Christopher Andrew - The Sword and the Shield

The targets selected for exfiltration by GROMOV and GURYEV in May 1968 were Professor Václav Černý and Jan Prochízka. 52Václav Černý (codenamed TEMNY), 53one of Czechoslovakia’s leading authorities on Romance literature, had been expelled from his chair at Charles University after the Communist coup in 1948 but re-emerged during the Prague Spring as a founder member of KAN and an eloquent advocate of academic freedom. At the June 1967 Congress of the Writers Union, Jan Prochízka had been one of those who took the lead in denouncing official censorship and demanding “freedom of creativity.” 54Claiming to be concerned for his safety, GURYEV tried to persuade Černý that he was in serious personal danger (presumably from the hardline opponents of reform) and offered to find him a temporary hiding place. GROMOV delivered a similar message to Prochízka. Once persuaded of the need to hide, both Černý and Prochízka were to be handed over to thugs from Service V (the FCD “special actions” department), who would drive them in a car with CD plates which could cross unchecked into East Germany. 55If they resisted, Černý and Prochízka were to be subdued with what the operational file euphemistically describes as “special substances.”

The operation, however, was a miserable failure. After the persecution Černý had suffered during the previous twenty years, GURYEV could not persuade him that he was in any greater danger than usual. GROMOV discovered to his dismay that Prochízka had been supplied with a bodyguard by Pavel. The Centre had also overlooked the language problems involved in the operation. Though Černý was a good linguist, Prochízka spoke only Czech. Posing as a non-Czech-speaking West German, GROMOV found it difficult to communicate with him. Though he could probably have made himself understood in Russian, he would have risked revealing his real identity. 56After a few weeks GURYEV and GROMOV abandoned their kidnap attempts.

In addition to their other missions during the Prague Spring, the illegals were tasked with a series of active measures collectively codenamed KHODOKI (“gobetweens”), which were intended to justify a Soviet invasion by fabricating evidence of a counter-revolutionary conspiracy by Czechoslovak “rightists” and Western intelligence services. 57Posing as sympathetic Westerners, the illegals tried to persuade editors and journalists to publish attacks on the Soviet Union and other provocative articles. They also attempted to interest Černý and K-231 in accepting aid from a fictitious underground organization allegedly supplied with arms by the West. Josef Houska, the StB chief sacked by Pavel in June, was secretly informed of operation KHODOKI and agreed to co-operate with it. 58

By mid-July, as part of KHODOKI, the illegals had succeeded in planting fabricated evidence of preparations for an armed coup. On July 19 Pravda reported the discovery of a “secret cache” of American weapons near the West German border, some conveniently contained in packages marked “Made in USA,” which had allegedly been smuggled into Czechoslovakia by “revenge seekers and champions of the old order.” The Soviet authorities, it claimed, had also obtained a copy of an American “secret plan” to overthrow the Prague regime. The press throughout the Soviet Bloc followed up Pravda ’s story with reports that hidden Western weapons were being discovered all over Czechoslovakia. Simultaneously bogus intelligence was fed to the StB implicating K-231 and KAN in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy with Western intelligence services. 59

The Soviet Politburo met to consider its next step in the crisis on the same day that Pravda produced its first report on the fictitious counter-revolutionary arms caches. Brezhnev began the meeting by proposing a final meeting with the Czechoslovak leadership to try to reach a negotiated settlement. Only if that failed should they take “extreme measures.” Andropov emerged as the chief spokesman of those who wanted extreme measures immediately. Bilateral talks, he argued, would achieve little, while any delay would increase the threat from “the rightists:” “They are fighting for survival now, and they’re fighting frenziedly… Both we and they are making preparations, and theirs are very thorough. They are preparing the working class, the workers’ militia [for a conflict].” It was a bad-tempered meeting. Andropov became involved in a furious argument with Kosygin, whom he accused of “attacking” him, presumably because of his call for immediate military intervention. “I am not attacking you,” retorted Kosygin. “On the contrary, it is you who are attacking me!” The only full member of the Politburo who supported Andropov’s opposition to a final meeting with the CPCz leadership was K. T. Mazurov. However, the foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko, like Andropov a non-voting member of the Politburo and later his close ally, probably summed up the majority view when he declared that meeting Dubček and his colleagues was no more than a necessary preliminary to invasion: “Clearly they will not accept our proposals. But then we can move to a decision about taking extreme measures…” 60

As Gromyko had predicted, the meeting between the CPCz Presidium and the Soviet Politburo at the border town of Čierní nad Tisou from July 29 to August 1 ended without agreement. After an StB investigation, Pavel reported to the CPCz Presidium that the alleged counter-revolutionary arms caches were a “provocation.” Though the weapons themselves were American, of Second World War vintage, some of them were in Soviet-made packaging. Other intelligence linking K-231 and KAN with Western secret services was also discovered to be fabricated. 61The KGB illegals behind operation KHODOKI, however, went undetected. Mitrokhin’s notes on KGB files lend some, though not conclusive, support to the claim by an StB defector that the KGB planned to murder the Soviet wives of a number of Czechoslovak citizens in August and blame their deaths on counter-revolutionaries. The plan was apparently discovered by the StB and aborted. 62

At a meeting of the CPCz Party committee of the StB early in August, the head of StB foreign intelligence, Shuoj Frouz (codenamed FARKAC), argued that the KGB advisers in the StB were violating the principles of Czechoslovak-Soviet intelligence liaison and should be recalled to Moscow. A report of the meeting, at which other StB officers supported Frouz, was quickly relayed to the KGB. 63After the Soviet invasion, those who had demanded the recall of the KGB advisers were arrested—with the significant exception of Frouz, who may well have made the demand on KGB instructions in order to identify the main anti-Soviet elements in the StB in advance of the invasion. 64

As well as producing fabricated evidence of a Western plot for public consumption, Andropov supplied the Politburo throughout the crisis with slanted intelligence designed to strengthen its resolve to intervene. Probably the most important accurate intelligence on American policy to reach the Centre during the Prague Spring came from the Washington residency, where the dynamic 34-year-old head of Line PR, Oleg Kalugin, gained access to what he reported were “absolutely reliable documents” proving that neither the CIA nor any other agency was manipulating the Czechoslovak reform movement. These documents, however, failed to conform to Andropov’s conspiracy theory of an imperialist plot and were thus kept from the Politburo. On returning to Moscow, Kalugin was amazed to discover that the Centre had ordered that “my messages should not be shown to anyone, and destroyed.” Instead, on Andropov’s orders, “The KGB whipped up the fear that Czechoslovakia could fall victim to NATO aggression or to a coup.” 65

At a meeting in Moscow on August 18, the leaders of the Soviet Union and the other four “reliable” members of the Warsaw Pact—Bulgaria, East Germany, Hungary and Poland—formally agreed on the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the biggest armed action in Europe since the end of the Second World War. 66At 4 p.m. on August 20 a meeting of “reliable” members of the StB was briefed by Pavel’s pro-Soviet deputy, Viliam Šalgovič, on plans for the invasion which was to begin that night and assigned tasks to assist the Warsaw Pact forces. Josef Houska, dismissed by Pavel two months earlier, returned to take charge of the StB.