in Bratislava on 3 August. The Soviet leadership considered it imperative, according to Brezhnev, “to enshrine the results of our negotiations with the leadership of the KSČ in a collective document in order to put these results on an international basis. This was done at the conference in Bratislava. In principle… the results of the negotiations found their expression in the Declaration of Bratislava.” 8