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

In the East, things were not working according to the theories of MarxismLeninism. It was clear by the middle of the 1960s that the Socialist economic system had seen better days. The major Eastern European countries were struggling with severe economic problems. The Kremlin (then led by Nikita Khrushchev) had encouraged gradual and limited political and economic reforms because it believed that these might ignite the economic dynamism needed for the economic recovery of these countries. Czechoslovakia, under a conservative Stalinist ruler, Antonin Novotný, was compelled to introduce a degree of relaxation, moving away from the Stalinization of the past. Reforms soon strengthened the hands of the anticonservative section of the party and made Novotný’s position difficult. In January 1968, he was replaced by a moderate and populist figure, Alexander Dubček.35 In effect, Dubček became instrumental in promoting “socialism with a human face,” a precursor of Eurocommunism in the 1970s. By the summer of 1968, the Czechoslovakian perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness) were gaining their own momentum, and pressures for change spread to nearly every corner of the country. Dubček sought to reform Czechoslovakia, but he had no intention of breaking away from the Soviet Union. However, other Czech reformist party officials were willing to go further by reducing party control over the church, parliament, censorship, and the economy as was to happen later in Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika. The dilution of the party’s role in Czech social, political, and economic affairs became the mainstay of the Prague Spring. 36Indeed, the Prague Spring looked as if it might be spreading to other Eastern European countries.

In May 1968, the Foreign Office set up a conference of British ambassadors to Eastern European capitals, which discussed the implications of the Prague Spring. An important question, initially, was how the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries would react to the Prague Spring, but with less attention given to the relevance of the Prague Spring to Western Europe. Permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office, Booth felt that the West had no power to control or influence the events which were taking place in Czechoslovakia, and that in any case, it would not be in the West’s interest to increase Soviet “difficulties” by interfering in what was perceived to be its internal affairs. The ambassador to Moscow, Sir Geoffrey Harrison, also predicted that the Prague Spring would not affect AngloSoviet relations in any serious way. But Harrison believed that the turmoil in Czechoslovakia must have “serious implications” for the USSR and wondered how this would affect the Kremlin’s foreign policy toward the West. If Czechoslovakia succeeded in establishing its own distinctive version of socialism at home and such reform started spreading to other Warsaw Pact countries, Harrison suspected that the Kremlin might “crush” the Prague Spring, or conversely let the reforms in Czechoslovakia continue, but limit any damage caused to the Kremlin’s leadership in Eastern Europe. The most optimistic speculation was that the Kremlin might even go along with the Czech movement as part of the current détente. The conference did not reach any definite conclusion, but suggested that there was some consolation to be extracted from the Soviet Union’s current preoccupation with Eastern Europe, for Moscow’s interference in other theaters, such as the Middle East and Far East, would be reduced at a time when British interests there were threatened. 37

The result of this conference was developed into the UK’s official policy, which was circulated by Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart to the cabinet in mid-June 1968. What is worth highlighting here is a new effort to link the events taking place in Eastern Europe to the interests of the West. This may have been the result of taking into consideration the views expressed by UK ambassadors serving in Eastern Europe. They were dissatisfied with Britain’s neglect of that part of the world, and asked King Charles’ Street to be more constructive in its policies toward Eastern Europe. The official memorandum therefore appreciated that most East European countries retained a degree of Western democratic traditions, and that, as a result, they would be more susceptible to modernization, liberation, and other democratic changes. Not only the reforms in Czechoslovakia, the documents continued, but other more modest economic and social reforms in Hungary and Poland might gather momentum and might, in turn, lead to a more independent Eastern Europe. Thus the document admitted that “the desire of the East European countries for greater individual independence is also in the interests of the West generally.” In order to encourage this trend, Britain should increase “substantially” its contacts with Eastern Europe in terms of official visits as well as cultural and business associations. 38

This was as far as the Foreign Office would go, since its hard-line analysis of the Soviet Union remained much the same as before. That country, after its abandonment of the “more brutal features of Stalinism” had still not completely escaped from “the grip of the old system.” 39While current moderate economic reforms might “in the very long run cause radical changes,” any reform would require some loosening of central control which might, however, threaten the stability of the existing Soviet system, a dilemma Gorbachev later encountered in the 1980s. Otherwise, Moscow continued to believe in its mission to spread communism worldwide, maintained a hostile stance toward Western democratic countries, and was anxious to undermine the relationship between the United States and Western Europe. The last thing that Britain and its Western allies wanted was to rock the boat in the Eastern Bloc, such as by driving wedges between the Eastern European countries and the Soviet Union. Instead, the Foreign Office recognized that what the West could do to help Eastern European reforms such as the Prague Spring was extremely limited, while London assumed that the Eastern European countries should generally continue to support Soviet foreign policy, either because it suited their national interests or for “tactical reasons.”

Overall, the Foreign Office produced a generally hopeful, but pragmatic, and sometimes farsighted, analysis of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, the ferment in Czechoslovakia increasingly worried the Kremlin and the other Warsaw Pact countries. In May, the Warsaw Pact powers began to deploy their troops close to the Czechoslovak borders under the guise of Warsaw Pact military exercises, but, in fact, the redeployment was meant to serve as a threat to the pro-reform Czechs. 40Walter Ulbricht of East Germany and Władysław Gomułka of Poland grew frustrated by the inability of the Dubček regime to control the pace and degree of the reforms in Czechoslovakia. 41The country was a major producer of advanced weapons and uranium for Moscow’s military-industrial complex and as such was too important to be allowed to leave the Soviet orbit. Nevertheless, Brezhnev was reluctant to resort to repressive measures against Prague, which might, he feared, provoke the West into war against the Soviet Union. Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko, and chief of the KGB Yuri Andropov, both apparently persuaded an indecisive Brezhnev to make the decision to intervene. There was also the fear that once Czechoslovakia fell into the hands of “counterrevolutionaries,” the rest of the Warsaw Pact powers might follow suit. It was important for Moscow to nip “the Prague Spring” in the bud. 42We now know that it was a difficult decision to make, but the decision was made nonetheless. 43

On the night of 20/21 August 1968, the Soviet Union, with the help of other Warsaw Pact countries (the German Democratic Republic, Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria), mounted a huge military operation, twice as large as Moscow’s intervention in Hungary in 1956, and with it the Prague Spring ended abruptly. Twenty-nine army divisions, 7,500 tanks, and more than 1,000 aircraft were sent to “a Defenseless country which had not even mobilized.” The Soviet military intervention shocked Dubček and other Czechoslovakian reformers, and they were reluctantly forced to accept that Marxist-Leninist theory was, in fact, “incompatible with a genuine, modern, democratic, economic and political system” and even worse, the system was not “even open to reform.” 44