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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2009
One of the major issues surrounding the perennial debates over Soviet alliance management is whether the Soviet leadership considers its military position vis-à-vis Western Europe to be a more important determinant of policy than the political stability of its East European allies. Moscow showed itself willing to use force to achieve its objectives in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, but analysts are not agreed either on the nature of those objectives or on the wider priorities governing Soviet policy. Before 1968 it was widely believed that security considerations relating to the unity and strength of the Warsaw Pact dominated Soviet thinking. It was assumed that East European regimes would be allowed to undertake some, primarily economic, reforms provided they did not repeat the mistake made by the Hungarians in 1956 of calling for a withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. This belief in the supremacy of strategic considerations led the Czechoslovaks, and many Western analysts, to miscalculate both the extent of the Soviet Union's ideological disagreement with the reform movement and the interrelationships between political and strategic considerations.
1 Among the many speeches by Soviet leaders and articles in the Soviet press on these subjects, perhaps the clearest statements can be found in Alexandrov's 11 July 1968 Pravda article; the Warsaw letter in Pravda, 18 07 1968Google Scholar; Konstantinov, , Pravda, 24 07 1968Google Scholar; Rodionov, , Pravda, 9 08 1968Google Scholar; Pomalev, , Pravda, 14 08 1968Google Scholar; and the major Pravda editorial on 22 August 1968 justifying the invasion. In their own speeches and articles, Soviet leaders did not usually condemn Czechoslovakia by name. Yet the fundamental principles underlying socialist society which were seen to be threatened by events in Czechoslovakia were dealt with by Suslov in a speech published in Pravda on 29 February 1968, Grishin in a speech published in Izveslia on 23 April 1968, by Brezhnev in speeches published in Pravda on 23 February, 20 March and 5 and 8 July 1968, and by Shelest in Pravda on 5 July 1968.
2 See Fallenbuchl, Z. M., ‘Comecon Integration’, Problems of Communism, xxii (03–04, 1973), 25–39, P. 36.Google Scholar
3 Czechoslovak dissatisfaction with Soviet monopoly within the bloc over enrichment facilities, and Soviet procrastination in supplying Prague with a long-awaited nuclear power plant, resulted during 1968 in calls from the Czechoslovak press to seek alternative markets for the valuable commodity. The Polish newspapers Trybyna lidu on 3 September 1968 and Zolnierz Wolnosci of 12 September 1968 both claimed that West Germany had a military and commercial interest in obtaining Czechoslovak uranium. Also see Polach, Jaroslav G., ‘Nuclear Energy in Czechoslovakia: A Study in Frustration’, Orbis, No. 3 (1968), 831–51Google Scholar; and Golan, Galia, Reform Rule in Czechoslovakia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 41Google Scholar; Wilczynski, J., ‘Atomic Energy for Peaceful Purposes in the Warsaw Pact Countries’, Soviet Studies, xxvi (1974), 568–90, p. 586CrossRefGoogle Scholar, claims that in August 1968 Dubček actually banned further uranium exports to the USSR.
4 Speech by Kosygin to the 16th Minsk Province Party Conference, in Sovetskaya Belorussia, 15 02 1968Google Scholar. Also, see Gromyko's speech to the June Supreme Soviet Session in Pravda, 28 06 1968.Google Scholar
5 The view that negotiations for the permanent stationing of forces began during Novotný's rule is supported by Mlynář, Z., a Party Secretary in 1968, in his book, Nachtfrost (Koln: Europaische Verlagsanstalt, 1978), p. 204Google Scholar; by Hajek, J., Dix ans après – Prague 68 à 78 (Paris: Ed. du Seuil, 1978), p. 335Google Scholar; by Deputy Foreign Minister Vaclav Pleskot in an interview on Prague radio, 22 May 1968 (Golan, , Reform Rule, p. 238)Google Scholar; by Erickson, John, ‘International and Strategic Implications of the Czechoslovak Reform Movement’, in Kusin, V. V., ed., The Czechoslovak Reform Movement, 1968 (London: International Research Documents, 1973), pp. 34–5Google Scholar; and Neue Zurcher Zeitung, 30 10 1969Google Scholar. A. Šnejdárek, in an interview with H. G. Skilling in 1971, while denying that the Soviets had proposed the stationing of troops, stated that there were negotiations in 1967 on the free movement of Pact forces. See Skilling, H. G., Czechoslovakia's interrupted Revolution (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 85, fn. 133Google Scholar. Elsewhere Šnejdárek elaborates that already in 1967 ‘there were some discussions with several socialist countries, including Czechoslovakia, about the possibility of the entry of Soviet troops on their territories for manoeuvres and temporary presence. This development must be considered as one of the most important. It preceded the Czechoslovak events and was accelerated by them.’ Quoted from Šnejdárek's reply to Erickson's paper cited above, p. 52.
6 Zorza, Victor in the Guardian, 12 07 1968 and 21 08 1968Google Scholar; and Erickson, John in The Sunday Times, 1 09 1968Google Scholar. Eugene Rostow has also indicated that among Šejna's revelations were Russian contingencies for an attack on Yugoslavia from the west, using Czechoslovakia and violating Austrian neutrality. See Urban, George, ‘The Invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968: The View from Washington. A Conversation with Eugene P. Rostow’, The Washington Quarterly, 11 (1979), No. 1, 107–8.Google Scholar
7 The text of the Action Programme is contained in Remington, Robin A., ed., Winter in Prague: Documents on Czechoslovak Communism in Crisis (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1969)Google Scholar. See p. 134 for the Czechoslovak pledge to participate ‘with a more elaborate concept’ in the development of Warsaw Pact structures and doctrine.
8 In a televised interview on 21 May 1968, the Czechoslovak Minister of National Defence stated that because of the situation in the army between January and April, and the fear in December that the army would misuse its power, earlier plans to hold large-scale manoeuvres in Czechoslovakia ‘had been cut’, and that ‘no large-scale exercises with big contingents of troops were being planned’. BBC, Summary of World Broadcasts, II (Eastern Europe), EE/2777/C/1 (henceforth referred to by serial number only).Google Scholar
9 Allegations that the Soviets were seeking the stationing of troops were made by, amongst others, the West German Foreign Minister, Willy Brandt. Analysis of these allegations and reports of official Czechoslovak denials can be found in Tatu's, Michel article in Le Monde, 23 05 1968Google Scholar; Floyd, David in the Sunday Telegraph, 6 10 1968Google Scholar; and Szulc, Tad in the New York Times, 25 05 1968Google Scholar. The original official report of the negotiations with Grechko and Dzúr's denial that stationing was discussed can be found in EE/2778/C/1. Bil'ak also stated that the Soviets had pressed for the stationing of troops at the 4 May meeting with Dubček in Moscow (CC plenum, September 1969, Svedectvi, x (1970), No. 38, p. 286).Google Scholar
10 Early arrival of Soviet troops was confirmed by the Press Secretary of the Czechoslovak Ministry of Interior, J. Kudrna, in a statement on Prague Radio's English service, 30 May 1968 carried in EE/2785/C1/7. Neither he nor the spokesman for the Czechoslovak Ministry of National Defence, however, was able to specify the numbers involved, although the latter did initially say that in addition to preparatory staff ‘some units and primarily signal troops of the Soviet army will gradually arrive’. (From ČTK release, 30 May 1968 in EE/2785/C1/8.) On 31 May 1968 General Dzúr announced that an integrated command staff under Soviet General M. I. Kazakov had arrived and that foreign troops would be limited to communication units and auxiliary units supporting the staff (The Times, 1 06 1968Google Scholar). But only two days later, coinciding with Western reports that Soviet tanks and armoured vehicles had been cited (New York Times, 6 06 1968Google Scholar), Major General Josef Čepický conceded in a Práce interview that ‘it is possible that there will be some tank squads’. Nor did he rule out the presence of aircraft. Prchlik, in his famous press conference on 15 July, summed up the situation when he said ‘none of the competent Czechoslovak officials has had, or even now has, any idea as to how many soldiers of the friendly armies have been, and how many still are, on our territory’ (from Tanyug Yugoslav news agency), 16 July 1968, EE/2824/C1/5).
11 The Czechoslovaks never tired of reminding the USSR of these provisions, as in the ČTK release of 7 May 1968 (EE/2766/C1/7) replying to rumours that the Soviets were prepared to respond to an appeal for help from Communists within Czechoslovakia, and in Prchlik's press conference, reported in Rudé právo, 16 07 1968.Google Scholar
12 Notably, Kosygin, in a press conference in Stockholm on 13 July, in answer to a question on whether political or military intervention by the Soviet Union in Czechoslovakia would be possible under certain circumstances, made no mention of the right of the USSR to intervene under any circumstances except those covered by the Warsaw Treaty. See Pravda, 15 07 1968.Google Scholar
13 Grishin, V. V.'s speech printed in Izvestia, 23 04 1968Google Scholar, was the first example of a shift away from non-interference.
14 These revisions, which came to be known as the ‘Brezhnev Doctrine’ and which were formally enunciated in Kovalev's famous Pravda article of 26 September, were enshrined in the July ‘Warsaw letter’ to the Czechoslovak Central Committee (Pravda, 18 07 1968Google Scholar) and the Bratislava declaration of six fraternal parties (Pravda, 4 08 1968).Google Scholar
15 See the articles by Shtemenko (Chief of Staff of Joint Armed Forces of the Warsaw Treaty Organization) in Krasnaya zvezda, 21 08 1968Google Scholar; Vershinin (Commander-in-Chief of Air Force) in Pravda, 18 08 1968Google Scholar; Kutakhov (1st Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force) in Izveslia, 18 08 1968Google Scholar; Pavlovsky (General in charge of invasion) in Krasnaya zvezda, 10 08 1968Google Scholar; and the two articles by Zakharov (1st Deputy Minister of Defence) in Krasnaya zvezda on 4 August and in Pravda Ukrainy on 21 08 1968.Google Scholar
16 His most important speeches and articles in 1968 are contained in Pravda on 24 February, 2 May, 9 May and in Izvestia of 9 July.
17 Izveslia, 9 07 1968.Google Scholar
18 New York Times, 1 08 1968Google Scholar, quoting a ‘member of the intelligence community in Bonn’.
19 Henry, Ernst's article in Izvestia, 15 08 1968Google Scholar; and Pravda, 9 07 1968.Google Scholar
20 Mlynář, , Nachtfrost, p. 287Google Scholar. Mlynář rates the military influence on decision making during the crisis as being both high and tending toward the hawkish position. This is also the view of Jacob Beam, the US Ambassador to Prague at that time, in Beam, J., Multiple Exposure (New York: Norton, 1978), p. 188.Google Scholar
21 ČTK, 21 March 1968, EE/2728/C/1–2.
22 Mlynář, , Nachtfrost, p. 188Google Scholar. Also the document presented at the December 1970 plenum of the KPČ Central Committee on the ‘Lessons of the Crisis Development in the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and in society after the XIIIth Congress of the KPC’ stressed that the reform movement had had ‘a particularly adverse affect on the operation and the moral-political condition’ of the army after April when the new command began to take over. See Pravda pobezhdaet (Moscow: Politizdat, 1971), p. 43.Google Scholar
23 Rudé právo, 19 05 1968Google Scholar; and Tanyug, , 19 05 1968, EE/2775/C/2.Google Scholar
24 Brezhnev, L. I., Leninskim kursom, Rechi i Stati, Tom vtoroy (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo politicheskoy literaturi, 1970), pp. 256–7.Google Scholar
25 Brezhnev's speech to the Moscow City Organization of the Party, in Pravda, 30 03 1968.Google Scholar
26 It was reported that a copy of the resolution calling the Czechoslovak reforms ‘revisionist’ was forwarded to the Czechoslovak leadership and leaked to the Western press from there. See International Herald Tribune, 8 05 1968.Google Scholar
27 Reported by Tatu, Michel in Le Monde, 5–6 05 1968Google Scholar, and Literární listy, 9 and 30 05 1968Google Scholar. Literární listy of 30 05 1968Google Scholar also claimed that another Soviet general, said to be General Zhadov (the man rumoured to have issued a diplomatic passport to Šejna), made a similar promise on 21 May during a visit to Czech army barracks.
28 Konev's speech was carried on Prague radio's home service, 9 May 1968, EE/2767/C/3. (Italics added.)
29 Moscow radio home service, 13 May 1968, SU/2769/A2/1.
30 Pravda, 14 05 1968Google Scholar. (Italics added.)
31 See the articles by Komoscin, (Hungary) in Pravda, 5 05 1968Google Scholar; Szirmai, (Hungary) in Pravda, 20 04 1968Google Scholar; Hager, (GDR) in Pravda, 5 05 1968Google Scholar; Honecker, (GDR) in Pravda, 24 06 1968Google Scholar; Gomulka, (Poland) in Pravda, 16 07 1968Google Scholar; Spychalski, (Poland) in Pravda, 18 07 1968Google Scholar; and Bulgaranov, (Bulgaria) in Pravda, 8 08 1968.Google Scholar
32 Prague radio, 3 April 1968, EE/2739/ii; Le Monde, 5 04 1968Google Scholar; Daily Telegraph, 5 06 1968.Google Scholar
33 The Times, 24 07 1968.Google Scholar
34 International Herald Tribune, 26 07 1968.Google Scholar
35 ČTR, 12 July 1968, EE/2821/C/8; and Observer Foreign News Service, 24 07 1968, No. 25419.Google Scholar
36 Radio Prague, 24 May 1968, EE/2780/C/2.
37 The Guardian (London), 16 07 1968Google Scholar, and Müller, Adolf, Die Tschechoslowakei auf der Suche nach Sicherheit (Berlin: Berlin Verlag, 1977), p. 259Google Scholar. Müller also cites Brandt's foreign policy adviser Bahr and Helmut Schmidt as visitors.
38 Kosygin was one of the few Soviet leaders to state publicly the view that the Czechoslovaks possessed all the means they required to deal with the internal situation, and by implication therefore that they required no external support. In Pravda of 15 07 1968Google Scholar, he was reported as saying ‘an attack on the socialist basis of Czechoslovakia would meet with an effective rebuff from the Czechoslovak people and Communists’. (Italics added.)
39 Author's interview with Mlynář, 1 June 1979. He claimed that information available when he became Secretary of the KPČ in April 1968 suggested that the Ministry had a total of 147,000 agents and informers throughout the country; and an apparat of 20,000 with 10,000 working in Prague alone. Of the 10,000 Mlynář claims one third were Soviet agents.
40 Beam, , Multiple Exposure, p. 158.Google Scholar
41 Tanyug, , 17 06 1968Google Scholar, EE/2825/C/3. Also see Radio Free Europe Research Report, East Europe, Czechoslovakia, No. 70, 24 06 1968, p. 3Google Scholar; Reuter report from Vienna, in the Daily Express, 26 07 1968Google Scholar; Rudé právo, 22 06 1968Google Scholar. For Pavel's April announcement, see the Daily Telegraph or the Guardian, 1 05 1968.Google Scholar
42 Bratislava Radio, 23 July 1968, EE/2834/C/2.
43 Tigrid, Pavel in Why Dubček Fell (London: Macdonald, 1971), p. 64Google Scholar, maintains that during the summer about 150 agents of the Soviet security forces, mostly Czechoslovak citizens working as Soviet advisers, were purged. He also maintains that in the Spring a minor purge of officials ‘known to pass on information to the Soviets’ was carried out. This view is consistent with a report by Floyd, David (Daily Telegraph, 1 10 1968)Google Scholar that in April a top Soviet official working in the Czechoslovak Ministry was purged along with forty advisers. The admission that Soviet advisers were working in the Ministry was made publicly by Rypel, J., Deputy Minister of Interior, in Práce, on 28 JuneGoogle Scholar. Bittman, Ladislav (The Deception Game: Czechoslovak Intelligence in Soviet Political Warfare (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Research Corporation, 1972). p. 202)Google Scholar, who claims to have worked for the Ministry of Interior in 1968 and to have subsequently defected, maintains that although there were a number of KGB officers purged in Prague during 1968, some Soviets remained and aided Czechoslovak conservatives in regaining control of the Ministry after the invasion. Mlynář, (Nachtfrost, p. 188)Google Scholar also maintains that Soviet officers held key positions of control within the army making effective resistance to the invasion more difficult.
44 Lidová armada, 2 07 1968.Google Scholar
45 Rudé pravo, 22 07 1968.Google Scholar
46 Prague Radio, 24 July 1968, EE/2830/1; and 23 July 1968, EE/2830/C/2; The Times and Guardian, 23 07 1968.Google Scholar
47 According to Antonin Liehm's discussion with the Deputy Minister of the Interior, cited in Kusin, , Czechoslovak Reform Movement, p. 61.Google Scholar
48 Tigrid, , Why Dubˇek Fell, p. 65.Google Scholar
49 The Times and New York Times, 23 08 1968.Google Scholar
50 ‘Lessons of the Crisis Development…’ in Pravda pobezhdaet (Moscow: Politizdat, 1971), p.45.Google Scholar
51 The text of the Moscow Protocol is contained in Tigrid, , Why Dubček Fell, pp. 210–14.Google Scholar
52 Speech by Bil'ak to the 1969 Central Committee plenum, in Svedestvi, x (1970), No. 38, pp. 284–5Google Scholar. This account of the summit was confirmed as being substantially correct by Z. Mlynář in the author's interview with him, 1 June 1979.
53 Mlynář, , Nachtfrost, p. 301.Google Scholar
54 While the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, denied that the US government had had any official communications with the Soviets in Czechoslovakia, a State Department official subsequently indicated that this denial covered only ‘authorized, deliberate, diplomatic’ warnings to the USSR and it did not exclude ‘the possibility of a conversation between an official of the US government and an official of the Soviet government on the subject of Czechoslovakia’, New York Times, 19 07 1968Google Scholar. Whatever the contents of any private communication. Rusk's statement on 18 July that ‘we've not involved ourselves in any way’ and that the Russians should be able to ‘sit down and figure out for themselves’ that the US did not wish to intervene in the crisis was a clear indication of the American posture (New York Times, 19 07 1968Google Scholar). For further discussion of Soviet-American signalling see. Daily Express (London), 1 08 1968Google Scholar; International Herald Tribune, 23 08 1968Google Scholar; and the speech by Brandt on 22 August 1968 when he stated that ‘the US Government has not given any indication that it will help [Czechoslovakia]… The shield of the Western alliance reaches no further than to the frontiers of its members. This is the truth of which we have again been expressly reminded. The Soviet leaders know this too, and not just since yesterday’. (News From Germany, xxiii (1968), No. 9, pp. 5–6).Google Scholar
55 Mlynář, , Nachtfrost, p. 301.Google Scholar
56 International Herald Tribune, 27 12 1972Google Scholar, and Daily Telegraph, 30 12 1972.Google Scholar
57 See the articles referred to in fn. 15 above and the Krasnaya zvezda editorial ‘Strengthening of Combat Readiness is our Chief Task’, 13 08 1968.Google Scholar
58 Quoted in Tigrid, , Why Dubček Fell, p. 127.Google Scholar
59 Mlynář, , Nachtfrost, pp. 287, 202Google Scholar. George Brown, the former British Foreign Secretary, had also concluded after a visit to Yugoslavia in August that by'then there was ‘“clear evidence” that some at least of the Russian leaders, in particular the Soviet military, were in earnest [about invasion]’. Evening Standard, 15 11 1968.Google Scholar
60 The Soviet ultimatum is in Svedestvi (1969), No. 37, p. 94Google Scholar, and in Sunday Telegraph, 10 08 1969.Google Scholar
61 Rudé právo, 3 04 1969.Google Scholar
62 Trevelyan, Humphrey, ‘Conversations with a Conspirator’, The Times, 19 02 1977.Google Scholar
63 Text in The Times, 2 09 1968.Google Scholar
64 Mlynář, , Nachtfrost, p. 194.Google Scholar
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67 Helmut Sonnenfeldt, the senior US State Department adviser on communist affairs, in a briefing to US ambassadors in Europe, which subsequently was released to the New York Times on 6 04 1976Google Scholar, maintained that US interests lay in encouraging the development of ‘a more natural and organic’ relationship between the USSR and Eastern Europe and that the US should respond to East European aspirations for autonomy only within the context of Soviet military domination of the area.