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

At 9 a.m., the building of the Czechoslovak broadcasting company was occupied by Soviet soldiers, and the same happened a short time later at the editorial offices and the print shop of Rudé právo . It proved, however, impossible to silence immediately the Czechoslovak journalists who had acquired a taste for the freedom of the press over several months. “Illegal” radio stations were genuine sources of information for the population for a number of days to come.

At 2 p.m., Dubček and fellow party members Josef Smrkovský, Kriegel, and Josef Špaček were ferried to Prague-Ruzyně airport in an armored personnel carrier and taken to the Soviet Union via Poland. 29At 6 p.m. CET, Bohumil Šimon was taken to the airport to be followed by Černík in short order. 30

Dubček was held captive all of Thursday in the Carpathians 31and was taken to Moscow in the early hours of 23 August.

In the Kremlin, the insight had gained ground in the meantime that Czechoslovakia’s future was inextricably tied to Dubček. Ousting Dubček was clearly illusory, for it was obvious that he had popular support.

At 11 p.m., President Svoboda called on the Soviet ambassador in Prague, Chervonenko, requesting his permission to go to Moscow. 32Svoboda’s request was granted, and the allies were informed accordingly. On this occasion, they were also informed to be prepared to leave for Moscow for consultations at short notice. 33

The next morning, on Friday, 23 August, Svoboda announced in a radio address that he was about to leave for a state visit to Moscow to negotiate a solution for the present crisis with the leadership of the Soviet Union. He had asked the members of the government to authorize him to conduct direct negotiations with the representatives of the USSR. Svoboda was accompanied on this trip by Minister of Defense Dzúr; the members of the presidium of the CC Jan Piller, Bil’ak, Indra; the minister of justice, Bohuslav Kučera, and his own son-in-law, Milan Klusák. Half an hour after Svoboda’s radio address, Czechoslovak radio was at pains to emphasize that Svoboda was going to Moscow of his own accord and that he had by no means handed control to a government consisting of “collaborators” loyal to Moscow. At 9:30 a.m. CET, Svoboda’s special flight took off from Prague-Ruzyně airport. After a stopover in Bratislava, where Gustáv Husák, the first secretary of the Slovak Communist Party, joined the delegation, the plane took off again for Moscow. 34

At 11:30 a.m. Moscow time, that is, at the time of Svoboda’s departure from Prague, the first “negotiations” between Leonid Brezhnev, Nikolai Podgornyi, Aleksei Kosygin, 35and Dubček began at an unidentified location. 36The first round of talks lasted at least an hour and a half and involved, at first, only Dubček. He was later joined by Černík. 37Brezhnev began the first round with a skillful gambit from his point of view. He proposed that instead of talking about the past they should be acting according to the “principles” of Bratislava. The Czechoslovak government was to abide also in future by the resolutions of the January and May plena of the CC KSČ, in other words, broadly on the basis of the reforms already initiated, but primarily with a view to strengthening socialism in the ČSSR. 38Brezhnev stepped up the pace by conveying to Dubček that the Soviet side was giving him the benefit of the doubt: they were prepared to believe that the “rightist forces” had become active behind his back: “We don’t want to blame you personally, Alexander. You may not have been aware of this.” Brezhnev also conveyed to Dubček from the start that while he would continue to count on him, in future he was also determined to put him in his place. Dubček, who had been kept in complete isolation since his arrest and had no information how his comrades had behaved, could easily have felt cornered and could have allowed the conversation to escalate, which he did not. At the same time, he was aware that it was not he who was in a virtually desperate situation, but Moscow and its allies. The obvious lack of coordination regarding his own abduction convinced Dubček that things were not going according to plan for the Kremlin. 39

Brezhnev proposed to Dubček as the talks continued that they “should keep no secrets from one another.” He underscored that Czechoslovakia had, after all, not been occupied. Brezhnev said: “We want the country to be free and that she abide by the socialist cooperation that we agreed on in Bratislava.” At the end of his first statement, Brezhnev encouraged Dubček to address “different variants completely freely,” not “in a temper” as in Čierná nad Tisou, but “in a controlled manner.” Brezhnev wound up emphasizing that Dubček was still “an upright Communist” in the eyes of the Soviet leadership.

In his first reply, Dubček said that he was “in a very difficult state emotionally,” but determined nevertheless “to look ahead.” He underscored that he was unable to identify with the decision in favor of a military intervention, particularly in light of the fact that preparations had been underway for the Party Conference and for the solution of the cadre issues, in particular for the removal of the “rightist forces.” There was no need for Dubček to claim the prophet’s role when he told the Soviet leaders that the extreme measures “confronted not only our party and yours, but the entire international Communist movement with the most difficult problem with which this movement has ever had to cope.” Dubček underscored the fact that his country looked back on “centuries” of good relations with Russia and accused the Kremlin leaders of having arrived at an assessment of the situation in Czechoslovakia that was out of touch with reality: there was no realistic scenario for a counterrevolution. The result now was a “difficult and tragic situation.” Despite his entirely different view of the situation, Brezhnev did not want to pursue this line of argument any further and interpreted Dubček’s words as “the wish to find a solution in conjunction with us and with all socialist countries.” Brezhnev said to Dubček, “Is that what you’re saying, Alexander?” Dubček replied, “Yes, it is.”

As part of his next move Brezhnev informed Dubček about how the invasion had gone. Dubček underscored that one of the most important steps of the Presidium of the CC KSČ immediately after the start of the invasion had been to urge the population not offer any kind of resistance. Brezhnev told Dubček that a one-day Party Conference of KSČ had taken place on the previous day which had elected “exclusively people of the extreme right” to form a new CC. Neither Indra nor Bil’ak had been elected into the CC. The new CC did not include a single member of the old one, Podgornyi interjected. In addition to this, it was said that no more than five Slovaks had been present. Then Brezhnev informed Dubček that President Svoboda had asked for permission to come to Moscow to take part in the negotiations and that he had spoken to him repeatedly on the phone, but the connection had been interrupted again and again. As they spoke, Brezhnev said, Svoboda, accompanied by Bil’ak, Piller, Kučera, Ladislav Novák, and Milan Klusák, was “already in the air.”

Brezhnev, Kosygin, and Podgornyi repeatedly raised the objection that the Party Conference had been irregular (as there had been virtually no Slovaks present nor any members of the Presidium itself); moreover, recognizing the Presidium of the CC that had, in fact, been elected would mean “that Czechoslovakia was going bourgeois in no time,” as Brezhnev put it.

Dubček showed himself broadly in agreement with the line of the Soviet leaders. “We’ve got to find ways to bring about a certain consolidation of the leading organs of the Party and of the state.” Yet he could not help pointing out what it meant “if in Slovakia the Slovaks are taught by the Hungarian army the proper attitude to Socialism and to the Soviet Union… and if a Slovak soldier… is now being disarmed by a Hungarian soldier.” Brezhnev replied laconically that this was the state of affairs with which one had to cope. Dubček replied: “That anybody should take it upon themselves to attempt to teach the Czechoslovaks what socialism is about! German troops invade and we give orders to our population to do their bidding!” Brezhnev did not add then and there the correction that the Nationale Volksarmee (NVA) of the GDR had not taken part in the invasion; instead, he chose to reproach Dubček with having sanctioned the meeting of the Sudeten Germans in Cheb. 40When Dubček denied having done so, this was grist to Brezhnev’s mill: “a lot had been happening” behind Dubček’s back. In the final analysis, this exchange shows clearly how one-sided and plain wrong a good deal of the information was that the Soviet leadership received.