This chapter answers three basic questions regarding how the Prague Spring crisis in Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (ČSSR) affected relations between the Soviet Union and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). First, how did Soviet interpretations of the FRG’s politics concerning Czechoslovakia come into being, and to what extent did they correspond to reality? Second, on what did Czechoslovakia—in the eyes of the Soviets—base its relations with the FRG? Finally, what effects did the Czechoslovak crisis and its outcome ultimately have on USSR-FRG relations?¹

The Politburo Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU (“Information for Fraternal Parties on the Current Situation in Czechoslovakia”) of 28 October 1968 contains the following passage:

In March 1968, Franz Josef Strauss stated in a meeting with senior West German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) functionaries that the U.S. and the German governments had invested a great deal of work in order to compromise the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) leadership in the eyes of the Czechoslovak public. According to Strauss, the Western world was, therefore, supposed to make “sensitive and prudent” use of all channels of ideological and economic influence in order further to weaken the KSČ’s clout in the country and “gradually to prise away Czechoslovakia from the USSR.”²

SOURCES FOR THE SOVIET INTERPRETATION OF THE FRG’S POLICY CONCERNING THE ČSSR

It has proved impossible to identify the source from which the Soviet leadership could have obtained this information. Leaving the authenticity issue aside, we may note that in this concrete case, mention is made of plans and intentions on the part of the West to interfere in Czechoslovak affairs, yet there are no facts to document any kind of actual interference. These are referred to in the next paragraph of the document, in which charges are leveled not at West German, but at Austrian politicians, those in Austria’s Socialist Party (SPÖ), to be precise.

An examination of the files of the Soviet press and of TASS results in a corroboration of the Austrian role in events in Czechoslovakia, which is even stronger and more accentuated than the West German one. The Literaturnaya Gazeta of 28 August 1968³ published an article entitled “Green Berets Again” about the transfer of “arms and saboteurs” from the FRG to Czechoslovakia across Austrian territory, whereas Pravda wrote about the transfer of “22 West German radio transmitter stations”—again across Austrian territory.⁴ According to these incriminatory articles, the Soviet propagandists blamed Czechoslovakia’s two “Western” neighbors in equal measure. In the secret TASS material, Austria’s role is underlined more strongly and in a more “aggressive” diction, as a glance at some of the headlines of these information bulletins⁵ conveys: “Austria’s radio transmits Czech language broadcasts on developments in the ČSSR” and “The Vienna unit of Austria’s Military Secret Service focuses its activities on Czechoslovakia.”⁶

It has to be borne in mind that we are talking here of the time after the invasion of the ČSSR by the troops of the Warsaw Pact. While the crisis was still brewing, the main target for all incriminations regarding “interference” was clearly the FRG. It is obvious that propaganda came in different degrees of intensity. Judging by the dossier “Czechoslovakia and the FRG,” which was put together in 1968 at the Soviet Foreign Ministry from TASS material, statements of FRG politicians, which were full of exhortations to use caution in exploiting the new situation in the ČSSR for German purposes, were the first focus of interest. A Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) report of 1 April reported that

It took some time for annoyance with the FRG to surface in comments in connection with the events of the Prague Spring. Reporting in the West German media on events in the ČSSR triggered the first sharp reaction. On 25 May the regular edition of the TASS Report⁸ published an article entitled “Libelous article in the weekly Der Spiegel on the developments in Czechoslovakia” (referring to the article “Zu Europa” in the edition of 13 May). Soon afterwards, the visits of members of the FRG’s political and economic elite in the ČSSR were given top priority in the TASS Report. Of particular interest to the Soviet Foreign Ministry were the almost simultaneous trips— on 12 and 13 July—of two representatives of the Free Democratic Party (Freie Demokratische Partei or FDP), Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Walter Scheel, and of the president of the Bundesbank, Karl Blessing.⁹ On 16 July, TASS published an article entitled “UPI on the Relations between the FRG and Czechoslovakia” (“UPI zu den Beziehungen zwischen der BRD und der Tschechoslowakei”) by the correspondent of the U.S. news service in Bonn, Wellington Long, which contained the following statement:¹⁰

It appears that the idea of Czechoslovakia receiving economic aid from the FRG rather rattled the Soviet leadership—a flashback to Josef Stalin’s reaction to the Czech government’s resolution in 1947 to accept aid under the Marshall Plan. However, given the state of affairs in the latter half of the 1960s, it was clearly unrealistic to follow in Stalin’s actions in order to solve the problem, that is, to order the Czechoslovak leadership to Moscow and dress them down. The only channel that remained open was propaganda. The task consisted in showing that, while the FRG was ostensibly offering talks on economic aid, it was, in fact, planning a military intervention. Soviet press reports began to announce the discovery of arms caches on Czechoslovak territory that had been deposited there by West German revanchistes close to the Landsmannschaft der Sudetendeutschen, the association of Sudeten Germans. TASS published an announcement from the Reuters News Agency to the effect that “the Sudeten German refugees have rejected Soviet charges today as the products of ‘pure fantasy.’”¹¹ The announcement also quoted the chairman of the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft, Walter Becher, accusing the USSR of doing “their utmost to create an atmosphere which made Russian interference in Czechoslovak affairs appear called for”—which was actually the case. At the same time, it becomes quite obvious from the Reuters correspondent’s interview with Becher that the latter did not deny the existence of the arms caches: “These weapons are, as Dr. Becher explained, quite obviously leftovers from the American postwar occupation of this region.”

The activities of the Sudeten German organizations and the statements of its president proved a boon to Soviet propaganda, particularly as Becher also belonged to one of the parties represented in the FRG’s coalition government of the day. In an interview for Der Spiegel of 29 July, Becher quite openly advocated “the return of Sudeten German experts to federal Czechoslovakia, to the federal Bohemian, Moravian, and Slovak state.”¹² Because such a program obviously existed, the thesis of revanchiste expansionism and of a threat to the Socialist construction—or even of the already existing statehood—of the ČSSR did not seem utterly absurd any longer.

Becher was planning to expound the rationale behind his program at a projected gathering of 25,000 Sudeten Germans on 24/25 August, the so-called Pear Sunday weekend, in Schirnding close to the Czech border. Planning for this gathering acquired ominous overtones when it was linked directly to plans concerning Bundeswehr maneuvers which were also due to take place in the ČSSR border region. When the Der Spiegel correspondent mentioned the possibility of a link between the two developments, Becher replied:

“Kerfuffle” was presumably Becher’s term for the acrimonious polemics that had erupted in FRG political circles around these maneuvers. The FRG press reported at length on the differences of opinion within the ruling coalition on this subject, namely between Minister of Defense Gerhard Schröder and the Social Democrats. This was also documented in some detail in TASS Reports. On 22 July, a report in the “Breaking News” section noted that “the FRG government had decided to either hold the ‘Black Lion’ maneuvers, which had been planned for the autumn, either at a different location or at a different time.” However, this information was not taken up by the press.

As opposed to the “Black Lion” maneuvers, the gathering at Schirnding was not adjourned. In a reaction to this development, the FRG ambassador to the USSR, Helmut Allardt, told the head of the 3rd European Department of the USSR Foreign Ministry, Garal’d Gorinovich, on 31 August that the FRG government had “implemented measures designed to reduce in size the gathering of Sudeten Germans in Schirnding at the border with the ČSSR. What eventually took place there was no more than a religious service for Sudeten Germans.”¹⁴ These “measures” neither made it into the press nor the materials of TASS. It appears that the difficult relations between FRG government circles and the Landsmannschaften received scant attention in Western media. The precise timing of the implementation of these so-called measures remains unclear. If they took place after 21 August, it indirectly corroborates the interpretation transported by Soviet propaganda that the military action of the Warsaw Pact countries “caused a certain disillusionment among West German revanchistes.”

Soviet propaganda, incidentally, was directly affected both by what FRG politicians said and did not say and by material lifted from West German media. It is characteristic that the TASS Report memorably entitled “Bonn’s Subversive Tactics against the ČSSR” repeats almost the entire Der Spiegel article.¹⁵ It should be noted that Der Spiegel was used in this concrete case as a source of non-partisan, objective information, even though the weekly had exclusively been characterized in extremely negative terms in the past. The report reported that “the West German Secret Service recruits its agents from among FRG citizens traveling to the ČSSR, according to the latest edition of the periodical Der Spiegel.” The weekly reported that West German border police keep tabs on the names, car registration plates, and addresses of those West German citizens who crossed the border from the FRG into the ČSSR. “The data on these persons are then forwarded to the staff headquarters of the West German Secret Service in Munich. On the basis of these data, individuals are selected who are capable of working as agents and informants for the federal Intelligence Service.”

TASS also noted that the police activities mentioned above had been questioned by Werner Porsch, one of the FDP members of the Bundestag, and that the reason given for them by the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior was “considerations of state security.” The communiqué winds up in a manner that makes it difficult to tell whether the concluding remarks are based directly on the Der Spiegel article or on the TASS correspondent’s judgment: “The registration procedure at the border does not serve the purpose of uncovering agents of the East but of recruiting agents for the West. This is how, according to the periodical, the principle of ‘strict non-interference’ in internal affairs proclaimed by the Chancellor is put into practice.”

It must be said that some of the statements made by FRG politicians on this “principle” were, indeed, highly ambiguous. One of the editions of TASS rendered an interview that Willy Brandt had granted a German TV station in which he “advocated not only as Foreign Minister but also as a representative of SPD restraint and strict non-interference in the developments in Czechoslovakia.”¹⁶ He “emphatically” declared on the same occasion: “I would like to state with complete candor that this does not come easily to me. It weighs on me that there are people we cannot receive, that there are many one would like to see and to talk to if there were the time to do so. Yet here we have to submit to a higher law.”

ESTABLISHING CONTACTS BETWEEN BONN AND PRAGUE

Brandt’s afterthought could be interpreted as referring to contacts that had already been established in secret with Prague and to attempts on the part of Prague to upgrade these contacts to a higher level, which would, however, have to wait. Such an interpretation obviously presupposes a certain measure of distrust or even suspicion regarding the intentions and activities of the Prague reformers. Both were present in generous measure in the minds of the Soviet leadership. The question that is interesting in this context is whether these were justified.

The first foreign political activities of the new ČSSR leadership could not give rise to further distrust or suspicion, at least as far as relations with the FRG were concerned. The memorandum “Reactions in the most important Czechoslovak papers to the resolutions of the January plenum of the CCKSČ” (Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia), whose author was the second secretary of the Soviet embassy in Prague, Yuri Zhuravlev, mentions the fact that “on 10 January, the KSČ’s central organ, Rudé právo, published a foreign political commentary which unmasks the fabrications and speculations of the bourgeois propaganda with reference to the changes that are supposed to have taken place in the ČSSR’s foreign policy in the wake of the January plenum.” It goes on to give a detailed summary of the most important points of this article, in particular the passage that deals with the ČSSR’s relations with the two German states:

The Soviet diplomat referred to an isolated lapse from correct political behavior by noting that “the imperialist aggression in the Middle East [was] not going to be considered.”¹⁷

On the day of the publication of this article in Rudé právo, a declaration of the Czechoslovak government on the activities of neo-Nazi and revanchiste forces in West Germany was also published. The declaration sharply criticized not only the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft and the National Democratic Part of Germany (NDPD), but also the federal government and the governments of “several” NATO countries.¹⁸ Both the content and the tone of the declaration were completely in accordance with the “tough stance” vis-à-vis the FRG that had been agreed upon at the 1967 Warsaw Pact Conference in Karlovy Vary.

On the following day, 11 January, a condensed version of the declaration was published in Rudé právo.¹⁹ The paper’s version admittedly differed somewhat from the original government declaration in that it was more laconic in tone; the demands to the FRG government were less specific, and the criticism of other Western governments and of NATO was omitted altogether. A feature common to both the declaration and the Rudé právo article was the explicit provenance of the facts documenting revanchiste and right-wing extremist activities in the FRG from documents of the country’s Ministry of the Interior and the SPD-associated Friedrich Ebert Foundation. These documents contained outspoken condemnations of these activities, which did not corroborate the thesis that the activities were carried out “with the government’s consent.” On the contrary, in this manner the position at least of the junior partner in the coalition, the Social Democrats, was vindicated, if indirectly.

Soviet diplomats could not have cared less for such nuances at the time. One can form some idea of the position they held from the following passage in the transcript of a conversation between the Soviet ambassador to the FRG and his Dutch colleague, de Beys, on 26 January 1968:

One should beware, however, of exaggerating the importance of the contradictions between the Soviet and the Czechoslovak assessments of the party political situation in the FRG during the first phase of the Prague Spring, lasting roughly to March 1968. At the time, Prague’s ideological attitude aimed at avoiding an exclusive reliance on the leadership of the SPD; instead, it reached out also to “leftist,” “progressive” forces within this party; these were going to become steadily more important in proportion to the progress of democratization in Czechoslovakia. In a report compiled by the 4th European Department of the Foreign Ministry of the USSR on reactions of the Western press to the developments in Czechoslovakia, the following passage from Rudé právo of 19 March was reprinted without comment:

This is followed by a report on reactions in the Czechoslovak press. Under the heading of 16 April, a statement is quoted from a speech given by Hessian Minister of Economy and Transport Rudi Arndt at the opening of the “Czechoslovak Days in the FRG”: “In the FRG, we, too, should be working toward such a progressive development as is now underway in Czechoslovakia.” The editors of the compilation work note that “these words were put in bold print in the Prace.”²²

Such emphasis is perfectly understandable. Arndt’s statement underlines the prognosis that the Czechoslovak model will have a positive effect on the West. Whether this corresponded to the truth is another matter, yet it is probable that it made people think, including those in Moscow. The question that the Soviet envoy to the FRG, Semyon Tsarapkin, put in the course of a conversation on 14 March 1968 to someone whose competence and influence particularly in the FRG’s leftist circles was beyond doubt, namely the head of the Metal Workers Trade Union, Otto Brenner, was a well considered one. Tsarapkin asked about people “belonging to the left wing of the SPD leadership.” The answer was a thoroughly discouraging one from the Soviet viewpoint, “Brenner declared that the left wing of the SPD leadership was non-existent, despite the fact that leftist tendencies were prominent in grassroots organizations.” Brenner’s ensuing remarks painted an even more downbeat picture: “In the FRG, a new generation of ‘young careerists’ is about to assume political power.” Within the SPD leadership, a group of “young careerists” prominently including Helmut Schmidt, an opportunist in Brenner’s eyes, was “getting thoroughly entrenched.”

At the end of the conversation, Brenner passed a sort of verdict on the very party on which the Czechoslovak reformers were pinning their hopes: “As the SPD no longer considers itself as a workers’ party but as a party for everyone, the Trade Unions are called upon to assume the role of the proponent of the interests and views of the working class—not only in the economic but the political arena as well.”²³

If no perspective whatsoever was in sight that the SPD might eventually identify with the ideas of the Prague Spring, the opposite view was gaining in strength, namely that the KPČ would be unable to resist the influence of the West.

In TASS correspondence from Bonn on the event that was also at the center of the Foreign Ministry report of 16 April, this information was relayed in a tone that might be called anxious rather than neutral:

An interview of the head of the Economics Department of the same Prague Institute, Karl Tauber, with the radio station Deutschlandfunk was linked by the DPA to the following day. In it, Tauber “advocated a speeding up of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Czechoslovakia and the FRG” and also referred to the ČSSR’s “interest to obtain loans from the FRG.” He also noted certain reservations on the Czech side: “Tauber declared that what Czechoslovakia was waiting for before diplomatic contacts could be established was a clear and unequivocal statement that the Munich Agreement was invalid from the beginning. In addition, it was desirable for the Federal Republic to turn over a new leaf in its attitude to the other part of Germany.”²⁵

There is no doubt that this bit of news had the potential to alarm those who read it in the USSR. Czechoslovakia could potentially go down the road of Romania, particularly as the “reservations” that were quoted were extremely weak. The Romanian analogy, incidentally, was extremely topical with regard to the ČSSR at the time and was frequently discussed in European circles. A characteristic example is taken from a conversation between the Soviet ambassador to Austria, Boris Podtserob, and his Czech colleague Pavel Novotný on 26 February 1968. The transcript contains the following passage:

The publication of “Apropos Foreign Politics” by Šedivoj in Literární noviny of 18 April 1968 and “Should We Negotiate with the FRG?” by Henzel in Lidová demokracie of 24 April bore witness to changes in exactly the direction that Podtserob’s interlocutor had ruled out as impossible. The more detailed assessment of these articles in the files of the Soviet embassy undertaken for Moscow’s information was already couched in a deliberately disapproving tone.²⁷

It was not only on the level of theoretical disquisitions of individual journalists that a new course was steered on the basis of unilateral activities that had not previously been discussed with the Warsaw Pact allies. Developments at the ČSSR-FRG border made headlines in the Western media, from where the news gradually seeped through to the Soviet decision-makers through TASS, that is, through nonpublic channels. On 3 April, the Reuters News Agency, citing the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior, reported that “today Czechoslovak soldiers have removed the triple barbed-wire barrier at the West German border.” This was followed by an “expert” explanation: the border installations “have become redundant as a new barrier is being erected about a kilometer further inland on Czechoslovak territory.”²⁸ After a two-week silence, the ČTK News Agency, citing Práce, came up with its own version:

The contradiction between the two versions—the first one claimed that the barrier was going to be moved farther inland, whilst according to the second, more authoritative one it was a matter of making the barrier identical with the border—was not difficult to notice. It necessarily led to the conclusion that until such time as the “other barrier was being built” there would be no barrier at all. It was precisely this (logical) reasoning that led to Aleksei Kosygin’s well known letter to the first minister of the ČSSR, Oldřich Černik, in which he stated that “owing to the overindulgence of the Czechoslovak authorities involved, the borders of Czechoslovakia are virtually open.”³⁰

This accusation was repeated in a more pointed form in the note of 20 July sent by the Foreign Ministry of the USSR to the ČSSR embassy, which stated that “the situation at the Western borders of the ČSSR has not only not improved after the receipt of the Czechoslovak side’s answer but work at the border has actually slowed down.”³¹ In the reply to this note, the Czechoslovak embassy in Moscow duly denied this accusation, adding that “the new Czechoslovak government has introduced a number of measures since May in order to ensure a stricter border management regime also for foreigners.” The note cited as proof above all that “during the recent maneuvers of the Allies, members of the Warsaw Pact High Command, with Soviet Marshal Ivan Yakubovskii at the head, visited a border post” and had “voiced their satisfaction with the measures, efforts and means that were being deployed in the defense of the Czechoslovak border.”³²

It would be tempting to accept the Czech line of argumentation if it were not obvious that the Western borders of the ČSSR had indeed been “open” in 1968, which was, in fact, due to the visa regulations that were in force. The ČSSR’s reply to the Soviet note, incidentally, gave an answer to a question that had not been asked by stating that the issue of visas to “members of the Armed Forces of NATO countries” had been stopped. This measure, however, was insufficient to rebut the charge referring to the possibilities that “were immediately exploited by imperialist intelligence services, particularly of the FRG and the U.S. These services sent spies and ‘diversants’ to the ČSSR, who were outwardly indistinguishable from ordinary tourists, in order for them to engage in subversive activities against the leadership in Czechoslovakia as well as against that in other Socialist countries.”³³

It is conceivable that the Soviet side did not want to be painted as a sponsor of the Iron Curtain or to reveal information it had received through secret channels. However, it did not take long for openly accessible information to emerge. In addition to the episode mentioned above concerning Porsch’s query that was commented on by Der Spiegel, there was an article three days later in the Neue Rhein-Zeitung of 7 August entitled “Queuing up for Visas to Czechoslovakia.” It stated, among other things, that the ČSSR Military Mission in West Berlin was “literally being flooded with visa applications.” Because these applications were processed inside one day, the result was that “in the first seven months of this year, more than 152,000 visas have been issued to German citizens.” This article also soon found its way into the TASS Report.³⁴

The TASS files already mentioned on “Bonn’s subversive activities directed against Czechoslovakia” quoted an even higher number of West German visitors to Czechoslovakia, “The West German Intelligence Service has a considerable potential for recruiting agents to spy on the ČSSR. According to press reports, 368,000 German citizens have entered Czechoslovakia in the first half of this year alone” (emphasis added).³⁵ It goes without saying that such a massive influx of Western tourists could not possibly be adequately monitored, even if one accepts the most conservative estimate of their number. This inevitably posed certain security problems for the Warsaw Pact countries.

Shortly prior to the beginning of the invasion, new reports on economic contacts between the ČSSR and the FRG surfaced. An announcement issued by Agence France-Presse (AFP) in Frankfurt/Main on 14 August stated that “a group of Czechoslovak finance experts are due to arrive here for talks with the Deutsche Bundesbank.”³⁶ The talks were officially classified as “technical”; loans were explicitly excluded from the agenda, and the precise topics of the talks remained unspecified. It is understandable that such reports could only increase the suspicions Moscow harbored toward the plans of the Czechoslovak reformers, particularly if they were not offset by official information.

A comparable lack of information also prevailed regarding the visits of West German politicians to the ČSSR. It was even the case that the country’s diplomats were not informed in time, which led to bizarre incidents. One example concerns the ČSSR ambassador to Austria, Novotný, who was showing considerable irritation with Austria’s media during a conversation with his Soviet colleague, Podtserob, on 22 July, at the peak of the crisis in Czechoslovakia. The media, according to Novotný, “spread all kinds of lies and try thereby to influence politics in Czechoslovakia and the country’s relations with the Socialist countries.” From the transcript of the conversation, it is apparent to what the envoy of the ČSSR was referring. “Austria’s media are carrying reports on a visit of the leader of the West German FDP, Scheel, to Czechoslovakia. This report is a pure and unmitigated fabrication.”³⁷ However, the news of Scheel’s visit had already been published by TASS on 13 July, and on the day of the conversation between Podtserob and Novotný, it was published by ČTK, which added that the visit was a nonofficial one. The result was that the ambassador was forced to retract his words the following day. The problem of the relationship between leading exponents of the ČSSR’s foreign politics and the country’s diplomats is beyond the scope of this article, but the above example shows very clearly that not all was well in this respect. This placed an additional burden on the Soviets in forming an objective, unbiased assessment of the Prague reformers and their political and foreign political goals. It was very difficult not to lose one’s bearings given this mêlée of reports, rumors, retractions, and the like.

So far this chapter’s discussion has only concerned image questions. But what were the actual stages in the development of Soviet–West German relations? What role did the events in Czechoslovakia play in this development?

THE REPERCUSSIONS OF THE ČSSR’S CRISIS ON RELATIONS BETWEEN BONN AND MOSCOW

As far as the relations between Bonn and Moscow were concerned, the year 1968 began with the jarring, tough-worded diplomatic note of 6 January 1968 on the topic of West Berlin, in which the Soviet government expressed its vehement disapproval of FRG policy. Bonn’s reply, handed to Soviet Ambassador Tsarapkin by Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger on 1 March, limited itself to expressing “surprise” at “the accusations filed by the government of the USSR”; it made no constructive contribution.³⁸ West Germany’s reaction on 15 January to a Soviet proposal (made as early as 15 August 1967) concerning the establishment of a direct airlink between the USSR and the FRG was more satisfactory in operational and constructive terms. This positive reaction was obviously part of the policy of “small steps,” the essence of Bonn’s Eastern politics, and a kind of hallmark of the Great Coalition. Unsurprisingly, Bonn’s diplomats in their reply hewed to West Germany’s claim to sole representation; they even managed to ascribe this position to the Soviet side. In concrete terms, the reply stated that the FRG government “welcomed the Soviet proposal to start talks involving the relevant ministries of both countries on the establishment of a direct German-Soviet airlink.” The Soviet proposal had, of course, referred to this goal as the establishment of “direct flights between the Soviet Union and the Federal Republic of Germany.” A positive Soviet reply did not arrive until the end of the year, a development that figures into the chain of events discussed later in this article.

In many talks on both official and unofficial levels, FRG representatives affirmed their wish for the USSR to demonstrate a modicum of acceptance of the FRG and its politics; this was accompanied by denials of the existence in the FRG of revanchism, a neo-Nazi threat, and so forth. The USSR reacted to this by repeating the same catalogue of demands: the existing borders had not yet been recognized; the other German state had not yet been recognized; there were unwarranted claims on West Berlin; the development of neo-Nazism did not meet with an adequate response; the country was banking on nuclear energy; the country was evading the issue of the Munich Agreement; and the country was preparing “extraordinary legislation.”

The Soviet side supported the strict measures taken against revanchistes by the GDR, as is evidenced by a conversation between the Polish ambassador to Moscow, Paszkowski, and the head of the 3rd European Department of the Foreign Ministry of the USSR, Anatolii Blatov, on 17 April 1968.³⁹ At the same time, care was taken at the Soviet Foreign Ministry not to demonstrate too much solidarity with their GDR comrades:

The most important topics in the talks held between staff members of the 3rd European Department and FRG diplomats, namely Ambassador Allardt and the embassy’s two ministers, Sante and Rudolf Wolff, were problems related to the FRG’s position on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and to its renunciation of the use of force. The discussion of the two problems proved fraught with difficulties, but was not hindered by polemics.

The situation in Czechoslovakia was not touched upon in these talks, as this author can testify. The same can be said of talks of the Soviet ambassador to the FRG, Tsarapkin, with politicians and representatives of public life in the FRG. These revolved around domestic issues of the FRG: neoNazism, extraordinary legislation, the student movement, and so forth. The only mention of events in Czechoslovakia in the documents that have been examined is in connection with the federal minister for Scientific Research in the FRG, Gerhard Stoltenberg, in the course of a talk with the Soviet ambassador on 18 July 1968:

One interpretation of this deliberately vague statement is that the West German minister had a compromise in mind: further steps away from Adenauer’s old Ostpolitik would be possible, provided the USSR acknowledged the irreversibility of the developments that originated in Czechoslovakia and were now affecting all of Eastern Europe. If this interpretation hits the mark, a new set of possibilities for decoding the statement becomes available. Was this an inadmissible attempt to blackmail the USSR, or a well-meaning attempt to warn those in charge against taking violent action? The answer will depend on the viewpoint of whoever is interpreting the statement. Whatever the result, Stoltenberg’s attempt has to be called a failure at least on account of the date of 18 September 1968 that the minutes of the meeting bear; in addition to this, it was not received by the Soviet Foreign Ministry until much later. Such a delay between an actual talk and its record being committed to the ambassador’s official log is rather unusual. Again, a range of different explanations is possible, one of them being that Soviet diplomats in third countries were loath to address topics on which they felt out of their depth and which they assumed were also causing unease in Moscow. An indirect corroboration of this explanation derives from the fact that the ambassador added no comment of his own to his interlocutor’s statement quoted above.

The conversation, however, took place at a time when the crisis that was brewing in the relations between Czechoslovakia and most of the other Warsaw Pact countries and its fallout, which would also affect SovietGerman relations, was approaching its climax. Almost simultaneously, the Soviet government dispatched strongly worded notes to the Czechoslovak government and a memorandum to the government of the FRG. In the latter the FRG was taken to task for making public the contents of the documents concerning a bilateral exchange of opinions on the topic of the renunciation of the use of force—notwithstanding the fact that at the same time the contents of these documents had been published in their entirety in the Soviet press. It has to be borne in mind that when Tsarapkin explained the purpose of the Soviet action to the Dutch ambassador, he did not mention Czechoslovak affairs with a single word. He confined himself to the remark that the action had been a “retaliatory measure” because the West German side had ignored the confidentiality principle in the dialogue. A further passage that is of interest in Tsarapkin’s minutes of this brief conversation on 16 July is the one where he describes the reaction of his interlocutor and his own answer to his colleague’s by no means trivial question: “The Dutch ambassador declared himself to be in agreement with my arguments and asked whether I concurred in thinking that the publication of the documents by both sides spelled the end of negotiations. I replied that the door to a continued exchange of opinions had not been closed.”⁴²

A comparable position was the one held by the 3rd European Department. In a memorandum dated 22 June and addressed to Andrei Gromyko by Anatolii Kovalev and Garal’d Gorinovich, the minister is given the advice to receive Ambassador Allardt and to inform him that the government of the USSR “is ready for a further exchange of opinions on the topic of the renunciation of the use of force.” The memorandum also noted that “it is presumably helpful to raise the issue of the FRG’s accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in order not to provide a basis for the other side to claim the Soviet Union is bringing pressure to bear in some way.”⁴³

By now, the FRG had already shifted the polemical exploitation of the Czechoslovak question to an official intergovernmental level. The declaration of the FRG’s government spokesman, Günther Dill, which was issued on 18 July 1968, must be considered the first “broadside” that was fired in this campaign. In it, he gave short shrift to the Soviet government’s declaration of 5 July and noted that the details of this note “suggested the presence of pitch black humor” and that confidence in Moscow had thereby “been seriously undermined.”

The exchange of protest notes between the Foreign Ministry of the FRG and the Soviet embassy in Bonn, which was to follow two weeks later, was the next step. It has proven impossible for this author to locate Soviet documents about this episode; the only document available is a version of a DPA report, which may, however, be considered reliable. It was in any case published without commentary in the daily edition of TASS under the title “On the Relations between the USSR and the FRG.”⁴⁴ The following text is a translation from the Russian version: “Despite the federal government’s protests, the Soviet Union remains convinced that ‘certain circles’ within the Federal Republic are meddling in the events in Czechoslovakia and want to exert ‘hostile’ influence on the relations between Moscow and Prague.”

On the following day, Bonn filed a protest against such accusations; a day later, on a Thursday, the Soviet embassy in Bonn issued a communiqué to the effect that Ambassador Tsarapkin rebutted the protest “in the most categorical terms.” In its rebuttal, the embassy referred to a talk that had taken place between Undersecretary Georg-Ferdinand Dukwitz and the Soviet ambassador at the Foreign Ministry on Wednesday. On that occasion, Dukwitz had registered a protest against the Soviet accusations and deplored the campaign that was being waged against the Federal Republic in the Soviet press.

In the communiqué based on this talk, the ambassador emphatically sided with the Soviet press with regard to the accusations against the FRG. The ambassador could not but rebuff the protest because “the evidence used by the Soviet press is based on facts amounting to proof that certain circles in the FRG are determined to interfere in a number of ways in the relations pertaining between the USSR and the ČSSR as well as in the internal affairs of the ČSSR.” The interference was undertaken with the “express purpose of undermining Soviet-Czechoslovak relations.”

The communiqué went on to say that Soviet-Czechoslovak relations and the situation in Czechoslovakia were not on the agenda in talks with the Federal Republic.

According to diplomatic observers, the Soviet-German “controversies” about putative German interference signaled Moscow’s increasingly rigid attitude toward Bonn during the escalation of the situation in Czechoslovakia. This can also be inferred from the federal government’s white book, which was published after negotiations with Moscow on the renunciation of the use of force stalled unexpectedly on 11 July.

The white book is significant in several ways. First, it provides definitive proof for the hypothesis that it was, in fact, the West German side that initiated official polemics centering on the Czechoslovak question. Second, the controversy followed a trajectory that was highly unusual given the traditional relations between the USSR and capitalist countries. Normally, the Soviet side would protest diverse articles published by the Western press; this drew a routine answer to the effect that the government involved in the matter, being unable to interfere in the affairs of independent media, was unable to assume responsibility. In the case under discussion, it was the other way round. Third, the Soviet side did not resort to the argument it habitually used on other, rare occasions when it was confronted with claims on the basis of positions put forward by Soviet media. It tacitly admitted that in this case the viewpoints of the Soviet press and the Soviet government were identical. This transformed the accusations leveled against the FRG by the press into a kind of official intervention. Fourth, in this case, accusations were not leveled against the government, but against “certain circles” in the FRG, which is indicative of Soviet diplomats’ determination to minimize the conflict. Finally, the main thrust of the Soviet counterprotest was no more than an explication of the Brezhnev Doctrine.

It is difficult to ascertain what the actual objective of the FRG’s intervention was. The government must have been aware that a change in the tune of Soviet propaganda was not in the cards. If the point of the exercise was to continue to expose propaganda for what it was, it would have been more logical to analyze the Soviet counterprotest and to expose the weaknesses of the Soviet position. However, Bonn came up with an entirely different reaction. According to the UPI Press Agency on 2 August, the FRG Foreign Ministry confined itself “to rebuffing the accusations of the Soviet ambassador, Tsarapkin, which centered on the claim that ‘certain circles’ were meddling in the internal affairs of Czechoslovakia” and stated “that the Foreign Ministry had no intentions of discussing this issue any further.”⁴⁵

By 21 August, USSR-FRG relations were smoother, if not entirely back to normal. On 20 August, literally on the eve of the invasion of the ČSSR by Warsaw Pact troops, a meeting took place between the head of the 3rd European Department, Gorinovich, and the ambassador of the FRG, Allardt, who signed, on behalf of the federal government, an international agreement on the Rescue of Astronauts, the Return of Astronauts, and the Return of Objects Launched into Outer Space. In the minutes of this meeting, Gorinovich writes: “I welcomed Allardt and expressed the hope that the next international agreement would be the one on Nuclear Non-Proliferation. The ambassador replied that this was by no means impossible.”

Allardt inquired about the state of affairs concerning the direct airlink between the Soviet Union and the FRG because the FRG was still awaiting a reply to its note of 15 January. Gorinovich answered evasively: “The project is still being evaluated.”⁴⁶

Public reaction in the FRG to the invasion of the ČSSR by troops of the five Warsaw Pact countries was extremely negative. Protest demonstrations outside the buildings of the USSR’s embassy and trade delegation escalated into riots. Bonn’s official position was more restrained, if not downright apologetic. On 31 August, another meeting took place between Gorinovich and Allardt, which Allardt used to register a protest. However, his protest did not concern the events of 21 August, but a comment made in a German-language program of Radio Moscow to the effect that Chancellor Kiesinger’s statement on 25 August “could be interpreted as a declaration of war and that the Warsaw Pact countries would draw their own conclusions from it.” The Soviet side denied, of course, that it had the intention of starting a war with the FRG, and at the end of the meeting, the ambassador had to tender an apology for what had happened outside the Soviet embassy.

Kiesinger himself was even more obliging toward the USSR in a meeting with Tsarapkin on 2 September 1969. This author has already written extensively on this topic, yet one characteristic detail can now be added: the West German ambassador had confined himself to asserting that his government had never interfered in the internal affairs of the ČSSR and would certainly not do so in future.⁴⁷ At the same time, he conveyed that the FRG could not remain indifferent to the events unfolding in a neighboring country. The chancellor went definitely further than this. According to the minutes that were made on Tsarapkin’s behalf, “he underscored… that the government of the FRG had never tried to interfere in security matters concerning Socialist countries or in their internal affairs or in their mutual relations” (emphasis added). As far as the past was concerned, this statement was less than candid; as an assurance concerning the future, it sounded decidedly attractive in Soviet ears.

An anecdote may be helpful in illustrating the mood at the time. On 7 September, Berthold Beitz, a member of the board of directors of the Krupp conglomerate, called on the Soviet ambassador in Bonn. He told the diplomat he had received an invitation to go hunting in Romania and was wondering “whether this trip might not provoke criticism in view of the existing circumstances.” An indulgently inclined Tsarapkin gave his permission: “It was up to [Beitz] where and when he chose to go hunting.”⁴⁸ Before 21 August, such an answer would have been unthinkable.

The FRG’s reactions were not limited to exceptional demonstrations of respect for the Soviet state and to official declarations of the same effect. In bilateral relations, the “business as usual” mode soon began to reassert itself and included an initiative to intensify contacts that originated with the FRG. As early as 5 September, the West German side contacted the Foreign Ministry of the USSR to inquire whether a delegation of the Ludwigsburg-based Central Office of the State Justice Administration for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes was welcome in the USSR. A positive answer was given on 9 September. On 20 September, the second secretary at the FRG embassy, Diepgen, told Ivan Sorokoletov, an official at the 3rd European Department, that the visiting group “was making good progress” and that the members of the group were “very in good spirits.”⁴⁹ Otto von Stempel, the acting plenipotentiary, hinted in a meeting on 7 October with the new head of the 3rd European Department, Valentin Falin, that the FRG might conceivably be having second thoughts on its formerly adamant position regarding trade and cultural exchange agreements. He also raised the question again as to when the FRG could expect an answer on the direct airlink issue. This time, the Soviet reaction was less evasive than in the Gorinovich-Allardt meeting on 20 August: Falin assured his interlocutor that “an answer might well be forthcoming any time soon”—and “soon” it was to be: on 21 October the Air Ministry signaled its approval to the start of negotiations and these kicked off on 9 October 1968 in Bonn.⁵⁰ The crisis between the USSR and the FRG had been overcome and soon gave way to normal relations.

It is to be deplored that this happened after a demonstration of its power by the USSR; in a way, one could even say this happened because of it. This was not setting the best of examples for the future.

NOTES

Translated from German into English by Otmar Binder, Vienna.

1. The sources used here are above all the files of the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation from the holdings F. 138a (Czechoslovak Desk), F. 757 (FRG Desk), F. 553 (Desk of the Soviet embassy in the FRG), F. 66 (Austrian Desk), and F. 56 “b” (holdings of the Press Department—TASS files), as well as the files of the former Archive of the CC of the CPSU.

2. RGANI, F. 3, op. 72, d. 214, 61, Politburo resolution of the CC of the CPSU P 106 (10), “On the memorandum addressed to the fraternal parties on the current situation in Czechoslovakia,” 18 October 1968.

3. See also the chapter by Günter Bischof, “‘No Action’: The Johnson Administration and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968,” in this volume.

4. This was one of the issues the Soviet ambassador to Austria, Boris Podtserob, addressed on 31 August 1968 in his conversation with Austria’s chancellor, Josef Klaus. AVP RF, F. 66, op. 47, 100, d. 6, pp. 179–83, official log of the USSR ambassador to Austria, Podtserob, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #182.

5. This refers to a reprint of an article first published in Volksstimme.

6. TASS, 28 August 1968, 4-AD, and TASS, 30 December 1968, 16-VE.

7. TASS, 2 April 1968, 11-BE.

8. TASS-Report, 1–4-AD.

9. TASS, 13 July 1968, 29-BE, 41-BE.

10. TASS, 16 July 1968, 19–20-BE.

11. TASS, 20 July 1968, 6-AD.

12. The said interview was also published in the TASS edition of 2 August 1968, 15–19-BE.

13. TASS, 2 August 1968, 17–18-BE.

14. AVP RF, F. 757, op. 13, 84, d. 13, p. 47, transcript of the conversation between the FRG ambassador to Moscow, H. Allardt, and the head of the 3rd European Department of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, G. Gorinovich, on 31 August 1968.

15. TASS, 5 August 1968, 34–35-BE.

16. TASS, 3 August 1968, 16–18-BE.

17. AVP RF, F. 138a, op. 49, 148, d. 16, p. 27, report of the second secretary of the Soviet embassy in Prague, Y. Zhuravlev, to the Soviet Foreign Ministry.

18. AVP RF, F. 138a, op. 49, 147, d. 12, pp. 1–4.

19. AVP RF, F. 138a, op. 49, 148, d. 16, pp. 2–4.

20. AVP RF, F. 757, op. 13, 84, p. 2, transcript of a conversation between the Soviet ambassador to Bonn, S. Tsarapkin, and his colleague, the Dutch ambassador to Bonn, de Beys, 26 January 1968.

21. AVP RF, F. 138a, op. 49, 148, d. 16, pp. 85–86, report of the 4th European Department of the Foreign Ministry of the USSR, 25 March 1968.

22. AVP RF, F. 138a, op. 49, 148, d. 16, p. 160, report of the 4th European Department of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, 16 April 1968.

23. AVP RF, F. 757, op. 13, 84, d. 14, pp. 12–13, transcript of a conversation between the Soviet ambassador to Bonn, S. Tsarapkin, and the head of the Trade Union of Metal Workers, O. Brenner, 14 March 1968.

24. TASS, 11 April 1968, 35–36-BE.

25. TASS, 12 April 1968, 18-BE.

26. AVP RF, F. 66, op. 47, 100, d. 6, p. 45, transcript of a conversation between the Soviet ambassador to Vienna, B. Podtserob, and his colleague, the Czechoslovak ambassador to Vienna, P. Novotný, 26 February 1968.

27. AVP RF, F. 138a, op. 49, 148, d. 16, pp. 120, 223–24, report of the Soviet ambassador to Vienna, B. Podtserob, to the Soviet Foreign Ministry, April 1968.

28. TASS, 4 April 1968, 6-AD.

29. TASS, 17 April 1968, 40-BE.

30. AVP RF, F. 138a, op. 49, 147, d. 1, p. 23, quoted according to the text of the Soviet note of 20 July 1968.

31. AVP RF, F. 138a, op. 49, 147, d. 1, p. 25.

32. AVP RF, F. 138a, op. 49, 147, d. 2, pp. 14–15, text of the Czechoslovak note.

33. AVP RF, F. 138a, op. 49, 147, d. 1, p. 24.

34. TASS, 8 August 1968, 14-BE.

35. TASS, 5 August 1968, 34-BE.

36. TASS, 15 August 1968, 18-BE.

37. AVP RF, F. 66, op. 47, 100, d. 6, p. 155, transcript of a conversation between the Soviet ambassador to Vienna, B. Podtserob, and his colleague, the Czechoslovak ambassador to Vienna, P. Novotný, 22 July 1968. In addition to this, Novotný passed on another piece of information to Podtserob: the West German ambassador, Josef Löns, had assured him that the last thing the FRG wanted was to interfere in the course of events in Czechoslovakia. In Bonn’s leading circles, the question of granting a loan to Czechoslovakia had been discussed. The idea was dropped, Löns said, because no one wanted to be accused of meddling in Czechoslovakia’s internal affairs. Comrade Novotný, however, added it was all very well for Löns to say this; the ruling circles in the FRG were in fact acting differently.

38. AVP RF, F. 757, op. 13, 85, d. 19, pp. 8–12, note of the government of the FRG, 1 March 1968.

39. AVP RF, F. 757, op. 13, 84, d. 13, p. 13, transcript of a conversation between the Polish ambassador to Moscow, Paszkowski, with the head of the 3rd European Department of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, A. Balatov, 17 April 1968.

40. AVP RF, F. 757, op. 13, 85, d. 19, p. 19.

41. AVP RF, F. 757, op. 13, 84, d. 14, p. 34, transcript of the conversation between the Soviet ambassador to Bonn, S. Tsarapkin, with the federal minister of Scientific Research, G. Stoltenberg, 18 July 1968.

42. AVP RF, F. 757, op. 13, 84, d. 14, p. 31, transcript of a conversation between the Soviet ambassador to Bonn, S. Tsarapkin, with the Dutch ambassador, de Beys, 16 July 1968.

43. AVP RF, F. 757, op. 13, 85, d. 19, p. 36, report written by A. Kovalev, A. Gromyko, and G. Gorinovich, 22 June 1968.

44. TASS, 2 August 1968, 14–15-BE.

45. TASS, 3 August 1968, 7-BE.

46. AVP RF, F. 757, op. 13, 84, d. 13, pp. 40–41, transcript of a conversation of the FRG ambassador to Moscow, Allardt, with the head of the 3rd European Department of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, 20 August 1968.

47. See N. I. Egorova and A. O. Čubarjan, eds., Cholodnaja vojna i politika razrjadki: Diskussionnye problemy (Moscow: Moskva, 2003), 181–82.

48. AVP RF, F. 757, op. 13, 84, d. 14, p. 45, transcript of the conversation between the Soviet ambassador to Bonn, S. Tsarapkin, with Berthold Beitz, a member of the board of directors of the Krupp conglomerate, 7 September 1968.

49. AVP RF, F. 757, op. 13, 84, d. 13, p. 55, transcript of the conversation between the second secretary of the FRG embassy in Moscow, Diepgen, with Ivan Sorokoletov, an official of the 3rd European Department of the Foreign Ministry, 20 September 1968.

50. AVP RF, F. 757, op. 13, 84, d. 13, pp. 57–58. AVP RF, F. 757, op. 13, 84, d. 13, pp. 61–62.

THE POWER QUESTION

In early 1968, the Czechoslovak Communists surprised their sister parties in the Soviet Empire with their plans for reform. Relations with the ruling Communist parties were the job of the respective party leaders. Walter Ulbricht, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands or SED), was full of mistrust toward this “Prague Spring.” The changes interested him above all from a political angle: did they serve the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia’s (Komunistická strana Československa or KSČ) monopoly on power or not? As the reforms of the KSČ pertained to the political system and the central administrative economy of the country, they did indeed affect core areas of its monopoly on power.

It was already clear to the SED leadership in March 1968 that these reforms were leading to a “counterrevolution.” This keyword was used by Communists to characterize a change of system in a Socialist society. In order to avoid such a change in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (ČSSR), the SED took an active part in the Soviet politics of intervention to restore the dictatorship.

This chapter focuses on the political decision process in the SED party leadership and their actions in the interventionist coalition against the reformist Communists in Prague. The activities of the Ministry for State Security (MfS) and the National People’s Army (NVA) in connection with preparations for an invasion of Warsaw Pact troops in August are handled by other authors in this volume.¹

The SED itself acted in close coordination with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Kommunisticheskaya Partiya Sovetskogo Soyuza or CPSU). This corresponded to its self-conception and the status of the German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik or GDR) as a satellite state of the Soviet Union. In 1968, the CPSU pursued first and foremost a political aim regarding the ČSSR: to restore the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia’s monopoly on power which was being eroded by the reforms. From the Soviet point of view, it was not a question of occupying the country, but only of protecting socialism in a “sister state.” Soviet general secretary Leonid Brezhnev had already articulated this aim to Alexander Dubček at the Dresden meeting in March. In the notorious “letter of invitation” from Vasil Bil’ak and four other members of the Presidium of the KSČ from August to Brezhnev, this aim is precisely and openly formulated: “The very being of socialism in our country is in danger.” With this phrase, the Communist Party’s monopoly on power was rewritten, which the reformers in the Party consciously wanted to renounce. In order to sustain its monopoly on power, the dogmatic wing of the Party required assistance from abroad: “Only with your help can we rescue the ČSSR from the impending counterrevolution.”²

This political aim also explains the procedure of coordination regarding the decisions of the CPSU with four of her “sister parties” and the function of the internal conferences. It was imperative to organize and demonstrate closeness in the Warsaw Pact. For the impartial viewer, this is a contradiction in terms; the policies and the military measures decided on were directed against a member state; one of them, Romania, did not participate in these interventionist politics.

By 1968, Moscow was no longer the undisputed leadership center of all Communist parties. Above all, there was the dispute with the Communist Party of China and the two largest western European parties in France and Italy. The response in the Communist world movement to the attempts at reform in Prague was divided. In April, the SED had already specified the differences between the Communists on this matter.³

The chosen position of the SED regarding the “Czechoslovak events” came about without losing sight of the Moscow line and the internal coordinating conferences. They constituted the breaks during the course of the crisis between the individual phases of its progress.

In Dresden in March, the “Warsaw Five”—the CPSU, the SED, the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP), the Polish United Workers’ Party (PUWP), and the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (HSWP) who would intervene in Czechoslovakia—brought to an end the phase of interpreting the reforms in the ČSSR as an impending “counterrevolution.” They confronted the delegation of the KSČ with this result. In Moscow in May, the Warsaw Five were concerned with increasing external pressure on the leadership of the KSČ in order to force the abandonment of the reforms. Then, in Warsaw in July, the basic decision to intervene was up for discussion. In Moscow, a few days before the invasion, Walter Ulbricht, Todor Zhivkov, Władysław Gomułka, and János Kádár signed the commitment to involve their states in the intervention. Following the invasion, the politics of restoration and the stationing of Soviet troops in the ČSSR were negotiated in Moscow between the CPSU and the KSČ and voted on by the CPSU in the context of the Warsaw Five.⁴

“COUNTERREVOLUTION” IN PRAGUE?

As the year 1968 dawned, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the SED Walter Ulbricht was at the zenith of his power. The borders of the GDR, closed since the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, provided for economic planning security; the mass exodus to the West was eliminated. The SED discussed a reform of the direction of the planned economy and a new constitution. The latter was to emphasize inwardly and outwardly the independence of the SED state. The “leading role” of the SED in the GDR received constitutional status and, thus, had to be respected by all citizens and social institutions. The constitution did not give up on the prospect of a united Germany and identified the GDR as the Socialist core state that was to demonstrate to a united Germany what its future development would look like.

With regard to foreign affairs, the GDR had received support at the 1967 conference of twenty-five European Communist parties in Karlovy Vary/Karlsbad for its demand for international recognition as the second German state. In the West and in the noncommitted states, the Federal Republic had prevented this recognition since its founding in 1949. In Karlsbad, the SED received the assurance that in the future no Socialist state would enter into diplomatic relations with the Federal Republic before the latter had recognized the GDR. This agreement was a direct response to Romania entering into diplomatic relations with the Federal Republic.⁵

With the support of the CPSU, the SED gained a foreign affairs victory. This support foiled the intention of the new eastern policy of the great coalition in the Federal Republic to isolate the GDR within the Socialist camp.

The change from Antonín Novotný to Dubček at the head of the KSČ in January 1968 did not yet disconcert the SED. The demand made by Ota Šik to introduce a new criterion for legitimating the rule of the Communist Party was presented quietly and did not immediately make it beyond the Czechoslovak border. He demanded in the future “the creation of better living conditions and the solution of the new social contradictions,” and, if the party did not bring this about, the danger existed “that the people would begin to turn their backs on socialism.” In order to prevent this, he demanded that “the Party should give up its monopoly on power” and fundamentally alter the style of party work: “Under current circumstances, it is not possible and also not necessary that the Party directs and controls the entire power and leadership apparatus in detail.”⁶ With this, he formulated the fundamental idea of the reformers: in the future, the Leninist conception of the party should not legitimate the power of the party; rather, the living conditions of the people under socialism should constitute in the future the yardstick by which its actions would be judged.

The SED leadership did not become alarmed until the developments of the following months: the personnel changes on all levels of the party organization, Novotný’s resignation as state president, the debate on the rehabilitation of the victims of repression at the beginning of the 1950s, and above all the abolition of censorship and, with it, the party’s control over the media.

An important building block for the first chosen positioning of the Central Committee apparatus of the SED in March was the report of the GDR ambassador in Prague. Peter Florin reported the following to East Berlin:⁷ “The activity of the opposing forces has intensified over recent days and assumes increasingly open counterrevolutionary characteristics.”⁸ The press, radio, and television were largely in “opposition hands,” and the media were becoming in this way organizers of “counterrevolution.”⁹

The keyword for the Marxist-Leninist perception of the dangerous character of the Prague reform politics had been spoken. It was a phrase with a meaning that provided direction. The first sentence of the Soviet black book from August 1968, with which the intervention was justified, was: “The counterrevolutionary line amounted to liquidating the leading role of the KSČ.”¹⁰ For the SED ideologues, counterrevolutionary processes in Socialist states under the circumstances of systemic confrontation between socialism and imperialism were always an interaction between “imperialist aggression” from the outside and the emergence of “hostile forces” within the Socialist society. The ideological struggle against the ruling Communist Party was among the most important instruments of “counterrevolution.”¹¹ At the meeting in Dresden, Ulbricht delivered a presentation on the causes of the Czechoslovak crisis with the KSČ delegation in mind. Using the example of the current discussion surrounding freedom in the ČSSR, he lectured on the interplay between the internal and external factors of a counterrevolutionary process. He stressed that the administrative errors made by the KSČ in the past had not been corrected in the framework of the politics of a Marxist-Leninist party, but rather

From this point of view, the main “counterrevolutionary” attack was always directed against the Communist Party’s monopoly on power. The GDR ambassador’s report contained a message that was particularly unsettling for the SED leadership: unity within the KSČ leadership no longer existed; an “open” and an “illegal center” were active within it.

The term “center” had a bloody meaning in the party language of the Communists. The accused during the Moscow show trials that took place in Moscow from 1936 onwards were defined according to “centers.” The first show trial against the old Bolsheviks was directed against the “TrotskyZinoviev center”; in January 1937, the “illegal so-called Soviet-hostile Trotskyist parallel center” was condemned.¹³

The composition of the “illegal center” in Prague in 1968 was unknown to Florin in terms of its personnel. The “open center” consisted of the economic reform planner Šik, the director of television Jiří Pelikán, the chairman of the Writers’ Association Eduard Goldstücker, and the author Pavel Kohout. The differences in the new KSČ leadership were expressed by Florin in the conspiracy constructions of the Stalinist show trials. The victims of the show trials in Prague at the beginning of the 1950s were to be rehabilitated at that precise moment.

On 15 March, Soviet general secretary Brezhnev invited Dubček to Dresden for an economics conference of the ruling Communist parties.¹⁴ The Central Committee of the SED met prior and parallel to the Central Committee of the CPSU in order to establish their position.¹⁵ The report of the Central Committee apparatus on developments in the ČSSR was regarded internally as prescribed terminology and named critical points of the reform process in the neighboring country: the removal of censorship and the publicly recognizable differences within the party leadership. Josef Smrkovský, Šik, and Goldstücker were characterized as revisionists. According to comments he made in an interview with WDR, Smrkovský’s stated goal was to unite democracy and socialism. For the SED, the demand for “democratization” was the banner under which the antisocialist forces were to be gathered; a tactical concealment of the actual aim, that is, the overthrow of socialism. Prior to Dresden, the SED was already convinced that in Prague the old social democratic revisionism was ideologically and politically stepping out in new clothes.¹⁶ Two days before the 5th Central Committee Congress, Rudolf Helmer¹⁷ had already communicated to a counselor from the Soviet embassy in East Berlin an event that was important for Moscow, which the counselor noted as follows: “He stressed that they have no secrets from their Soviet comrades and that, as he was aware, the principal judgment and the access to events in the ČSSR on the part of the leaderships of the CPSU and the SED were consistent with each other.”¹⁸

Ulbricht used this Central Committee Congress to evaluate the SPD’s new eastern policy and to link it with the changes in Prague. For the SED boss, this new eastern policy was a strategy of ideological “maceration of the socialist countries with new methods and demands and that under the slogan of security in Europe, the slogan of the ‘new eastern policy.’” For Ulbricht, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands or SPD) sought with this policy to find “ways of infiltrating the GDR, of unrolling the GDR from within, in order to transfer the West German system of state monopoly capitalism with its Federal Armed Forces to the whole of Germany”; the aim of German unity was for him “the main point of difference with the Social Democrat leadership.”¹⁹ Ulbricht mistrustfully recorded all contact between the SPD and KSČ during the spring.

THE DRESDEN TRIBUNAL IN MARCH 1968

The intervention in August began with a confrontation in March in Dresden. The leadership of the CPSU, the PUWP, the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, the BCP, and the SED reproached the delegation of the KSČ, led by Dubček, that a counterrevolutionary process had been established in the ČSSR. The Communist Party of Romania was consciously not invited. Dubček accepted the invitation, knowing in advance what the topic would be, but the other KSČ officials traveling with him were under the mistaken impression that the conclave would deal with economic issues.²⁰ Ulbricht as host then announced the real topic of the conference.²¹ He requested of Dubček information regarding the plans of his Central Committee and the preparation of the KSČ’s Action Program. He stressed the self-evident right of every Communist Party to determine its own policies, but his party was entirely isolated. “Thus, developments in a socialist country and the resolutions of a sister party can have far-reaching consequences for every other party and also the situation in Europe. Our mutual mortal enemy, imperialism, does not sleep.” Before entering into the order of business, Brezhnev declared: “The discussion will be very serious; …I would, therefore, suggest not keeping the minutes.” Dubček agreed, but Ulbricht allowed a record to be made.

For the time being, Dubček had to explain the policies of his party without any preparation.²² Following his comments, the confrontation began. Brezhnev presented his assessment of events in the ČSSR and explained bluntly that the meeting in Dresden was not about discussing reforms with the KSČ, but about coordinating a mutual evaluation of developments in the ČSSR. Four parties toed the line laid down by Brezhnev. The question posed to the KSČ delegation was would it yield to this verdict and alter its course?

Brezhnev’s keyword in describing the situation in the ČSSR was “counterrevolution,” which was organized by “an entire group or entire center” in public life in the ČSSR. He asked Dubček directly what he understood “democratization” or “liberalization” to mean. “Have you not had democracy thus far?” For him, the “main processes” of the preceding few weeks were: “Public attacks against the Central Committee” and “defamation” of all the “achievements” of the previous twenty-five years “that will be printed in West Germany, in America, in Austria, everywhere.” “Attacks against the leading cadre of the Party, against the government, against the Ministry of Defence, against the Ministry of the Interior…. It’s all being denigrated.” He demonstrated what the consequences might be by citing Foreign Minister Václav David: “For twenty years he led the struggle against imperialism in alliance and agreement with us… but he was also pelted with dirt in order to create a basis for the ‘independent foreign policy.’”

The antisocialist background to all these campaigns seemed for Brezhnev to be no secret: he saw this in the tendencies of a “Czech socialism.” In order to emphasize this judgment on the danger of a domestic system change, he followed on with the question, “Yes, what will come next?”

What did the enemy want? That was the key question in the struggle against “counterrevolution.” The “enemy acted skillfully, very tactfully and organized. We cannot claim that one single center is being established today in Czechoslovakia. Perhaps there are several centers.”²³ But all events—this must be stressed—are consummated in intellectual circles, in youth circles, but not in the sphere in which one could find strong support for the Presidium and the Central Committee, in order to fight against the counterrevolution. That is, namely, the working class.²⁴

The concern over the potential change of sides on the part of the ČSSR, which was already hinted at in the question regarding an autonomous foreign policy, was repeated as a question pertaining to the Warsaw Pact. Why was the view being disseminated: “Our people do not know what the contents of the Warsaw Pact are, but if our people did know it, our people would very quickly withdraw from the treaty. As though it was a gagging treaty in the event of a war.”

In the Dresden debate on the autonomy of Socialist states and their Communist parties as well as on how binding the Warsaw Pact was, Soviet prime minister Aleksei Kosygin positioned himself unequivocally. The discussions in the Czechoslovak media on the role of the Communist Party and relations with the Soviet Union were not only followed worldwide, they “not only concern the entire socialist camp,” but affected the whole Communist movement. With this, Kosygin formulated the keynote of the later so-called Brezhnev Doctrine of the limited sovereignty of the Socialist states. For him, the Dresden meeting served to support the KSČ in the struggle against the “counterrevolution.” Addressing Dubček directly, he said that here “the support for Czechoslovakia in the struggle for a Socialist and Communist Czechoslovak country was forged,… for the business of Czechoslovakia is our mutual business and we do not surrender this business to our enemy, whatever it might cost us!” Brezhnev’s comments on the—from the point of view of the Communists—negative reports in the ČSSR media were accentuated by Kosygin: they found themselves “in the hands of the enemy.”

Brezhnev personalized the term “counterrevolution” and mounted a massive attack on Josef Smrkovský.²⁵ His list of transgressions began with the interview on West German Radio (WDR). Brezhnev quoted him: “We are convinced that that which we are undertaking will set an example for the comrades of other socialist countries. That’s what he said! He assured the Federal Republic that that which they are doing will set an example for everyone. We will do and achieve that, and believe that it will be interesting for both German socialists and the socialists of other western countries, he said.” Addressing Dubček directly, the Soviet party leader commented “[and you] give him a good appraisal, honest etc.” Using the example of Smrkovský, he demonstrated at the same time the leadership weaknesses of the KSČ Presidium and Central Committee: “In Party practice it is not common that some coal minister or forestry minister replaces the Central Committee and gives interviews to the Federal Republic, indeed an anti-socialist, anti-communist interview for which one could pay millions of dollars…. How is it that the Central Committee did not know that such an interview exists?” Brezhnev’s next charge was Smrkovský’s relationship with the Soviet Union. “The same Smrkovský says: Oh well, what does it mean if the Soviet Union has lost 100,000 soldiers, but the Czechs have also lost, and why? The Party has made so many mistakes.” Again addressing the KSČ delegation, he passed judgment: “That means, dear comrades, behind your back this highly praised politician of yours carries out his anti-socialist, anti-Party activities.” Once more he quoted the WDR interview. From Brezhnev’s point of view, Smrkovský answered the question as to what was to be done in the ČSSR with a challenge: “Perhaps something that no communist party has done, namely the combining of socialism with freedom.” Brezhnev clarified that the CPSU regarded the events in the ČSSR not as an “experiment” but as a “premeditated scheme” to bring about a change of system. This view became very clear at the end of his speech:

He remarked threateningly:

The KSČ’s political goal was formulated as follows: the KSČ should assert its monopoly on power in Czechoslovakia and strike down the “counterrevolution” using its own power. In order to achieve this aim, it could count on the assistance of the CPSU. In order to achieve it ultimately without and against the KSČ, the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops took place on 21 August. The restorative aim had already been formulated in Dresden.

What everyone expected from Dubček was repeated by Gomułka as head of the Polish delegation: “We are of the opinion that it is today still possible to face these dangers, I would say, to face these dangers in a peaceful way, nonetheless with an energetic counteroffensive that must in our opinion be undertaken by the leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia against the counterrevolutionary forces.”

Dubček immediately received pledges of assistance from the PUWP, the SED, the HSWP, and the BCP. In addition, each of the parties communicated specific messages to the KSČ. The minutes convey the impression of a well thought-out performance. It began with the “confession” of the accused Dubček, the “plea” by Brezhnev, to which the SED, the BCP, the PUWP, and the HSWP acquiesced and with which a united course was constituted; it became the binding frame of reference. The PUWP and the HSWP then reminded the KSČ of the lessons of the counterrevolutionary experiences of the year 1956. Hungary’s party leader János Kádár delivered a historic analogy in order to underline Brezhnev’s judgment: “[T]his process is extremely similar to the prologue of the Hungarian counterrevolution at a time when it wasn’t yet a counterrevolution. This means that is the process that took place in Hungary from February 1956 to the end of October. And we ask that you give that some thought.”

The SED undertook to demonstrate by means of the German example the interaction between western interference and the stance of the internal “enemy” and to recall the struggle of the Socialist camp against imperialism. Ulbricht began with the special situation of the GDR and the ideological threat posed by West German reporting on events in the ČSSR. He spoke of the “heating up of the psychological war” and referred explicitly to Brezhnev’s remarks on Smrkovský’s WDR interview. The praise of the Czechoslovak press association (ČTK) for the politics of the SPD in their report on the SPD’s Nuremberg party congress was, for Ulbricht, interference in the domestic affairs of the GDR; on top of everything he saw in this report the “representation of the ideology of West German imperialism.” He announced to the KSČ that the SED would no longer remain silent regarding these things, but would publicly “refute the opposing arguments.” Following a lesson on the causes of the current situation, which he sought in the failure of ideological work within the KSČ, he described how the West was currently benefiting propagandistically from developments in the ČSSR: “In a situation where we are all interested in the Socialist camp and the Warsaw Pact states acting unanimously, now, where U.S. imperialism is in a difficult position with its global strategy, in this of all situations you start to discriminate against your own party, you give the enemy material for its campaign against Socialist countries, and West German imperialism naturally exploits that and conducts a massive campaign.” In his analysis of the new tactics of the enemy—he claimed to have learned from the failure of the Hungarian “counterrevolution”—he dealt with the importance of future developments involving freedom of the press. If freedom of the press existed as in the ČSSR, where a “platform for counterrevolution at the current stage” could be publicized unimpeded without this being prevented, then the freedom of the press would lead directly “to counterrevolution.”²⁶

Ulbricht demanded from Dubček that the KSČ in their Action Program “state concretely what happened in the past, what must be corrected, how the situation is assessed, and what dangers have arisen as a result of the revisionist approach of certain intellectuals. The Party leadership should turn to the workers.” Dubček and his leadership should say openly “which dangers exist.” He provokingly accentuated the question: “Will you also have the courage to say that there are counterrevolutionary forces under Western influence who are attempting to do their business?” With the accentuation on block loyalty and the conflict of systems, Ulbricht intrinsically represented the political interests of the SED relating to Germany and also attempted in this way to preclude special negotiations on the part of the ČSSR with the Federal Republic on the normalization of state relations.

The Dresden conference set the course for the further development of the Czechoslovak crisis. With the claim that the main tendency of developments had been leading since the KSČ’s January plenum to “counterrevolution,” the CPSU made their assessment of the situation. Supported by the SED, the PUWP, the BCP, and the HSWP, they demanded from Dubček and his leadership the restoration of the KSČ’s monopoly on power and with it the abandonment of the reform course, which was stigmatized in the person of Smrkovský. This political aim was never subsequently revised. Once the “healthy forces” within the KSČ could no longer realize this on their own, external military intervention was affected. In each phase, the SED executed this Soviet policy of intervention without restrictions.

THE SED INTERVENES

Until mid-March, the GDR press remained silent on events in its neighboring country, although the issue increasingly attracted interest in the media of the Federal Republic, and the GDR population was also informed by means of electronic media as a result. The SED assessed these reports as part of the Federal Republic’s psychological war against the GDR. As Ulbricht had announced in Dresden, open polemics against the Prague reform Communists began at the end of March. Kurt Hager²⁷ openly attacked Smrkovský at a convention of philosophers in the GDR and reproached him for his criticism of the KSČ being exploited by the Western media.²⁸ Until 25 March 1968, an unwritten law between the Communist parties in power was in force: no public interference in the affairs of other Socialist states. The publication of Hager’s attack on Smrkovský in Neues Deutschland, the central organ of the SED, broke this rule. In his report on the speech, the Soviet ambassador in the GDR, Pyotr Abrasimov, announced tactical doubts about the date, yet the speech was, in fact, given on the eve of the Central Committee plenum of the KSČ.²⁹ Its effect in the ČSSR was counterproductive for the intentions of the SED. The Czechoslovak media was outraged. In Berlin, the Czechoslovak ambassador appealed to the GDR foreign minister Otto Winzer.³⁰ Winzer rejected the protest and explained to the ČSSR ambassador Václav Kolář in plain words the specific position of the GDR: “There is a West Germany, but no West Hungary, no West Bulgaria, and no West Czechoslovakia.”³¹ If, therefore, Czechoslovak politicians or authors made appearances in West German media in order to discuss the democratization of socialism in Prague, they were—in Winzer’s opinion—interfering in the domestic affairs of the GDR. As a result of this, the SED had to defend itself against “West German propaganda” directed at the GDR; this, therefore, amounted to no interference in the domestic affairs of the ČSSR.

Ulbricht reproached the Czechoslovak ambassador Kolář with the public rehabilitation of victims of repression supplying the “Western press” with material “for the struggle against the socialist world system. Why must you dig up the dead?”³² The demand made by the SED leadership that the number of “Western journalists” in the ČSSR be restricted and Czechoslovak citizens prevented from making unauthorized appearances in the media of the Federal Republic, was ignored there.

At the “April plenum” of the KSČ, the Action Program was passed and the attacked Smrkovský elected to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the KSČ.³³ Dubček had kept his silence in Prague regarding the conference in Dresden;³⁴ the results of the Central Committee plenum were now the opposite of that which the “sister parties” had demanded from him there: the position of the reformers within the party leadership was strengthened; the Action Program, the content of which had been devised by him, was passed.³⁵ A public statement from the SED regarding the Action Program “Czechoslovakia’s Path to Socialism” did not exist. Internally, however, the Central Committee apparatus had analyzed the program and understood its character to be a compromise between the two wings of the party. The most important point for the SED was the statement on the leading role of the KSČ. They now no longer presented themselves as “the conscious and organized vanguard of the workers and negated Marxism-Leninism as science.”³⁶ The SED expected hefty internal conflicts within the KSČ when it came to the implementation of the action program. Following the press campaign, the next stage of interference in the internal affairs of the ČSSR began: the SED strengthened the “healthy forces” in the KSČ and conducted to this effect “educational work on the ground” by means of delegation trips. In this relationship, the SED cadre in the ČSSR often did not have to search for long; they found conservative KSČ functionaries who supplied them with unsolicited information.³⁷

At the end of April, the Bulgarian Communist Party passed on their assessment of the state of the KSČ leadership to the general secretaries of those parties present at the Dresden conference, and attempted to arrange, according to personnel, the different opposing centers operating within the leadership.³⁸ Ulbricht saw in this report a confirmation of his own analysis. Toward the Bulgarian ambassador in Berlin, he initially advanced the Dresden line: “We must win Dubček and help him to take measures in order to obtain control over the press, the radio and television; that is very important.”³⁹ To a statement in the Bulgarian report to the effect that in Prague “no conclusions were drawn from the meeting in Dresden,” Ulbricht responded, “In all probability, a second Dresden consultation is unavoidable.”

MOSCOW, 8 MAY 1968: MILITARY PRESSURE AND THE QUESTION OF “HEALTHY FORCES”

The second “Dresden” took place on 8 May directly after the discussion between the CPSU and the KSČ in Moscow.⁴⁰ The two most important results for the CPSU leadership were that the Czechoslovak delegation agreed to Warsaw Pact maneuvers in their country and that the differences in the Presidium of the KSČ became visible.⁴¹ This time, the Warsaw Five met without the KSČ. By the end of their conference, the building of an interventionist coalition had been decided. At Brezhnev’s suggestion, a “hotwire” was set up between the five parties. The CPSU, like the SED, set up a special task force in its Central Committee in order to prepare analyses of the developments in the ČSSR.⁴²

In Moscow, Brezhnev demanded that the “sister parties” sign a joint communiqué with a clear warning to Prague. Its core statement should be that the KSČ was not alone and could not decide on its course of action independently of the five parties. This, however, they had just done with their Action Program, in which Gomułka saw the “general line of counterrevolution” and which Brezhnev did not want to publish.

In contrast to Dresden, the military card was now openly brought into play. There was unanimity that the maneuvers agreed on between the High Command of the Warsaw Pact and the ČSSR would have to begin soon. The SED had insisted in advance to the still hesitant Soviet side that the National People’s Army (Nationale Volksarmee or NVA) should take part in these maneuvers.⁴³ Ulbricht combined the maneuvers with the aim of strengthening the position of the “healthy forces” in the KSČ with a demonstration of power.

The main problem for the Warsaw Five was still who within the KSČ party leadership should become their partner. During deliberations between the CPSU and the KSČ, Bil’ak alone from the Czechoslovak delegation had accepted the Soviet criticism. Ulbricht demanded, even when it was “only a minority group in the Presidium of the KSČ that advances the correct line, then I am in favor of us helping this minority group.” Opinions on Dubček were divided in this context; above all Kádár and Brezhnev had not yet given up on him. Both called attention to the popularity that Dubček enjoyed not only nationwide, but also internationally. As such, the question as to who in the KSČ leadership would be prepared to take on the struggle for the restoration of the Party’s monopoly on power was still open for the Warsaw Five. While Ulbricht suggested relying on the right wing of the KSČ—which ultimately happened—Brezhnev hoped until into August that Dubček could be won over to the idea of taking on this role himself.

At the end of the conference, Brezhnev drew the conclusion that was to become known as the Brezhnev Doctrine of limited sovereignty of the Socialist states: “By defending Czechoslovakia, we are defending the entire socialist camp, the entire international Communist movement. We must recognize our strengths and become active.” Toward Dubček and his delegation, the same message read as follows: “We are ready to give you help, if this becomes necessary. We are ready to do this, and in awareness of the mood of Comrades Gomułka, Ulbricht, Zhivkov and others, I can say that such a readiness is also at hand from them.”⁴⁴

Ulbricht demanded in Moscow a concerted international campaign against the “revisionism” in Prague, as part of which it should be openly said “that there is counterrevolution in the ČSSR.” He repeated his thesis, according to which the main thrust of this counterrevolution was directed against the GDR. The SED could no longer accept that the GDR would be taken in a political pincer attack: on the one hand from the new eastern policy of the Federal Republic and on the other hand from the reformers in Prague. The first secretary of the SED was concerned that both events could contribute to the erosion of the SED’s monopoly on power in the GDR.

This fear was not unfounded. Both events elicited hope for change in the GDR. The new Bonn eastern policy opened up the prospect of an improvement in German internal relations and the reforms in Prague awoke the hope among Socialists for analogous improvements in the GDR. The Leipzig historian Hartmut Zwahr noted in his diary, “Beneath the surface, a wave of sympathy is rolling; a large proportion of the youth is trembling with the Czechs.”⁴⁵

The SED confronted the danger of the Czech infection in the GDR with campaigns and prescribed ideological terminology. “With the power of the apparatus and of the entire state, the Party establishes Party opinion, the ‘orientation’: before it all public discussions fell silent. A new taboo is created.”⁴⁶ Not everyone fell silent; Robert Havemann gave an interview to a Czech magazine.⁴⁷ Turning to the reformers, he said, “[S]ocialists and communists across the world are following political developments in the ČSSR with genuine sympathy and filled with great hopes.”⁴⁸ He stressed the self-assessment of the reform Communists, that they attempted for the first time to reconcile socialism and democracy. He was concerned with Stalinism being overcome.⁴⁹ Havemann was able to publish his German text in the Federal Republic, but not in the GDR. A Danish journalist who published this interview in Copenhagen was identified on Ulbricht’s direct orders. The MfS received the directive to intensify the surveillance on Havemann and his circle of friends. The distribution of the German-language Prager Volkszeitung (Prague People’s Newspaper) was prohibited in the GDR.

In the KSČ, the May plenum (29 May until 1 June) was supposed to set the course; it decided to convene the 14th Party Congress in September. The party had in the meantime split into two wings: the conservatives and the reformers. Dubček constituted the integrating clip between them. In the resolution accepted by the plenum, the Soviet criticism was absorbed. Both wings agreed on the struggle against the counterrevolutionary danger. The KSČ’s claim on the leading role in the political system was strengthened.⁵⁰ Initially, it looked as though the resolutions and decisions of the May plenum had consolidated the position of the leadership in order that they could prepare for the Party Congress in peace.⁵¹ This proved to be a fallacy in terms of both domestic and foreign policy. Thus Florin reported from Berlin that at the plenum no “debate was conducted with those revisionist views strongly represented among those persons active in the cultural sector and the middle-class intelligentsia, above all with regard to the leading role of the Communist Party in society.”⁵² It was precisely this that the Warsaw Five expected from Dubček.⁵³ The SED’s skepticism as to whether the necessary turnaround in the KSČ’s politics would come about was also demonstrated by the prognosis of the ambassador regarding the probable result of the 14th Party Congress: “During the preparation of the Party Congress, the Party will as hitherto lose itself in a general discussion and questions on the new composition of the Central Committee will take center stage. The danger exists that the KSČ will take a social democratic development on the basis of the Action Program.”⁵⁴ The Soviet ambassador in Prague personalized the consequences that “the healthy forces will disintegrate at the Party Congress” and the party would split. It was now already clear that Drahomír Kolder, Alois Indra, Bil’ak, and others would not be elected as members of the Central Committee and, perhaps, not even as delegates to the Party Congress. Should this situation be consolidated, the party would be led across to the right at the Party Congress.⁵⁵ Neither ambassador allowed himself to be deceived by the resolution. While Florin stressed the change in character of the KSČ, his Soviet college had the “cadre question” in mind, without which the monopoly on power of the Party in the ČSSR could not be restored.⁵⁶ Mikhail Prozumenshchikov has dealt with the consequences that Dubček’s politics had for the Soviet leadership, concluding: “To a certain extent, Dubček himself with his constant promises to improve the situation (which were not, however, fulfilled) also contributed to the increase within the Russian leadership of the number of those who advocated a solution of the problem by force.”⁵⁷ A party reform requires an alteration in its statute. Florin did not, however, address the draft of the new party statute, although the text would have confirmed his prognosis, for he envisaged an extension of membership rights as well as the secret ballot for leadership functions and a protection of minorities.⁵⁸

The election of delegates in July led to a change in generations and resulted in a clear majority of 80 percent for Dubček and the reformers.⁵⁹ In Moscow, Ulbricht had realistically estimated the balance of power in the KSČ: the “healthy forces” were a minority.

The Sˇhumava (Bohemian Forest) maneuver was set to end on 30 June. The Soviet Army used it to prepare undercover the occupation of the ČSSR.⁶⁰ The military demonstration and the political pressure of the Warsaw Five aroused in the ČSSR not only fear, but also resistance. This resistance was articulated in the “2,000 Words,” written by Ludvík Vaculík.⁶¹ He called upon the citizens to take the initiated democratization of their country into their own hands, to support the progressive wing of the Communists in view of the election of delegates, and not to allow a restoration. In his report of 3 July, the GDR ambassador recorded very precisely the contradictory response at the conferences of delegates to the “2,000 Words.”⁶² Two days after its appearance, Ulbricht received an estimate from the GDR ambassador in Prague. Florin presented a piece of “evidence”: “This document is a call for counterrevolution, which bears programmatic character and contains the methods for the implementation of the counterrevolutionary intentions.”⁶³

This corresponded to the meaning of the “2,000 Words” for the CPSU, who also expressed this in its letter of 4 July to the Presidium of the KSČ.⁶⁴ The SED received the letter at the same time as Prague did. The handwritten underlining on the German translation—presumably marked by Ulbricht himself—is important for understanding the position of the SED in its own letter to the KSČ. The underlining relates to a series of passages, above all those in the Soviet letter that concern the ČSSR’s relationship with West Germany and in which the CPSU assumes the position of the SED. The following was underlined: the “decisive question… as to whether Czechoslovakia should be socialist or not”; the behavior of the KSČ toward the “anti-socialist forces,” against whom no “effective blow” had so far been dealt; the passage on the revisionists in the party and on the intention to “legalize factions and groups” within the KSČ; and finally the questions of missing party control over mass media and the exploitation of events in the ČSSR by the “enemies of socialism [for] comprehensive ideological diversion.” Reflected in this underlining is the keyword that gave direction to the SED leadership’s perception of the “Prague Spring”: counterrevolution.

Following receipt of the CPSU letter, the Politburo of the SED convened for an extraordinary session with just one item on the agenda: the situation in the ČSSR. The committee approvingly took note of the letter from the Kremlin and finalized the text of its own letter to the KSČ.⁶⁵

The letter ended, like the Moscow original, with an “offer of assistance.” In contrast to the nonspecific “promise of help” from Moscow, the SED stated the basis of its willingness more precisely by making reference to the corresponding agreements between the Warsaw Pact states and the spirit of “socialist internationalism,” while at the same time narrowing them down. This offer related only to such decisions made and steps taken by the KSČ that were suitable for strengthening the position of socialism in the ČSSR.⁶⁶ All these letters by the Warsaw Five were supposed to warn Dubček to take the criticism and demands of the Warsaw Pact states seriously.

WARSAW, 15 JULY: THE DIE IS CAST!

The “2,000 Words” became in “many respects the turning-point in SovietCzechoslovak relations and characterized the beginning of the third stage, during which the better part of the Soviet leadership psychologically came to terms with the necessity of a military solution to the problem,” according to Prozumenshchikov.⁶⁷

The CPSU resolved to convene a new conference of the “Five” and the KSČ in Warsaw. Under pressure from large municipal associations, Dubček cancelled his participation in the meeting and proposed instead bilateral negotiations with the individual parties.⁶⁸

In Warsaw, the die was cast for an effort of collective assistance for the protection of socialism in the ČSSR, though not yet for the decision to intervene. The Soviet general secretary came to Warsaw with the draft of a letter endorsed by his Politburo.⁶⁹ It was to be sent to the Presidium of the KSČ as a joint warning and at the same time legitimate externally the collective action. The letter was approved and passed on to Prague; in it, the most important parts of the existing letters were repeated. It instructed the KSČ in a threatening tone: “We, therefore, think that the decisive repulse of attacks by the anti-communist forces and the resolute defense of the socialist order in Czechoslovakia are not only your task but also ours.”⁷⁰ The joint letter gave the interventionist coalition its name Warsaw Five.

The papers of the party leaders all had the character of a general reckoning with the developments of the previous months in the ČSSR. All of them emphasized the broken promises of the KSČ leadership since Dresden.⁷¹ In the assessment of the situation, all were in agreement: in the ČSSR, a change of system loomed. The Polish party head, Gomułka, precisely formulated this theory: in Czechoslovakia, “a peaceful process of change from a socialist state… to a republic of middle-class character is taking place.” This was, for him, an event that threatened “to turn into a weakening of our bloc.” His reasoning considered that, because at that moment all political problems were decided on a global scale, the action in Czechoslovakia meant a weakening of socialism “as represented by us.” Neither the Poles not the GDR were the decisive problem for imperialism; for him, the Soviet Union and its nuclear potential counted above all; it was the decisive force that held the “imperialist world” at bay. The Czech comrades were in the process of altering the European balance of power with their course. In order to do that, they had “already broken their bond with us. They have broken our bilateral and multilateral resolutions. They do not consult with us in significant matters.” Gomułka advocated “practical measures” to restore the closeness of the Bloc and “a unified line in the main issues”; this was, for him, “our unity toward the imperialist camp.”

Ulbricht likewise addressed the Bloc confrontation; he combined the theory of peaceful system change, as formulated by Gomułka and with which he agreed, with western, imperialist politics toward the Socialist states. For him there was no doubt that the organizers of the “counterrevolution” were located in Washington and Bonn.⁷² He apodictically declared:

For Ulbricht, it was not the property question that was the decisive one; rather, “political power is what it’s about.”

Brezhnev himself shared this view and emphasized: “There is no example where socialism has been victorious and is firmly established, of capitalist circumstances triumphing anew. That does not exist and we are convinced that it also never should and also never will.”

The invocation of socialism and internationalism and the references to the existing treaties among the Socialist states already served to legitimize the imminent “collective action” in Czechoslovakia. Brezhnev justified at length why it did not represent interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. Prior to the decision on this “collective assistance” for socialism in Czechoslovakia, Brezhnev asked once more: Would the KSČ leadership have the courage to take resolute measures “to topple the reaction, to rescue the position of socialism?”

If it did not do this, the downfall of socialism loomed, which the Five could not allow! Therefore, it remained necessary “to support” the “healthy forces” in the KSČ. Moreover, the “sister parties” must be ready at the “first call of the Czechoslovak comrades to arise or, in the event that the circumstances required such an appearance and if the Czechoslovak comrades were having difficulties, to turn to us for assistance.” The new keyword for the intervention was “assistance.”

The Bulgarian party leader Zhivkov translated what this word really meant in the context of July 1968. He began solemnly, explaining that prior to the 14th KSČ Party Congress, which should never have taken place, the Five had had a “historic task” to fulfill: “There is only one way out, namely for the socialist countries, the Communist Parties and the Warsaw Pact to provide decisive assistance to the ČSSR.” The “inner forces of the ČSSR” could no longer be entrusted with rescuing socialism. “We can address diverse appeals and letters to them, of course, but unfortunately at present there are no such forces in the ČSSR that could assume the task mentioned in the letters. Czechoslovakia must be supported by the assistance of the socialist countries and the Communist Parties, by the assistance of the Warsaw Pact, primarily by the armed forces of the Warsaw Pact. First of all, the dictatorship of the proletariat must essentially be resurrected there.”

This demand did not yet, however, answer the question as to who in the ČSSR should restore the dictatorship and rebuild the KSČ. The “collective assistance,” should it fulfill its political aim, required party followers in the ČSSR who were to assume the task of restoring the monopoly on power into their own hands.

In his report on the Warsaw meeting before the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU on 17 July, General Secretary Brezhnev fell back on the suggestion from Ulbricht in May in Moscow in order to find a solution to these questions: “When we see that the leadership of the KSČ does not wish to adhere to our considerations, one must pursue efforts to promote other healthy forces in the Party and search for the opportunity to turn to these forces in the Party, which perhaps emerge with the initiative in the struggle for the restoration of the leading role of the KSČ and for the normalization of conditions in the country.”⁷³ In order to organize this, there must be a meeting at which “representatives with the initiative group empowered by us… who represent the healthy forces in the Presidium of the Central Committee of the KSČ and convey our position to the political stage, on the basis of whom one can consolidate the Party, issue a rebuff to the anti-socialist elements and above all declare our readiness to provide our necessary support.” Then he repeated the passage from his speech in Warsaw, in which he had called on the “sister states” to look out for the first call for help from Prague. The Central Committee approved the report, and with this the Politburo was given a free hand.

On 22 July, the Soviet foreign minister, Marshal Grechko, was commissioned by the Politburo “to take measures.” At the same time, documents were drawn up in Moscow, “which had supposedly been written by the future leadership of the ČSSR, who should displace the current leaders.”⁷⁴ At the July plenum of the Central Committee, Brezhnev had devised the contours of the Soviet approach during the action of collective assistance. In the event of doubt, an “initiative group” of “healthy forces” in the Presidium of the Central Committee of the KSČ would solicit assistance from abroad for the protection of socialism in the ČSSR. This “appeal” was the indispensable political prerequisite for the implementation of the military operation. In this way, as Brezhnev evidently hoped, the “measures” could be legitimized and lose their character of an intervention in the affairs of a sovereign state.

On 18 July, the GDR ambassador Florin announced from Prague that the Presidium of the KSČ had substantiated its “negative attitude” to the Warsaw Letter with the “principle of personal responsibility for domestic developments.” The course of the session had shown that the “Party leadership is still not prepared to engage in an energetic struggle, supported by the sister parties, against the counterrevolutionary activities.”⁷⁵ In view of the approach of the Czechoslovak leadership, collective action became more and more probable. The SED began to prepare itself. The first measure was a resolution from the SED Politburo on 19 July to install a radio transmitter in the region of Dresden, which was to broadcast political information mornings and evenings in Czech and Slovak. As the technical equipment of GDR Radio was not sufficient, the mobile transmitter of GDR-Ferienwelle (GDR Holiday Wave) was used for this purpose.⁷⁶

The military preparations were complete.⁷⁷ On GDR territory alone, 650,000 soldiers were mobilized. “Overall, the military concentration of the troops of the five ‘fraternal armies’ reached its highpoint on the borders of the ČSSR on 29 and 30 July. The intervention had become militarily possible; the Soviet generals awaited the political approval of the CPSU leadership.”⁷⁸ The GDR was also prepared. On 29 July, the National Defense Council (NVR) had convened and received reports on the status of military preparations and those from the Interior Ministry and the MfS.⁷⁹ When the Presidium of the KSČ met with that of the CPSU on 29 July in Čierna nad Tisou, the SED had completed the political and military preparations for the intervention in the ČSSR, but the SED like the Soviet generals also had to wait for the order to deploy.

The political preparation for the “collective actions” was significantly more complicated. The KSČ had a leadership chosen by the relevant party bodies and its reform program was widely approved within the Czechoslovakian population, including its insistence on barring interference from the Warsaw Five in the internal affairs of the ČSSR. A further problem for the Soviet leadership was that Dubček agreed internally with the criticism on the part of the CPSU of the approach of the “antisocialist forces,” but did not proceed against them. In short, the intervention required a political justification; it was most elegant when Dubček publicly committed himself to an agreement with the Warsaw Five and then failed to abide by it. When one takes all the CPSU’s points of criticism of developments in the ČSSR since January 1968 together, it was also clear to Brezhnev by the meeting in Warsaw at the latest that Dubček and his leadership would not bring about a change in the “counterrevolutionary process” on their own initiative. It seems, however, also to have been important to the CPSU general secretary to demonstrate this to the Communists in the ČSSR, in the Socialist states, and in the global movement. Perhaps he also still hoped to induce Dubček to “take the leap” in order to utilize his popularity for the politics of restoration—as indeed happened after the intervention.

There were thus reasons enough for his plan of continuing to want to search for a “political solution” with which he concluded his report to the Central Committee on 17 July. He affirmed that “before we resort to extreme measures,” the leadership at a bilateral meeting with the KSČ would still attempt to resolve this political solution. Its contents were known to Dubček and his Presidium since the Dresden meeting; the letter from the Warsaw Five had updated them.

The meeting began on 29 July;⁸⁰ the Czechoslovakian railway border crossing to the Soviet Union, Čierna nad Tisou, had been selected as the venue. The Soviet Politburo met for the first time outside its national boundaries. The gathering lasted several days. In the end, the SED, BCP, PUWP, and HSWP were invited on 2 August by the CPSU to a meeting with the KSČ in Bratislava on the next day. During the negotiations, the CPSU had forced a series of conditions on the Czechoslovakian side in order to regulate the political issues: they were to win back control over the mass media and to prevent the activity of political clubs outside the National Front, as well as attempts to reestablish the Social Democratic Party. The changes in the cadre were serious: in the Presidium and the Central Committee, secretariat Česimír Císař and the chairman of the National Front, František Kriegel, were to lose their posts, as well as Interior Minister Josef Pavel and the director of state television, Jiří Pelikán. Viliam Šalgovič was again to assume leadership of state security. “Brezhnev insisted on these commitments and threatened, if they were not complied with, ‘we will come to your assistance’—evidently militarily.”⁸¹

The gathering in Bratislava had one single aim: for the Warsaw Five and the KSČ to adopt a joint communiqué. Dubček accepted the Soviet draft as a basis for negotiations.⁸²

With regard to the future foreign policy of the ČSSR, the KSČ had prepared the formula of “exclusive responsibility of each country for socialism in their own country” for the 14th Party Congress, and with it justified the rejection of the letter of the Warsaw Five.⁸³ In contrast, in Bratislava the KSČ signed a very different formula, namely that of the “mutual duty of all socialist countries to defend socialism. The Soviet side did not even allow the basic principle of non-intervention guaranteed by the bilateral alliance treaties.”⁸⁴ Before the Central Committee of the SED, Hermann Axen, Central Committee Secretary for International Affairs, assessed it as a great success that the term nonintervention called for by the Czechoslovakian delegation was not included in the communiqué.⁸⁵ As a member of the editorial commission, Ulbricht spoke out vehemently against the Czechoslovakian conception of the SPD as a “progressive force” in the Federal Republic and got the formulation accepted into the communiqué “that promised above all support to the [Communist Party of Germany, Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands] KPD, which was banned in the Federal Republic.”⁸⁶ Hence, in Bratislava the KSČ had agreed in the joint communiqué both to Socialist internationalism and to the renunciation of an individual path to socialism. If in the view of the Kremlin, the KSČ should break the agreements made, it had itself signed the political basis on which the “collective action” or the “brotherly assistance” could be legitimized.

On the fringes of the conference in Bratislava, the “initiative group” of the “healthy forces” announced by Brezhnev to his Central Committee, which was indispensable for the political justification of an intervention and for the day after, also finally made an appearance. Jan Pauer writes, “During the course of the Bratislava meeting, a plea, a letter was passed to the Soviet comrades, in which several members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the KSČ and the government requested help from the Soviet leadership. It was stated in the letter that ‘should the situation continue to deteriorate and the accepted commitments not be fulfilled—the undersigned comrades would see no other option than international assistance from the allies, because we won’t get out of there on our own steam and there won’t be any more time for new negotiations.’⁸⁷ The letter was signed by five members of the KSČ Presidium and Secretariat, who took part in the negotiations in Čierna nad Tisou themselves.⁸⁸

With that, the political problem of collective action appeared for Brezhnev to be solved. Should Dubček, as expected, not adhere to the agreements, there was now an alternative. A few days later, an SED delegation traveled to Karlsbad for bilateral discussions with Dubček.⁸⁹ The situation seemed to ease up, but Ulbricht was, in fact, implementing an exploratory mission for the Politburo of the CPSU. He wanted to examine how the agreement of Čierna nad Tisou was put into practice. Two points were particularly important: (1) “[m]easures for controlling the media” (Ulbricht for this reason dug his heals in toward Dubček during a joint press conference) and (2) whether or not the activity of the Social Democratic Party would be prevented and the clubs disbanded.

The content of the report to Moscow is not known, but under the circumstances Ulbricht could only confirm that party control over the media had not yet been reestablished.

THE SOVIET UNION ACTS

The period of joint debates was over.⁹⁰ On 16 August, the Politburo of the CPSU established that the KSČ had broken the agreements of Čierna nad Tisou. The CPSU listed in detail which ones in their letter to the Presidium of the KSČ from 17 August, at which time it decided to respond to the “call for help” from Prague. The Soviet ambassador in Prague was at the same time instructed to hand the draft of a “Declaration of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the KSČ and the Government of the Czechoslovakian Socialist Republic” to Bil’ak and Indra.⁹¹ The draft was to serve as the political foundation for their bureaucratic putsch plan, the carrying out of which they had promised the Soviet leadership for the Presidium session on 20 August.⁹² The Politburo transferred the military high command to Grechko, the Soviet defense minister, and it decided to call a further meeting with the “Warsaw Five” in Moscow for 18 August with a single point on the agenda. The four parties were to assume uncritically the decisions made for their parties and countries and with it guarantee their participation in the “collective action.” The assent of the SED was a simple “yes” from Ulbricht, which he reinforced with his signature beneath the minutes. Brezhnev demanded silence regarding this session, including toward the respective national party leaderships. The first secretaries of the four parties had to sign a set of minutes that stayed in Moscow.⁹³ Ulbricht’s “yes” remained in force; the GDR supported the intervention and helped in forcing through the “normalization” in the ČSSR, with which the restoration of the monopoly on power of the Communist Party and its cleansing of “revisionists” was party-officially rewritten.⁹⁴

1988: A SPIRIT IS ABROAD IN THE SOCIALIST CAMP

The suppression of Communist self-reform in the ČSSR in 1968 was a Pyrrhic victory for the Warsaw Five. They did not succeed in enduringly securing the Communist Party’s monopoly on power in Czechoslovakia and in their own states.

Twenty years after the violent suppression on 21 August 1968 of the democratization of the Communist dictatorship in Czechoslovakia emanating from the KSČ, the spirit of reformist communism was abroad anew.⁹⁵ One year before peaceful revolutions in the GDR and Czechoslovakia ended their rule, two protagonists of the restoration of the Communist Party’s monopoly on power in Czechoslovakia from 1968, Bil’ak and Erich Honecker, spoke in East Berlin full of concern for their own power about the new evaluation of the history of Communist rule taking place in the Soviet Union. It concerned the debate on Stalin in the Soviet Union. In 1968, Bil’ak had belonged to the “healthy forces” within the KSČ who had “solicited” the intervention of the “five sister states” for the protection of socialism in the ČSSR. As then Central Committee secretary for security in the SED Politburo, Honecker had unreservedly supported the intervention policy of the SED.

Now, in view of the Soviet policy of reform, they were haunted by the memories of the crimes in the history of communism, to which the suppression of the “Prague Spring” doubtlessly belonged. In 1988, the memories had a name for Honecker and Bil’ak: Mikhail Gorbachev. The general secretary of the CPSU pursued a policy of democratization; Stalin’s victims were rehabilitated and censorship abolished. Soviet historians spoke and wrote openly about the Terror of the 1930s and asked what part Stalin’s politics had in Adolf Hitler’s seizure of power.⁹⁶

According to the SED’s memorandum on the discussion, Bil’ak complained about the dangerous political consequences that could arise from the Soviet history debate.

Bil’ak was dismayed about the presence of the history of the Prague Spring in the Soviet reform debate. He reported “some Soviet representatives demanded that the events of 1968 be re-evaluated. The First Secretary of the Communist Party of Estonia had advised this internally; Comrade Gorbachev also advanced that the events must be re-evaluated, but the Czechoslovakian comrades are not prepared to do that.”⁹⁸ To Honecker, Bil’ak expressed the feeling of losing his “hinterland.”

These quotations prove that, for the leaders of the ruling Communist parties, the history of their own rule primarily served the historical legitimization of their own power. The question to which historians are bound, namely that of the historical truth regarding the methods with which power was gained and held, always turned from this point of view into an attack on the dictatorial power of the Communist Party. Only from this perspective can the significance of the “Prague Spring” in the history of the Soviet Empire also be explained. It was no coincidence that the Soviet reformers of 1987–1988 contemplated a “reevaluation” of these Czechoslovakian reforms: the Prague reform Communists were their forerunners. Precisely because of its violent ending, the history of the “Prague Spring” remained politically current and was one of the causes of the peaceful revolutions in Eastern and Central Europe and in the GDR in 1989. Robert Havemann predicted this at the end of 1970, in order to encourage himself and others to continue the struggle with this hope in mind: “It is in the long run quite inevitable that the ideas of the KSČ precisely as a result of the intervention will also spread within the countries of the interveners. Freedom is the disease from which Stalinism will die.”⁹⁹

NOTES

Translated from German into English by Otmar Binder, Vienna.

1. On this, see the texts from Rüdiger Wenzke, “Die Nationale Volksarmee der DDR. Kein Einsatz in Prag,” 673–86, and Thomas Großbölting, “Die Niederschlagung des ‘Prager Frühlings’ und das Ministerium für Staatssicherheit der DDR,” 807–22, both in Karner et al., Beiträge.

2. Lutz Prieß, “Der ‘Einladungsbrief’ zur Intervention in der ČSSR 1968,” Deutschland Archiv 12 (1994): 1253; RGANI, F. 3, op. 72, d. 197, pp. 3–14, Politburo resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU P 95 (I), 17 August 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #62.

3. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/3616, pp. 182–207, report of the Department for International Ties, “Zur Reaktion in der kommunistischen Weltbewegung auf die Ereignisse in der ČSSR,” to the office of W. Ulbricht, 11 April 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #162.

4. The name originated in July when the CPSU, the BCP, the PUWP, the HSWP, and the SED sent a joint letter to the KSČ following the Warsaw Conference.

5. Hermann Wentker, Außenpolitik in engen Grenzen: Die DDR im internationalen System 1949–1989 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2007).

6. Zdenek Hejzlar, Reformkommunismus: Zur Geschichte der Kommunistischen Partei der Tschechoslowakei (Cologne: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1976), 146.

7. Peter Florin, born 1921, was of the “Moscow cadre” and son of Wilhelm Florin (KPD). In 1935 he emigrated to the Soviet Union, in 1942 completed an apprenticeship at the School of the Communist International, in 1943/1944 was a partisan in Belarus, in May 1945 returned to Berlin, from 1952 to 1966 served as head of the Department for Foreign Affairs in the Central Committee of the SED, and from 1958 to 1989 was a member of the Central Committee of the SED.

8. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/3616, pp. 52–57, report of the GDR ambassador in the ČSSR, P. Florin, on the situation in the country, 10 March 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #3 (reprinted in appendix 1 of this volume).

9. Rudé pravo, report of the Central Committee of the KSČ regarding the alteration of the authority of the Central Publication Administration, 6 March 1968, reprinted Karner et al., Dokumente, #2.

10. Zu den Ereignissen in der Tschechoslowakei: Tatsachen, Dokumente, Presse-und Augenzeugenberichte (Moscow: Pressegruppe Sowjetischer Journalisten, 1968), 3.

11. “Defamation of the revolutionary power as a ‘totalitarian dictatorship’ and the related demand for ‘pluralism’ and the ‘democratization’ of power under socialism serve them as the main means for the ideological preparation and implementation of counter-revolution.” Rudolf Dau et al., eds., Wörterbuch des wissenschaftlichen Kommunismus (East Berlin: Dietz, 1982), Stichwort: Konterrevolution, 216. Further keywords, which are characteristic for “counterrevolution” are anticommunism, anti-Soviet, and nationalism. Anticommunism: “Wesenszug und Grundtendenz der gesamten Ideologie und Politik des Imperialismus im Kampf gegen den Sozialismus, gegen die revolutionäre Arbeiterbewegung und den Marxismus-Leninismus, gegen die Friedensbewegung und alle anderen demokratischen Kräfte” (Stichwort: Antikommunismus, 26). Anti-Soviet: “dominierendes Kennzeichen des Antikommunismus. Er richtet sich gegen die Sowjetunion, gegen deren führende Kraft—die KPdSU—, gegen Politik, Wirtschaft, Ideologie und Kultur des sowjetischen Staates. Der Antisowjetismus entstand als konterrevolutionäre Reaktion auf die Entstehung des ersten sozialistischen Staates in der Welt. Er zielt auf die Diskreditierung und Vernichtung der sowjetischen Gesellschaft” (Stichwort: Antisowjetismus, 30). Nationalism: “ist eine ‘bürgerliche Ideologie,’ im Zusammenhang mit dem Ost-West-Kon-flikt bekommt er eine spezifische Bedeutung: Mit Hilfe des Nationalismus sollen die politisch-ideologischen Grundlagen des Sozialismus in einzelnen Ländern untergraben, die Einheit der sozialistischen Gemeinschaft und der kommunistischen und Arbeiterparteien durch die Leugnung allgemeisngültiger Gesetzmäßigkeiten, die Überbetonung nationaler Besonderheiten und nationalistischer Ideen zerstört werden” (Stichwort: Nationalismus, 270–71).

12. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/11834, pp. 1–271, stenographical record of the consultation of the five “sister parties” with the KSČ in Dresden, 23 March 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #75.

13. A. J. Wyschinski (Vyshinsky), Gerichtsrede (East Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1952), 545, and Wladislaw Hedeler, Chronik Moskauer Schauprozesse 1936, 1937, und 1938 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2003).

14. RGANI, F. 3, op. 72, d. 155, p. 5, Politburo resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU P 74 (II), 15 March 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #73.

15. RGANI, F. 3, op. 72, d. 157, pp. 6 and 15–19, Politburo resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU P 76 (12), 23 March 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #30.

16. On this, see Lutz Priess et al., Die SED und der “Prager Frühling” (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1995), 63–64.

17. Rudolf Helmer, KPD member since 1931, since 1959 served as head of the Department for Neighboring Countries of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the GDR.

18. RGANI, F. 5, op. 60, d. 299, pp. 108–13, taken from the official diary of the embassy counsel of the USSR in the GDR, V. P. Grenkov, 19 March 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #6.

19. Quoted from Priess et al., Die SED und der “Prager Frühling,” 172–73. On this, see also Békés, “Hungary and the Prague Spring,” in this volume.

20. RGANI, F. 3, op. 72, d. 154, p. 2, Politburo resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU P 73 (1), 11 March 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #72; RGANI, F. 3, op. 72, d. 155, p. 5, Politburo resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU P 74 (II), 15 March 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #73. On this, see also Békés, “Hungary and the Prague Spring,” in this volume.

21. RGANI, F. 3, op. 72, d. 154, p. 2 (see note 20) and SAPMO-BA, DY 30/11834, S. 1–271 (see note 12); all quotes that follow are from these minutes.

22. Jan Pauer writes about how Dubček and his delegation dealt with the confrontation in Dresden: “Neither the Party leadership nor the public learnt anything about the conflict and about possible verbal undertakings on the part of the KSČ delegation to the effect that they wanted to bring developments more in line with Soviet intentions.” Jan Pauer, Prag 1968, Der Einmarsch des Warschauer Paktes: Hintergründe—Planung—Durchführung (Bremen: Ed. Temmen, 1995), 43–44.

23. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/3617, pp. 17–19 and 26–32, internal Bulgarian information passed on to the GDR and other participants at the Dresden meeting, 30 March 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #21.

24. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/3617, pp. 17–19 and 26–32.

25. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/3616, pp. 1–16 and 46, text of the speech of Comrade Josef Smrkovský on the plenum of the Central Committee of the KSČ, 1 February 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #1.

26. This is a reference to a survey by the Literární listy on basic questions relating to current affairs, on the importance of free elections, a functioning parliament, an opposition, and active neutrality. Ulbricht commented on the last point with the statement “no more Warsaw Pact then.”

27. Kurt Hager (1912–1998) was a participant in the Spanish Civil War, in 1955 was secretary of the Central Committee of the SED for Culture and Science, was a 1958 nominee, and from 1963 until 1989 served as a member of the Politburo.

28. See Priess et al., Die SED und der “Prager Frühling, ” 81–94.

29. RGANI, F. 5, op. 60, d. 299, pp. 298–307, report of the Soviet ambassador in the GDR, P. Abrasimov, to the departmental head of the Central Committee of the CPSU, K. V. Rusakov, “Zur Frage der Beziehungen zwischen der SED und der KPČ, der DDR und der Tschechoslowakei,” 19 April 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #16.

30. Otto Winzer (1902–1975) was in 1925 a KPD member, a member of the Comintern, emigrated to the Soviet Union, in 1945 returned to Berlin as a member of the “Ulbricht Group,” and from 1965 to 1975 served as foreign minister of the GDR.

31. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/316, memorandum on a discussion between the minister for foreign affairs of the GDR, Winzer, and the ambassador of the ČSSR in the GDR, Kolář, on 1 April 1968.

32. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/3616, pp. 235–41, memorandum on a discussion between the first secretary of the Central Committee of the SED, Walter Ulbricht, and the ambassador of the ČSSR in the GDR, Kolář, 16 April 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #15.

33. The “April plenum” took place from 28 March 1968 until 1 April 1968.

34. From the record of the information provided orally by Dubček and other members of the Czechoslovak delegation regarding the meeting of the Communist parties in Dresden, 23 March 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #76.

35. See Priess et al., Die SED und der “Prager Frühling, ” 95–110; ÚSD, sb. KV ČSFR, D IV/25, extract from the Action Program of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, 5 April 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #13.

36. Information no. 23/68, see Priess et al., Die SED und der “Prager Frühling, 104.

37. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/3616, pp. 221–24, information from the GDR embassy in Prague regarding a discussion with the director for fiction in the party’s publishing house “Svoboda,” J. Hájek, 5 April 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #14.

38. SAPMO-BA, DY, 30/3617, pp. 17–19 and 26–32 (see note 23).

39. A MVnR, op. 5 sh, a. e. 516, 112, coded telegram from the Bulgarian ambassador in Berlin, Daskalov, to the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry, 30 April 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #20.

40. AdBIK, holding “Prager Frühling,” minutes of the discussion between the heads of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the heads of the Communist parties of Bulgaria, Hungary, the GDR and Poland, 8 May 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #77; SAPMO-DA, DY 30/11835, pp. 1–48, notes made by Ulbricht on this discussion, 8 May 1968; the subsequent verbatim quotes from Priess et al., Die SED und der “Prager Frühling, ” 118–32.

41. Pauer, Der Einmarsch des Warschauer Paktes, 45–62.

42. On this, see also the chapter by Mikhail Prozumenshchikov, “Inside the Politburo of the CPSU: Political and Military Decision Making to Solve the Czechoslovak Crisis,” in this volume and Priess et al., Die SED und der “Prager Frühling, ” 158.

43. On this, see also the text from Rüdiger Wenzke, “Die Nationale Volksarmee der DDR: Kein Einsatz in Prag,” in Karner et al., Beiträge, 673–86.

44. Pauer, Der Einmarsch des Warschauer Paktes, 58.

45. Hartmut Zwahr, Die erfrorenen Flügel der Schwalbe: DDR und “Prager Frühling” (Bonn: Dietz, 2007), 81.

46. Zwahr, Die erfrorenen Flügel der Schwalbe, 75.

47. Robert Havemann (1910–1982) was in 1943 sentenced to death by the Volksgerichtshof, but the physicist/chemist survived by carrying out research in jail; in 1950 he was a member of the SED and professor at Berlin’s Humboldt University; in 1964 he lost his professorship, was ejected from the SED, and was the voice of opposition in the GDR until his death.

48. Quoted from Priess et al., Die SED und der “Prager Frühling, ” 139.

49. “Stalinism is the system of distrust and hypocrisy; democracy is that of trust and the free and critical expression of opinion. In Stalinism, the state has the citizens; in democracy, the citizens have the state.” Priess et al., Die SED und der “Prager Frühling, ” 140.

50. On this see also the text from Vondrová, “Der ‘Prager Frühling’ 1968 und Moskau,” in Karner et al., Beiträge, 171–204.

51. Vondrová, “Der ‘Prager Frühling’ 1968 und Moskau,” in Karner et al., Beiträge, 171–204.

52. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/3617, p. 9, embassy in Prague, 13 June 1968, assessment of the May plenum by the Central Committee of the KSČ (29 May–1 June 1968).

53. SAPMO, DY 30/3618, p. 6, in a letter from the CPSU to the Presidium of the KSČ from 4 July 1968, it says: “The offensive announced at the May plenum of the Central Committee of the KSČ against the right-leaning and anti-socialist forces was neither ideological, nor political, nor organizationally secured; it simply didn’t take place” (extract from the German version).

54. SAPMO, DY 30/3618, p. 17.

55. On this, see also Vondrová, “Prag und Moskau,” in Karner et al., Beiträge, 171–92.

56. At the 14th Party Congress conducted underground on 22 August 1968, these persons were indeed not elected to the Central Committee: Jiři Pelikán, ed., Panzer überrollen den Parteitag, Protokoll und Dokumente des XIV: Parteitags der KPČ am 22 August 1968 (Vienna: Europa Verlag, 1969).

57. On this, see also Prozumenshchikov, “Inside the Politburo of the CPSU,” in this volume.

58. Hejzlar, Reformkommunismus, 194–200; the draft of a new party statute is printed in Pelikán, Panzer überrollen den Parteitag, 143–84.

59. Hejzlar, Reformkommunismus, 179-80.

60. BA-MA, VA-01/12826, pp. 115–18, report of the operational group of the NVA from the operational headquarters of the supreme commander of the Unified Forces of the Warsaw Pact in Legnica, 25 July 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #92.

61. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/3617, pp. 169–79, 28 June 1968. The manifesto of the “2,000 Words,” 28 June 1968, is reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #28.

62. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/3618, pp. 14–21, report of the GDR ambassador in the ČSSR, Peter Florin, regarding the preparations for the extraordinary 14th Party Congress of the KSČ, 3 July 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #29.

63. Priess et al., Die SED und der “Prager Frühling, ” 177.

64. RGANI, F. 3, op. 72, d. 183, pp. 3–17, Politburo resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU P 88 (I), 3 July 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #37.

65. See Priess et al., Die SED und der “Prager Frühling, ” 180–86.

66. Priess et al., Die SED und der “Prager Frühling, ” 182.

67. On this, see also Prozumenshchikov, “Inside the Politburo of the CPSU,” in this volume.

68. On this, see also Vondrová, “Prag und Moskau,” 171–92.

69. RGANI, F. 3, op. 72, d. 186, p. 19, Politburo resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU P 90 (12), 11 July 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #81.

70. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/3618, p. 8, letter from the “Warsaw Five” to the Central Committee of the KSČ, 15 July 1968. The “Warsaw letter” is reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #45.

71. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/11836, 1–116, stenographical record of the meeting of the interventionist coalition in Warsaw, 14 and 15 July 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #82.

72. On the politics of the United States and the Federal Republic, see the articles from Horst Möller, “Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der ‘Prager Frühling,’” in Karner et al., Beiträge, 549–58; and Udo Wengst, “Die bundesdeutschen Parteien und ihre Reaktionen auf den Einmarsch,” in Karner et al., Beiträge, 559–70; as well as Günter Bischof, “‘No action’: Die USA und die Invasion in die Tschechoslowakei,” in Karner et al., Beiträge, 319–54.

73. RGANI, F. 2, op. 3, d. 114, pp. 27–54, speech of the general secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, L. I. Brezhnev, 17 July 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #38.

74. On this, see also Prozumenshchikov, “Inside the Politburo of the CPSU,” in this volume.

75. Telegram from the ambassador of the GDR in Prague, 18 July 1968, SAPMOBA, DY 30/ 3618, p. 1.

76. Priess et al., Die SED und der “Prager Frühling, ” 206–9.

77. Rüdiger Wenzke, Forschungen zur DDR-Geschichte, vol. 5, Die NVA und der Prager Frühling 1968: Die Rolle Ulbrichts und der DDR-Streitkräfte bei der Niederschlagung der tschechoslowakischen Reformbewegung (Berlin: Ch. Links, 1995).

78. Wenzke, Forschungen zur DDR-Geschichte, 5:211–12.

79. Wenzke, Forschungen zur DDR-Geschichte, 5:202; on this see also the protocols of the NVR from the year 1968, Bundesarchiv, 2008 http://www.bundesarchiv.de/fb_daofind/Zdaofind_DVW1_NVR/mets/NVR_39490/index.htm (accessed 21 June 2008).

80. On this, see also Prozumenshchikov, “Inside the Politburo of the CPSU,” in this volume and Vondrová, “Prag und Moskau,” 171–92.

81. Priess et al., Die SED und der “Prager Frühling, ” 213.

82. Pauer, Der Einmarsch des Warschauer Paktes, 173.

83. Pauer, Der Einmarsch des Warschauer Paktes, 174.

84. Pauer, Der Einmarsch des Warschauer Paktes, 174.

85. Hermann Axen (1916–1992): 1932 member of the Communist Youth Organization; imprisoned after 1933, inc. in Auschwitz concentration camp; 1945 KPD; 1970–1989 member of the Politburo of the SED, Central Committee secretary for international affairs.

86. Priess et al., Die SED und der “Prager Frühling, ” 215.

87. Pauer, Der Einmarsch des Warschauer Paktes, 175.

88. RGANI, F. 3. op. 72, d. 197, pp. 3–6, Politburo resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU P 95 (I), 17 August 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #62.

89. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/3621, pp. 57–61, minutes of the discussion between members of the delegations of the SED and the KSČ, 13 August 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #86; RGANI, F. 89, op. 76, d. 73, pp. 1–2, Politburo resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU P 94 (82), 10 August 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #54.

90. On the significance of this discussion for the forming of opinion in the Central Committee apparatus of the CPSU, see also Prozumenshchikov, “Inside the Politburo of the CPSU,” in this volume.

91. RGANI, F. 3. op. 72, d. 197, pp. 3–6 (see note 2).

92. Pauer, Der Einmarsch des Warschauer Paktes, 228–62.

93. On this, see Manfred Wilke, “Protokoll der 47: Sitzung der EnqueteKommission: Der Prager Frühling 1968 und Solidarnosc 1980/81,” in Materialien der Enquete-Kommission der 12. Wahlperiode des Deutschen Bundestages, vol. 1, ed. Der Deutsche Bundestag (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1995), 170; AdBIK, holding “Prager Frühling,” stenographical record of the meeting of the interventionist coalition in Moscow, 18 August 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #87.

94. Priess et al., Die SED und der “Prager Frühling, ” 226–84, and Pauer, Der Einmarsch des Warschauer Paktes, 283–391.

95. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/11836, pp. 1–116 (see note 59).

96. Boris Meissner, Die Sowjetunion im Umbruch (Stuttgart: Deutsche VerlagsAnstalt, 1988).

97. Memorandum on a discussion between the general secretary of the Central Committee of the SED and chairman of the State Council of the GDR, Comrade Erich Honecker, and the member of the Presidium and secretary of the Central Committee of the KSČ, Comrade Vasil Bil’ak, on 24 November 1988 in the offices of the Central Committee, SAPMO-BA, DY 30/2439, p. 3.

98. SAPMO-BA, DY 30/2439, 5.

99. Robert Havemann, Fragen Antworten Fragen: Aus der Biographie eines deutschen Marxisten (Munich: R. Piper, 1970), 59.

The reform movement in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (ČSSR) that began in January 1968 coincided with the introduction of the “new economic mechanism” in Hungary.¹ The Hungarian leadership saw three possible scenarios on which to base a prognosis regarding the potential consequences of the events in Prague on Hungary. In the best-case scenario, the Czechoslovak reforms would remain moderate; they would, if reluctantly, be accepted by the Soviets in a development that was analogous to that in Poland in October 1956. In this case, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the two leading reformist countries within the Soviet Bloc, would be able to support each other and serve as an example to the other countries. This would echo the first half of the 1960s, when Hungary and Poland had played a leading role in de-Stalinization.

In a second, much more probable scenario, the Czechoslovak reforms, which were above all political in nature, would sooner or later—perhaps even contrary to the original intentions of their initiators—move beyond the limits set by the Soviet leadership. This would ultimately lead to an armed intervention on the pattern of Hungary 1956 and could seriously jeopardize all initiatives and reforms in the Soviet Bloc that deviated from the Soviet model, including the Hungarian economic reforms.

In the third scenario, the far reaching political reforms in Prague might prove unacceptable to Moscow, which could lead to Hungary’s course of moderate restructuring, which did not threaten political destabilization, being given a green light as the lesser of two evils. A comparison of the two processes, which differed in their objectives, might even awaken a certain amount of sympathy on the part of the Soviet leadership for the downright moderate Hungarian reforms, which only aimed at improving economic efficiency and indirectly also served Soviet interests. It was, in fact, this third scenario which was turned into reality in 1968 and the ensuing years. The Soviet leadership, after being rather tolerant at the beginning, exerted substantial pressure on the Hungarian leadership in the early 1970s to prevent the reforms from leading to the country’s destabilization, and they made sure that the leading reformists were removed. János Kádár himself was not removed, however, whereas Władysław Gomułka and Walter Ulbricht were both forced to resign from their posts during those years; the most important measures of the Hungarian economic reform were allowed to remain in place.

Since the beginning of 1968, it was quite clear that there was only one objective for Kádár and the Hungarian leadership: to do everything in their power to make the first scenario come true. Failing that, the next one in order of preference was the third one; the second one, discrediting all reforms, was to be avoided at all costs. This determination was the driving force behind Kádár’s repeated attempts to persuade the Czechoslovak leaders to be cautious, to slow down the pace of reform, to acknowledge realities while he worked hard up to the middle of July, and even after that to convince the Kremlin and the other Soviet Bloc leaders to muster more understanding and patience because the cause of socialism was not yet critically endangered there.

It is important to make it quite clear from the outset that the difference of opinion between Kádár and the Soviets and/or the other Socialist leaders did not concern the question whether the Soviet Union and the member states of the Warsaw Pact were entitled to intervene if a restoration of capitalism was to be attempted in Czechoslovakia. Kádár had given an unequivocal answer to that question at the session of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (HSWP) held on 19 and 20 June 1968:

This statement showed Kádár running true to form. This was, after all, the same man who accepted the leadership of the countergovernment in 1956 and went on to suppress brutally the Hungarian Revolution with the help of the Red Army. He was even the only political leader in the entire Eastern Bloc to have overseen a “rescue operation” of the Communist system in a serious crisis.³ So the difference was not one in the degree of loyalty to the Communist system, but in the assessment of the situation, that is, in choosing the right moment once it was obvious that there was no longer the chance of a political settlement and that Czechoslovakia could only be kept within the Socialist camp through a military invasion. Yet in this question he stubbornly clung to the formula that was for him a tried and proven one on the basis of his own experience: armed intervention was the method of choice only once the counterrevolution had already gained the upper hand. If this undesirable development did indeed come to pass, then the Soviet Union was in a position to restore order and the Communist system in a matter of a few days. This was the reason why at the beginning there was so much emphasis on the Hungarian assessment of developments in Czechoslovakia, particularly regarding the fact that despite negative tendencies there was as yet no counterrevolutionary danger; the goal was merely the correction of earlier mistakes.

By early May 1968 Kádár, too, saw the danger of a counterrevolution and the seriousness of the situation and modified his position accordingly. From that point on, he underlined that at least the counterrevolution had not yet been victorious. At the Warsaw meeting of the “Five” in July, Kádár endorsed the plan of a joint invasion in principle and declared Hungary to be prepared to participate, but he continued to do everything to prevent a drastic solution from happening.⁴ In the end, he bowed to the inevitable, and Hungary took part in the military action on 21 August. Even then Kádár rather curiously refused to give up his theoretical point of view. In midAugust, in the days immediately preceding the intervention, he told Leonid Brezhnev that the Czechoslovak developments had their closest parallels not to the Hungary of 1956, but to Poland. The Soviets nevertheless opted for the “Hungarian solution.”⁵ Kádár maintained that Czechoslovakia, as opposed to Hungary in 1956, had not yet reached the counterrevolutionary phase in August 1968. He remained true to himself when he felt that the intervention had been premature.

In this case, however, Kádár’s assessment of the situation was mistaken. In 1956, Gomułka had got the measure of Soviet tolerance and its limits and was able to contain developments within boundaries that were acceptable to Moscow. Czechoslovakia, on the other hand, had undergone a process of democratization by August 1968 that could not be arrested without the use of force, either internally or from outside and that, in fact, recalled two developments in Hungary.

First, the process occurring between February and November 1956 brought about, by the time of the second Soviet intervention on 4 November, a situation in which Communist power had ceased to exist;⁶ the general elections, which were due to be held shortly, would most certainly have resulted in the establishment of a bourgeois democratic system.

At first sight, a comparison of the two crises seems to show up significant differences, the chief one being that there was no armed uprising in Czechoslovakia. Yet a closer look will reveal that such developments as the extraordinarily fast decay of the Communist Party’s self-confidence resulting from the freedom of the press and the societal pressure it generated, the evaporation of its legitimation, its erosion and subsequent dissolution would have taken place within a very short time in Czechoslovakia as well. In Hungary, these developments unfolded step by step in the half year leading up to the revolt and at an accelerated pace during the two weeks of the revolution.⁷

Secondly, the regime change in Hungary in 1988/1989 highlights in an extremely instructive manner how the Communist Party attempted at that time, in a transitional situation similar to the one in Czechoslovakia in 1968, to take into account society’s changed interests to a larger extent than had previously been the case in order to revitalize its legitimation. From a starting point of accepting pluralism within the party, it was propelled by pressure both from radicals in the party and in society very quickly to the nominal acceptance of a multiparty system, which the party envisaged as coexisting with its dominant role remaining intact within an overall framework of regulated power sharing. This “new model of socialism” evolving from the middle of 1988 was, in fact, very similar to Alexander Dubček’s vision of “socialism with a human face.” By May 1989, however, once the danger of a Soviet intervention had gradually receded into the background, this position swiftly gave way to the party’s voluntarily accepting the idea of genuine free elections. The subsequent Round Table talks resulted in September in an agreement between the party and the opposition on holding free elections the next spring, and in early October, the HSWP itself morphed into a social-democratic party.⁸

In Soviet, Polish, East German, and Bulgarian prognoses, it was precisely these fears that were expressed in the summer of 1968 with reference to the developments in Czechoslovakia, and for this there was good reason. The free press, the foundation of political clubs (that were clearly protoopposition parties), the preparations for a relaunch of the Social Democratic Party, the “2,000 Words” manifesto and the reception it met with in public opinion, and societal demands of increasing radicalism all concurred in underlining that the Czechoslovak society, which had a powerful streak of nostalgia for the parliamentary democracy of the interwar years, would not have limited its political goals to the acceptance of a reformed Socialist system if it had not been for a military intervention from outside. There is no doubt that the reform movement that was underway in Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1968 gradually but rather quickly progressed from visions of a reformed Socialist model toward a nontotalitarian system and would ultimately have reached the modern variant of such a system, that of parliamentary democracy; this is indeed what happened in 1990 without pressure from outside in a matter of months.

The Dubček leadership, which was at least in nominal control of developments until the military intervention in August, had two options in this situation. The first one was to restrict liberalization to below the Soviet threshold of tolerance (the Gomułka model of 1956). In this scenario, the gradual relaxation since January 1968 and the freedom of the press would have resulted in a serious conflict between the established power of the state and society so that the increasing societal resistance would probably have had to be dealt with domestically by the use of force (Jaruzelski model of 1981). Yet Dubček, like Hungary’s Imre Nagy or Poland’s Stanisław Kania, belonged to the “soft” type of Communist leader who was neither willing nor capable of using brute force against society in a crisis to suppress the process of democratization. In this sense, Kádár, who as leader of Hungary’s “soft” dictator ship was regarded as a liberal Communist in the West, clearly belongs with Communists of the “hard” type. Another notable representative of this type was Josip Tito, whose independent foreign policy line was highly appreciated in the West while the Yugoslav political and economic model was the most serious deviation from the Leninist-Stalinist-type Communist model. Moreover, he was also lucky for not having had to face and handle a serious internal crisis during his reign. Nevertheless, when Nikita Khrushchev and Georgi Malenkov secretly visited him before the Soviet intervention to crush the Hungarian Revolution in November 1956, Tito not only agreed that intervention was necessary to save the Communist system there, but also promised to help eliminate his virtual allies—Prime Minister Imre Nagy and his adherents—from political life.⁹

The second option—and this is the one that both Nagy in 1956 and the Prague leaders in 1968 chose—consisted of attempting to avoid the conflict with society and yielding gradually to societal pressures. At the same time, it was necessary to convince the Soviets that the political reforms, no matter how far reaching they might appear, were still within the framework of the Socialist system. The Czechoslovak leadership did not accede to the Soviet demands contained in the agreement of Čierna nad Tisou in August 1968 because they understandably concluded that this would be interpreted by the people as a betrayal of the cause of the Prague Spring and provoke determined resistance.¹⁰ The Soviets in their turn viewed the inactivity of the Prague leadership as irrefutable proof of their inability and their unwillingness—which was even worse—to channel developments into the direction of Soviet expectations.

In view of an unreliable party leadership and an increasingly free press, Moscow had by early August also lost confidence in the Czechoslovak security services and in the country’s military leadership, as they, too, seemed loyal not to the Soviet Union, but to the Prague leadership.

It was the same four factors as in Hungary in 1956 that were interpreted as symptoms of a deep crisis in Czechoslovakia in 1968, and this realization propelled Moscow toward the military intervention that spelled the end for the Prague Spring.¹¹

In moral terms, the two actions constituted blatant interferences in the internal affairs of nominally independent allies, yet in terms of realpolitik, the Soviet Union, having its own imperial interests at heart, was making rationally justifiable decisions.¹²

KÁDÁR MEDIATES BETWEEN BREZHNEV AND DUBČEK

On taking office as leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), Alexander Dubček held his first international negotiation with János Kádár. Having received an official invitation to Moscow on 10 January, Dubček confidentially asked the Hungarian party leader for a secret meeting before his trip to Moscow.¹³ Kádár was an obvious choice for the Czechoslovak leader. De-Stalinization, which had been carried out successfully in Hungary in the early 1960s, and the reformist élan of the leadership made the Hungarian party automatically a potential ally of the Prague reformers and one to which they were looking for support of their policies.

Dubček was of course well aware that the Soviets would learn of the meeting, yet he possibly banked on the meeting being legitimized in the Kremlin’s eyes by an—ultimately unrealized—move that Leonid Brezhnev had suggested during the crisis of a month before, in December 1967, which would also have involved a mediating role for Hungary.

During his trip to Moscow in November, Antonín Novotný had invited Brezhnev to Prague without informing the leadership of the KSČ; he hoped that the presence of the Soviet leader would bolster his own weakened position. In a move unusual even by the standards of Soviet Bloc practice, Brezhnev made Novotný also invite Kádár to Prague, again without informing the KSČ. The Soviet leader had obviously concluded that Kádár’s international standing and his “experience” in dealing with domestic crises and in the consolidation of a difficult situation might help persuade the disgruntled members of the Prague leadership to defer Novotný’s ousting. As the Hungarian party leader shared this view regarding Novotný at the time, he signaled his willingness to accept the invitation.¹⁴

The following incident is evidence of the dramatic pace at which the Czechoslovak developments were unfolding. In a telephone call on 13 December 1967, Brezhnev attempted to motivate Kádár to undertake the trip to Prague, which was then only three days away, by saying that the Czechoslovak leaders were impatiently looking forward to his arrival—only to be told by Kádár that Novotný had withdrawn the invitation on that very day.¹⁵

The meeting between Dubček and Kádár, which also included a hunting expedition, took place on 20 and 21 January 1968 in Polarikovo and Topol’čianky in Slovakia. The two leaders had known each other for a long time, which gave the meeting an amicable atmosphere. This is also evidenced by Kádár’s greeting, which was not what one might call a standard formula: “Congratulations—and my most sincere condolences!” With this unusual phrase, he signaled that he was only too familiar with the Czechoslovak problems.¹⁶ “The atmosphere was excellent, Comrade Dubček even said that for obvious reasons there was hardly anyone apart from Kádár with whom he could have talked about those topics in the same manner.”¹⁷

Dubček gave Kádár a detailed report on the causes of the Czechoslovak crisis and mentioned the mistakes that had been made since the 1950s in a historical retrospective. He also spoke about the circumstances of Novotný’s removal and his own election. Kádár admitted openly that Brezhnev and he had felt in December that Novotný should have been removed at a later date. Kádár knew intuitively that Dubček had actually sought the meeting in the hope of being given friendly advice, and he was unlikely to disappoint him. Kádár therefore advised restoring unity in the party leadership and tackling the problems methodically, calmly, and patiently. He also told Dubček that he must on no account embark on an “offended” political course and that he had to put up with other fraternal parties not being happy about the changes in Prague.¹⁸ “Tell yourself that they are only insufficiently aware of the circumstances and of your own point of view. They will become more aware of the actual situation before long and revise their assessment accordingly.”¹⁹

These encouraging words reflect Kádár’s initial optimism. They also proved to have been a prophesy which was soon to come true—if in a way that was disastrous for the Czechoslovak leaders. Kádár also mentioned that he deemed secret meetings inadvisable. It was agreed that the Czechoslovak leaders were to come to Budapest in late March or early April for a friendly visit, on which they would report. In retrospect, Kádár called the meeting “an open, straightforward private conversation” and Dubček a “sane, sober-minded communist motivated by a sense of responsibility and also struggling with problems.”²⁰

The next meeting between Dubček and Kádár took place before March as developments were picking up momentum not only in Prague and Moscow, but also in East Berlin and Warsaw, where leaders were becoming increasingly concerned about the situation in Prague.²¹ The Czechoslovak leaders’ trip to Moscow took place earlier than originally planned, at the end of January. A meeting with Gomułka was arranged for 10 February.²² An invitation to the German Democratic Republic (GDR) had also arrived. Therefore, it became important for Dubček, once he had completed his introductory visit to Moscow, to schedule the first official negotiations with one of the countries of the Soviet Bloc. This first country was to be Hungary, which was considered a close ally, a fact that Dubček openly addressed in the letter of 27 January to Kádár containing the invitation.²³ The hectic pace of developments in Prague becomes apparent from the fact that Dubček originally planned to go to Budapest on 5 February; the information was accordingly conveyed to the Hungarian embassy in Prague. A few minutes later, Dubček himself called the ambassador and asked him to make arrangements for a meeting in Komárno on 4 or 5 February instead.²⁴

In order to underline the official character of this meeting, which took place on Czechoslovak soil in Komárno, the list of participants included the foreign policy secretaries of the two parties, Vladimír Koucký and Zoltán Komócsin, as well as Hungarian deputy foreign minister Károly Erdélyi.²⁵ Dubček reported on the Action Program that was going to be submitted to the session of the Central Committee scheduled for March, and mentioned that “they did not want to tackle too much at once.”²⁶ For the time being, priority was given to solving the most important problems. The necessity of drafting a document that dealt in detail and from a long-term perspective with the problems confronting the party, the state, the economy, and society, which would have to be passed by the KSČ’s Central Committee, was not mentioned by anyone. Kádár expressed his concerns with regard to the Czechoslovak developments extremely diplomatically when he said: “Mark my words: now everyone is at work there on their own Action Program.”²⁷

At the Politburo session of the HSWP on 6 February, the Hungarian leader formulated this concern much more pointedly. According to information he had received two days before the meeting in Komárno, things had taken a turn in Czechoslovakia

At the meeting, Dubček painted his visit to Moscow as a great success. He said that Brezhnev and the other Soviet leaders had assured him of their assistance. He underlined that he had explicitly made the point that he wanted to solve all problems in close cooperation with the Soviet Union. Dubček and Kádár agreed in their assessments of the international situation across the board (Middle East, Vietnam, the issue of the Budapest Conference of the Communist and Workers’ Parties, and so forth). The most interesting discussion was the one regarding relations with the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). Kádár noted with relief that the Czechoslovak and Hungarian points of view were identical and felt sure he had found an ally in the Czechoslovak leadership in a question that was crucially important to the Hungarian economy. The secret protocol that had been endorsed under Polish and East German pressure by the Conference of Foreign Ministers in February 1967 in Warsaw made it impossible, after Romania’s earlier unilateral move, for Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary to enter into diplomatic relations with the FRG even though the Bonn government had extended this offer to all four countries.²⁹ Kádár and Dubček welcomed the fact that diplomatic relations had been reestablished in the meantime between West Germany and Yugoslavia. There were now three Socialist countries (the Soviet Union, Romania, and Yugoslavia) that had official relations with the FRG. The fact that Dubček agreed with him that this created an entirely new situation made Kádár hope that with help from the Czechoslovak leadership the time might come for the Warsaw directive to be reviewed. Kádár used open, flexible language to describe his point of view to Dubček:

Dubček and Koucký found themselves in complete agreement with the Hungarian leader.³⁰ That Kádár pinned his hopes of bringing about a review of the Warsaw Pact’s attitude toward the FRG to Dubček’s help appears to be an important clue in any attempt to understand why he insisted for so long that Czechoslovakia’s consolidation according to the interests of the Soviet Bloc be carried out with the Dubček leadership rather than with the “healthy forces” backed by Moscow.

The meeting also produced an agreement on a continued development of bilateral economic and cultural relations. At Dubček’s request, Kádár was willing to consider that the friendship treaty between the two countries that had been concluded for twenty years in February 1949 should be renewed a year before its termination, with a clearly demonstrative purpose in the summer of 1968.

The next meeting between Kádár and Dubček also took place earlier than had originally been planned, at the anniversary of the Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia in February 1968. Initial planning had provided for the invitation of delegations from the “fraternal countries” headed by one Politburo member, yet in mid-February Dubček, citing “domestic and foreign policy reasons,” requested in no uncertain terms that the Soviet delegation be led in person by Brezhnev.³¹ According to the ritual of “imitation,” which was well established in the Soviet Bloc, it now became imperative for all other countries to be represented on the occasion by their party leaders as well. In Prague, Kádár had his most important conversation curiously enough not with Dubček, but with Novotný. The Hungarian leader was not only interested in Novotný’s views on the developments in Czechoslovakia, but he also tried to persuade the deposed politician not to be swayed by injured pride and not to block reform. A positive outcome was dependent on a unified leadership, Kádár told Novotný, and advised him “to work for a solution of the problems alongside the comrades.”³²

In March, the news from Czechoslovakia that reached the countries of the Soviet camp became more and more perturbing. After the abolition of censorship, ever more radical views found their way into the media. Novotný’s suggested removal from the post of president, for instance, did not even make it into the list of the particularly courageous “proposals.” The Soviet leaders therefore concluded that a meeting must be called immediately to enable leaders of “fraternal countries” to offer Dubček and his comrades Communist assistance in the task of consolidating the situation.

The story of the meeting in Dresden on 23 March 1968 and Kádár’s role as a mediator are sufficiently well known. What is less well known is the precise role Kádár played in the run-up to the meeting, which, generally speaking, was the result of agreements involving Brezhnev, Gomułka, and Kádár. During the Czechoslovak crisis, Brezhnev was in regular contact by telephone with the leaders of the five other countries of the “Six”; he was also regularly in touch with Kádár for purposes of sharing information and consultation. On average, he spoke to Kádár at least once a week, with occasional peaks of twice a day.

Wishing to provoke Kádár into speaking his mind, Brezhnev told him on 11 March that Gomułka and Todor Zhivkov, who were both deeply worried about the Czechoslovak developments, had suggested a meeting in Prague in that very week, if possible. Because Dubček himself had suggested at the March meeting of the Warsaw Pact Political Consultative Committee in Sofia that the members should meet more frequently at top level to discuss issues of economic cooperation, this meeting was to be advertised as one devoted to economic consultations, which meant that, in addition to the party heads and prime ministers, the leaders of the state planning boards would have to be invited as well.

Kádár’s reaction to the proposal was far from enthusiastic, yet he did not think it prudent to reject it out of hand. He suggested holding the meeting in Uzhgorod rather than in Prague “so that things were less obvious.” He also objected to painting the meeting as something different from what it was actually going to be: “Comrade Dubček must be told the truth whole and unabridged.” He also suggested that participation in the meeting should be confined to the party heads of four countries, namely the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary. Because Kádár knew the points of view of each of the respective leaders, he concluded that a smaller forum, excluding Bulgaria and the GDR, was going to provide more opportunity for offering the KSČ genuine constructive advice and assistance and at same time reduce the probability of it ending in outright condemnation of the Prague leadership’s erroneous ways.³³

On 12 March, Brezhnev took the “initiative” out of the hands of “mediators.” He was now saying that dangerous tendencies were becoming apparent in Prague that were spreading to the military as well and that this made a meeting necessary. At first, Gomułka was in favor of inviting Novotný and suggested Moravska Ostrava as a possible venue for the meeting, yet after learning about Kádár’s proposal, he, too, favored a reduction of the number of participants; he would even have agreed to limiting the invitation to the Soviet Union, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia.³⁴ On the next day, Brezhnev announced that he had spoken to Dubček on the phone and had mentioned the proposal of a meeting. Dubček had reacted positively, saying he would give his answer later. Brezhnev told Kádár that the Soviet leadership was examining a variety of moves, among others also inviting Dubček to Moscow, and signaled that “certain other measures would be taken as well,” which he was not prepared to discuss on the phone, even if it was supposedly tap-proof. This meant, in other words, that preparations for a military solution were underway.³⁵ On 16 March, Brezhnev told Kádár that Dubček still welcomed the idea of a meeting, but had as yet been unable to commit himself to any details. He had, however, mentioned that he was going to speak to Kádár and perhaps even to travel to Hungary for discussions with him. Brezhnev noted that “it was obvious that Dubček was eagerly looking forward to meeting Comrade Kádár; the relationship is a very good one and marked by complete trust.” Brezhnev was trying to curry favor with Kádár for a good reason: mutual trust would stand him in good stead in the realization of their common goal. He signaled approval of the idea; in a bilateral meeting, Kádár would be able to address their common worries and problems and prepare the ground for the four-party meeting.³⁶

Dubček, however, changed his mind in the meantime, abandoned the idea of going to Hungary, and informed Brezhnev on 19 March that he was ready for a meeting. He named Dresden as a possible venue because he had never been to the GDR and considered Dresden neutral territory. In light of the GDR leadership’s point of view,³⁷ Dubček’s proposal does not really make sense in retrospect. What is even more curious is the fact that in the meantime Dubček had even adopted Brezhnev’s idea of the smoke screen; he suggested making the meeting appear like an “economic forum,” which would necessitate including the heads of the planning boards.³⁸ What he was probably hoping for from this solution was that it might make it easier for him to ward off both international and national criticism of the Czechoslovak leadership’s decision to take part in a meeting whose main topic was bound to be an assessment of the situation in Czechoslovakia. In the literature on the Prague Spring, the myth, born in 1968 and still generally surviving, suggests that the Czechoslovak delegation was ensnared in Dresden only to realize the true nature of the meeting after its opening. Now it is obvious, however, that Dubček was aware of the situation from the outset and it was precisely him, who “forgot” to inform his colleagues. Thus the rest of the Czechoslovak delegation was sincerely shocked when they recognized the trap.

Brezhnev had, therefore, achieved his goal. All that remained to be done for him was to ensure that the Bulgarians were going to take part. To “soften up” Kádár, he told him that Gomułka had already agreed in principle.³⁹

The same day also saw a session of the Politburo of the HSWP. Several members of that body viewed the meeting with considerable anxiety; they were worried that it might be construed as a clear case of interference in the internal affairs of Czechoslovakia and, therefore, inflict unnecessary political damage on the Prague leadership. The proposal was floated to hold the meeting in Budapest. Quite a few asked Kádár to advise the Czechoslovak leaders not to go to Dresden on account of the dangers lurking for them there.

Kádár had not anticipated such a critical attitude on the part of his Politburo. The thought that, in a situation where Brezhnev had finally succeeded in persuading Dubček to attend the meeting, it might fall to him to “abort” the plan quite obviously rattled him. Political maneuvering, manipulation, and the untiring search for compromise formulas were definitely Kádár’s strong points yet it was unthinkable for him to thwart openly Brezhnev’s intentions. He therefore told the Politburo in a long argumentation that there was simply no way the meeting could now not take place. He did not even shirk from using arguments the implausibility of which he himself was perfectly aware. For instance, he wound up his speech by saying that “it was possible for the meeting to have no other result than to convince us, the others, of the necessity to support wholeheartedly the concept of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Party.” He then added in a more realistic vein, signaling his own doubts: “If this becomes apparent there, then that in itself would be no mean result.”⁴⁰ Kádár telephoned Moscow on the same day to inform the Soviets about the positive result of the Politburo session, yet he added that this body “had reacted to the proposal with mixed emotions because they did not expect much good to come of it and they foresaw a negative echo both inside and outside Czechoslovakia.”⁴¹

In Dresden, Kádár attempted to divide his efforts out of genuine conviction evenly between the two goals he had set himself: to assure the Czechoslovak leaders of his unqualified support and, at the same time, to point out to them emphatically the dangers inherent in the present situation. In his speech, he underlined the Hungarian leadership’s solidarity with the KSČ; what was happening in Czechoslovakia had to be considered an internal affair of that country in which no one was entitled to interfere. He urged solving the present problems in a manner that would result in a strengthened Socialist system. He also pointed out that the leadership was not unified and that there could be no successful conclusion to the present troubles without unity. A second precondition for victory, according to Kádár, was a recognition of the necessity to wage consistently a two-front war to fight for the correction of mistakes that had been made in the construction of socialism prior to January 1968 and to fight antisocialist phenomena and tendencies. Kádár spoke at length on his view that Czechoslovakia had not yet—contrary to the assertions of Brezhnev and Gomułka—reached the stage of counterrevolution; there was, however, that danger because the present situation resembled in a number of ways the one that preceded the Hungarian “counterrevolution” of 1956. He expressed the hope that the outcome would be different in Czechoslovakia. The most effective argument that Kádár advanced was that the people who had brought about the Hungarian crisis had not been ardent counterrevolutionaries either. Rather, they had been a confused lot without firm convictions, who had rallied to the cry of putting the resolutions of the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) into practice and had caused tremendous damage without intending to do so: they had opened the gates of the Socialist fortress to the class enemy. In case this was not yet powerful enough as a warning note, Kádár added for good measure: Imre Nagy had not been a conscious counterrevolutionary aiming for regime change; he was carried away by the events of 25 and 26 October and made common cause with the class enemy. Finally, Kádár said quite bluntly to the Czechoslovak delegates: “These events can turn any one of you into an Imre Nagy.”⁴² Because Kádár was the only representative of the five parties openly to support the Dubček leadership and to maintain that the solution of the Czechoslovaks’ problems was exclusively their own concern, his speech was the most liberal at the meeting in Dresden. Conversely, it must be said that his remarks about Nagy were by far the bluntest reference to a worst-case scenario; everyone knew that Nagy had been executed.

The Hungarian leaders came to play an important role in drafting the final communiqué. The Soviets had originally proposed to itemize in detail the tasks and obligations of the Czecho slovak leaders in the communiqué. Because this would have constituted a blatant interference in the internal affairs of Czechoslovakia, it was unacceptable for the Hungarians. During a break at the close of the meeting, Prime Minister Jeno“ Fock told the Czechoslovak delegation that a communiqué of this sort might have disastrous consequences for the Prague leaders and that they must on no account allow that to happen. Drahomir Kolder felt that mentioning all these points in the communiqué would be tantamount to a death sentence for all of them. Kádár, the master of compromise, insisted that at least mention must be made of the discussion of these points in the course of the negotiations “for if we don’t mention that, the world will make fun of us for not having discussed the situation in Czechoslovakia at this juncture.” Dubček signaled his agreement to the communiqué mentioning that the KSČ had informed the other parties about the situation in their country. Then Brezhnev entered and announced that a new text was being drafted in which Czechoslovakia was not mentioned. The Hungarians said they had just struck a compromise with the Czechoslovaks. Thus the final draft of the communiqué was written by a Soviet-Czechoslovak-Hungarian “ad hoc committee.”⁴³

FROM DRESDEN TO WARSAW: “IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA THE COUNTERREVOLUTION HAS NOT YET GAINED THE UPPER HAND”

The meeting in Dresden fell short of reaching its aims. Despite the “fraternal” parties’ warnings, the Czechoslovak leadership failed to halt democratization and attempted to paint the whole process as a renewal of socialism. In a manner that was actually rather naïve, they continued to believe that this was not going to endanger the position of the Communist Party.

In view of the latest developments, Brezhnev summed up his assessment of the situation in a conversation with Kádár on 16 April: “We are about to lose Czechoslovakia.” He hinted at the necessity for the fraternal parties to meet again in secret very soon to discuss the situation; this time without the KSČ. Kádár signaled his readiness to attend this meeting. However, as he sensed that the handling of the crisis was about to undergo a drastic qualitative change, he demurred that “he could not envisage discussing [the Czechoslovaks’] fate in their absence.”⁴⁴

In spite of Kádár’s doubts, this undesirable situation materialized very soon, and at the Moscow meeting on 8 May the only option left to the Hungarian party leader was an attempt to convince his comrades that the present Czechoslovak leadership only needed sufficient support in order to get the situation back under control. However, the representatives of the other parties who had assembled in Moscow saw the situation as indisputably counterrevolutionary and the KSČ leaders as incapable of consolidating it. From this date onward, the idea was gaining ground that consolidation through political means was to be achieved by “healthy forces” seizing power internally. Kádár acknowledged in his statement that there was rampant anarchy in Czechoslovakia and that this fact was being exploited by antisocialist forces. The leadership was weak, divided, and unable to control state or society. There was, however, no doubt that it was engaged in a two-front struggle. This was to be welcomed, and there was no alternative in any case. He called the KSČ’s Action Program a “big zero” because it could be interpreted at will either as a defense of socialism or as its abandonment. What it meant depended on what people wanted to read into it. So the situation was indeed dangerous, but counterrevolution had not yet gained the upper hand in the country.⁴⁵ Kádár therefore proposed that in assessing the situation simplistic schemata should “be replaced by societal analyses, by the analysis of necessities.” To illustrate the point he was trying to make, he chose examples that cannot have been to the Soviets’ or any of the others’ liking, for he appeared to caricature the simplifications endemic to the Eastern Bloc: “For instance, if you call Mao Tse-tung and his clique insane, Castro a petty bourgeois, Ceaus¸escu a nationalist, the Czechoslovaks crazy, you have not actually done anything to deal with the underlying problems.”⁴⁶ After that, he emphasized that “the struggle would ultimately be decided in Czechoslovakia, in the party, by the working class, by the people. This sets out clear boundaries for our actions: to do everything on the one hand to make a communist solution to this difficult situation possible and on the other to do nothing that might give comfort to our enemies.”⁴⁷ He was certain that there would be those that advocated a military solution, so he closed with a plea for restraint, saying that he, too, was in favor of using military maneuvers as a means to exercise pressure on both the Czechoslovak leadership and on the people, yet “the problem cannot be solved by military means alone; the political issues are too complex for that.” He used a curious example to illustrate that point: “One should bear in mind for instance that Soviet troops were stationed in Hungary in 1956 and that it was their deployment that served as a pretext for the counterrevolution.”⁴⁸ He was trying to make the others, most notably Brezhnev, understand that there was an enormous difference between the stationing of Soviet troops and their deployment to restore order, and that the latter could easily backfire.

In this speech, Kádár did no less than rewrite history, at least for the benefit of those who were present, by fundamentally reinterpreting the causes of the “counterrevolution” that had officially been diagnosed in December 1956: the mistakes of the Rákosi-Gero“ group, the treachery of the Nagy group, and the disruptive and destructive influence of internal and external reactionary forces. What he was actually saying amounted to a claim that the intervention of the Soviet troops, whose aim had been the restoration of order following the outbreak of the armed revolt on 23 October, had caused the escalation of the revolution and of the anti-Soviet freedom struggle. This assessment of the sequence of events is indeed borne out by the latest research.⁴⁹ Through this interpretation, Kádár was indirectly blaming the Soviet Union for the consequences of the revolution of 1956.

Kádár was soon given an opportunity to play again the role of mediator that he had assumed from the beginning: he was asked to influence Dubček. The visit of the Czechoslovak leaders that had originally been planned for March finally took place on 13 and 14 June, and a delegation consisting of party and government representatives left Prague for the Hungarian capital.⁵⁰ In order not to leave anything to chance, Brezhnev telephoned Kádár on the previous day and urged him to help Dubček understand “the dangers that are threatening the KSČ, socialism and himself.” If they wanted to count on Soviet support, then the least they had to do was get the mass media under their control and detach and distance themselves from the revisionist group.⁵¹ After the Moscow meeting of the “Five,” this visit had something of a demonstrative character anyway, which was further enhanced by the renewal for another twenty years of the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance between the ČSSR and the People’s Republic of Hungary. In public, Kádár assured the Czechoslovak leadership of his support for their efforts to consolidate the situation. In private, however, he sounded a note of warning. The Hungarian experiences of 1956 showed that it was necessary to curb democratization and to draw an unmistakable line against deviations and hostile tendencies; otherwise, the party was bound to lose control. Dubček replied in a selfconfident vein:

This determination began to sound increasingly hollow to Moscow, and the news from Prague was ever more worrisome. An article published by Literární Noviny on the tenth anniversary of the execution of Imre Nagy, which called him wrongfully executed and a martyr, caused indignation in Budapest as well as in Moscow. Kádár considered this as sniping that was taking aim at him personally and at his support for the Prague leadership. What he found particularly galling was the fact that the leadership of KSČ did not react unequivocally to this provocation. The “2,000 Words” manifesto, which was published on 27 June, was counterrevolutionary in the eyes of the Hungarian leadership, and they expected it to draw a number of resolute administrative responses. In a letter to Dubček of 5 July, Kádár outlined in detail his utter condemnation of the two documents. Whereas in his reply Dubček classified the article on Nagy as a provocation, he defended the KSČ’s attitude concerning the “2,000 Words” by pointing out that the manifesto had produced no tangible result.⁵³ It is important to declare that contrary to previous interpretations, neither the Nagy article nor the “2,000 Words” manifesto was a turning point in the policy of the Hungarian leadership, since the HSWP’s position remained to avoid a military solution at all costs, even in the middle of July.

Toward the end of June, Kádár traveled to Moscow at the head of a party delegation. Brezhnev painted a somber picture of the ČSSR: Dubček was gradually drifting to the right, the right was growing in strength, Czechoslovakia was getting ever closer to going down the road of Yugoslavia, and its further trajectory might even take it into the bourgeois camp.⁵⁴ Brezhnev announced that Moscow was planning two moves: first, a letter to the KSČ and, second, another meeting with those of its allies who had been present in Dresden. Kádár agreed in principle, but remembering the negative Czechoslovak echoes of the meeting of the “Five” in Moscow in May, he underlined the crucial importance of allowing Czechoslovakia to participate in the meeting. The Hungarian leadership itself differed at that time from the Soviet line on a number of issues, such as economic relations with the West in general and relations with the FRG in particular, so it seemed important to maintain the goodwill of the Soviet leadership. Kádár presumably felt that the time had come to make it quite clear that, while the Hungarian party favored a political solution for the Czechoslovak crisis in principle, it would support a military intervention as a measure of last resort if a political settlement could not be achieved and the continued existence of the Socialist order was in danger. This had been his point of view all along yet from what he had said so far, the Soviets could not be sure. This is why his “declaration of loyalty” was so important. Kádár did not want to irritate Moscow with aberrations of which he was not guilty. The minutes of the meeting of the Politburo of the CPSU of 3 July 1968 contain Brezhnev’s take on the topic: “In expound ing his thoughts on the Czechoslovak situation, Cde. Kádár said it was obvious that an occupation of Czechoslovakia was inevitable. ‘If this should become necessary, we will vote in favour of this move.’”⁵⁵ In the version of the report prepared for the Politburo of the HSWP, this pledge is not mentioned. Nevertheless, we may follow Tibor Huszár in believing that Kádár actually made some similar statement, provided we assume that it was made in the dialectical form outlined above in which military intervention was seen as a measure of last resort.

Brezhnev distorted Kádár’s statement to foreground the part that he himself played and to be able to present it as evidence of an important political victory he had gained by forcing a wavering ally back into line with the rest of the Soviet camp. This was certainly the interpretation that the members of the Politburo of the CPSU made of it.⁵⁶ It was by no means Brezhnev’s first “distortion” of Kádár’s point of view: in the meeting of the Central Committee of the CPSU on 17 July 1968, he claimed that in their assessment of the Czechoslovak situation at the Moscow meeting of the “Five” on 8 May there had been “unanimous agreement,” even though Kádár had put forward a point of view there that differed sharply from that of the others.⁵⁷

Kádár also came to play an important role in preparing the meeting of the “Warsaw Five” on 14 and 15 July in Warsaw. Brezhnev had informed the others on 9 July that the Presidium of the KSČ had on the previous day declined at short notice the invitation to another meeting of the six “Dresden” allies. Kádár was taken aback by the reaction of the KSČ, for during his visit to Budapest, Dubček had voiced his dissatisfaction with the fact that in May the “Five” had met for consultations in Moscow without the Czechoslovaks. This is why Kádár proposed a meeting between representatives of the KSČ and the CPSU within a day or two, which would be followed in seven to ten days’ time by a meeting of the six allies. This would allow the leaders from Prague sufficient time to do their homework. If they were to decline this invitation as well, then the meeting would have to go ahead without them.⁵⁸ On the next day, Presidium member Oldřich Švestka, one of the representatives of the “healthy forces” told János Gosztonyi, editorin-chief of the HSWP’s daily who had been sent by Kádár on a secret mission to Prague to gather firsthand information, that the Presidium of the KSČ had come out unanimously against the proposal. Kádár therefore, echoing Švestka, told Brezhnev that the Warsaw meeting was making the situation of the left more difficult by shifting the center to the right.⁵⁹ Vasil Bil’ak, another representative of the “healthy forces,” had been in Budapest a few days before; in his talks with Kádár and György Aczél, he had repeatedly stressed that Czechoslovakia was capable of solving its problems on its own and needed no help from outside.⁶⁰ Kádár therefore suggested to Brezhnev wording the letter to the KSČ in a tone that would make the Czechoslovaks’ participation possible. He added for tactical reasons that the topic of the talks had better not be the situation in Czechoslovakia; each party was to be asked to report on its own situation.⁶¹

In this difficult situation, Dubček asked Kádár urgently to meet him in secret. The meeting took place on 13 July on Hungarian soil, in Komárom. Yet the hopes of Dubček and his companion Černík were disappointed. Instead of offering assurances of continued support, Kádár and Fock severely criticized them for declining to take part in the Warsaw meeting. Kádár told them not only that this had been their worst mistake since January, but that they had also reached a point of no return, which meant “that we have parted ways and will be fighting on opposing sides.”⁶²

When Kádár set out for the meeting in Warsaw on 14 and 15 July he did so equipped with a resolution of the HSWP Politburo that continued to call for a political settlement for Czechoslovakia and that was designed to keep the leaders of the “fraternal parties” from opting for a “military solution.”

In Warsaw, Kádár stuck to his brief in his first speech. He reported on the meeting in Komárom and underlined the danger inherent in the country’s situation, which had, however, not yet reached the stage of counterrevolution. In the debate, Ulbricht and Zhivkov allowed themselves to be carried away in the moment for which there had been no parallel up to then: they not only resolutely and openly condemned Kádár’s point of view, but added (the former overtly, the latter indirectly) that it might well be the case for Hungary’s internal problems to be next in line for a solution at a comparable meeting of the “fraternal parties.”⁶³ This was evidence for the emergence of a dangerous tendency that entitled “fraternal parties” to act as joint trouble shooters not only in crucial crises, but also in the context of developments or reforms that did not endanger socialism as such but were considered undesirable by the others. There was no doubt that Hungary was a case in point at that time.⁶⁴ Kádár therefore thought it advisable to repeat in front of the present company the “declaration of loyalty” he had issued two weeks before in Moscow in order to calm everyone down. He unexpectedly rose to his feet a second time and announced: “We unreservedly agree with the explanations and conclusions of our Soviet comrades and are prepared to take part in any joint action.”⁶⁵ Although this was a serious violation of the HSWP’s resolution, taking this step was arguably facilitated for Kádár by Brezhnev’s making it clear in his speech that despite pressure from the others no final decision would be reached at the meeting itself. Kádár was, therefore, still free, even though he had “publicly” committed himself to agreeing in principle to an ultimate military solution, to work toward a political settlement in the background. Yet the chances for such a settlement were dwindling.

FROM WARSAW TO MOSCOW: KÁDÁR’S LAST EFFORTS FOR A POLITICAL SETTLEMENT

After the Warsaw meeting, Kádár concentrated on persuading Brezhnev to make one more effort, to stage one more Soviet-Czechoslovak meeting in order to make it quite clear to Dubček and his comrades that in case they continued to do nothing to stop a development that bore all the hallmarks of total disintegration, there would have to be outside intervention to save the Socialist system. Kádár had the impression that he had succeeded in frightening Dubček and Černík in Komárom; at the end of the meeting, when they realized the danger they faced, both men burst out crying.⁶⁶ He hoped that a last warning to the leadership by the Soviets would prove effective and trigger at long last the administrative measures required for a consolidation of the Communist system. The Soviet-Czechoslovak meeting in Čierna nad Tisou at the end of July was mainly the result of Kádár’s tireless efforts at mediation. At the ensuing meeting in Bratislava, Kádár confronted Dubček quite openly with the alternatives the KSČ had to choose between: either they themselves used force to stop certain tendencies or force would be applied from outside. He illustrated this with his own example and underlined that in 1956 it had been necessary to use deeply unpopular measures to save the Communist system in a context that was much more difficult; yet he had done what had to be done.⁶⁷

At Brezhnev’s invitation, Kádár went to Yalta on 15 August. During the ensuing negotiations, everyone knew that a decision in favor of a military solution was in the offing. Kádár now concentrated on the time after the intervention. The situation being as it was, he consented to the military solution, yet he emphasized that, in the long-term, only a political settlement can ensure success. The struggle for the correction of the mistakes made before January 1968 had to be continued, and the KSČ must not relinquish its two-front struggle. Kádár felt that the difficult situation the Soviets were in might provide him with an opportunity to criticize the policy of the CPSU in a constructive manner. He said the Soviet leadership had been impatient in its dealings with the Czechoslovak party and that this impatience had been a key factor in the escalation of the crisis; a more patient approach might have rendered military intervention unnecessary. In this context, he formulated a question that rose far above the present context: “When the CPSU is perceived as rigid by the world, by the global communist movement, who is going to play the role of the standard bearer in the global communist movement?”⁶⁸ He praised Soviet policy after 1956 and said the Soviet leadership had then shown trust in the Hungarian and Polish party leaders and had allowed them to seek new solutions. This had brought a handsome dividend, for they were able to consolidate the situation in their countries.⁶⁹ With these lessons from history Kádár was pursuing two goals. He was first of all trying to make sure that postinvasion Czechoslovakia would be allowed to reestablish order with minimum interference from the Soviets; second, he was trying to broaden with these arguments the maneuvering space in terms of domestic policies in the states of the Soviet Bloc.

In Yalta, Brezhnev entrusted a last mediation mission to Kádár, saying that the Hungarian party was the only one in addition to the CPSU to which Dubček might be prepared to listen. The meeting took place in Komárno on 17 August. It made one thing abundantly clear: the Czechoslovak leaders seemed completely unaware that they were sitting in a train that was heading for the abyss. Even if they suspected their predicament, they preferred resignedly to wait for the catastrophe; none of them had the courage to pull the emergency brake. It is little wonder that Kádár, who was notorious for his pragmatism, described the meeting as “embarrassing, ill tempered, sterile, pointless.”⁷⁰

After the invasion on 21 August, an unexpected opportunity arose for Kádár to influence the course of events positively. On the first day of the crisis management negotiations of the “Five,” which took place parallel to the Soviet’s talks with the captive Czechoslovak “delegation” between 24 and 26 August in Moscow, he was a fervent advocate of the need to find a compromise with the legitimate Czechoslovak leadership. In order to give emphasis to this Hungarian point of view, he first submitted it to the Soviets in writing.

Ulbricht and Zhivkov clearly advocated a dictatorial solution, the formation of a revolutionary government of workers and peasants in keeping with the Hungarian model of 1956. Gomułka, who was apparently completely out of his depth, went as far as to claim that the situation in Czechoslovakia was much worse than the one in Hungary at the time of the “counterrevolution.”⁷¹ In view of the fact that there were a number of influential supporters of a radical solution among the Soviet leaders themselves, Kádár, with his plea for Dubček and his comrades, came down clearly on the side of the realistic solution also favored by Brezhnev and Aleksei Kosygin. He thereby contributed in the end to a political compromise being hammered out that involved the legitimate Czechoslovak leaders and culminated in the signing of the Moscow Protocol.

NOTES

Translated from German to English by Otmar Binder, Vienna.

1. For an overview of the history of the Prague Spring, see H. Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976); Karen Dawisha, The Kremlin and the Prague Spring (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); Jaromír Navrátil et al., eds., The Prague Spring 1968 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1998); Kieran Williams, The Prague Spring and Its Aftermath: Czechoslovak Politics, 1968–1970 (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 1997). On Hungary’s economic reform in 1968, see Ivan T. Berend, The Hungarian Economic Reforms, 1953–1988 (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 1990).

2. Magyar Országos Levéltár [Hungarian National Archives] (hereafter cited as MOL) M-KS-288, F. 4/92, minutes of the meeting of the HSWP CC, 19–20 June 1968.

3. While in the Soviet Bloc, there had been two other serious crisis situations as well, the local leaders did not have to play a similar role in those cases. In June 1953 while crushing the Berlin uprising, the Soviet military commander directed operations, and Ulbricht and his comrades returned from hiding only after order was restored. In October 1956 during the Polish crisis, Gomułka did not have to save the Communist system, but avoid a Soviet military intervention which he did and consequently emerged from the crisis as a most popular leader.

4. For the role of the Hungarian army in the invasion of Czechoslovakia, see Iván Pataky, A vonakodó szövetséges: A Magyar Népköztársaság és a Magyar Néphadsereg közreműködése Csehszlovákia 1968. évi megszállásában [The Wavering Ally: The Participation of the Hungarian People’s Republic and the Hungarian People’s Army in the Occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968] (Budapest: Zriínyi Kiadó, 1996).

5. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 5/467, minutes of the meeting of the HSWP CC, 20 August 1968.

6. For details on the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, see Csaba Békés, et al., eds., The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: A History in Documents (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2002).

7. For a comparative analysis of the two crises, see Csaba Békés, Európából Európába: Magyarország konfliktusok kereszttüzében 1945–1990 [From Europe to Europe: Hungary in the Crossfire of Conflicts, 1945–1990] (Budapest: Gondolat, 2004), 223–36.

8. For details of the Hungarian party’s policy at the time of regime change, see Melinda Kalmár, “From ‘Model Change’ to Regime Change: The Metamorphosis of the MSZMP’s Tactics in the Democratic Transition,” in The Roundtable Talks of 1989: The Genesis of Hungarian Democracy, ed. András Bozóki (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2002).

9. Csaba Békés, The 1956 Hungarian Revolution and World Politics, Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC, September 1996, Working Paper No. 16, http://cwihp.si.edu.

10. For details see the chapter of Harald Knoll and Peter Ruggenthaler, “The Moscow ‘Negotiations,’” in this volume.

11. See Békés, Európából Európába, 233.

12. For details on Hungary’s policy with reference to the Czechoslovak crisis, see Tibor Huszár, 1968, Prága, Budapest, Moszkva: Kádár János és a csehszlovákiai intervenció [1968, Prague, Budapest, Moscow: János Kádár and the Intervention of Czechoslovakia] (Budapest: Szabad Tér, 1998).

13. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 5/444, minutes of the meeting of the HSWP Politburo 23 January 1968.

14. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 47/743, memorandum of conversation between Kádár and Dubček, 22 January 1968.

15. Navrátil et al., Prague Spring 1968, 22.

16. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 47/743, memorandum of conversation between Kádár and Novotny, 26 February 1968.

17. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 5/444 (cf. note 13 above); Huszár, 1968, Prága, Budapest, Moszkva, 15.

18. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 47/743 (cf. note 14 above).

19. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 5/444 (cf. note 13).

20. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 47/743 (cf. note 14).

21. For details, see the article by Manfred Wilke, “Ulbricht, East Germany, and the Prague Spring,” in this volume and Paweł Piotrowski, “Polen und die Intervention,” in Karner et al., Beiträge, 447–60.

22. The meeting was later moved forward to 8 February and finally took place on 7 February.

23. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 47/743 (cf. note 14).

24. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 47/743, memorandum on Dubček’s message to Kádár, 29 January 1968.

25. After the end of the negotiations, Dubček and his comrades paid a half-hour visit to Komárom on the Hungarian side of the border at Kádár’s request. Komárom was originally one town, located on both sides of the Danube that was cut in two by the Trianon Peace Treaty of 1920.

26. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 47/743, memorandum of conversation between Kádár and Dubček in Komárno, 5 February 1968.

27. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 5/445, minutes of the session of the HSWP Politburo, 6 February 1968.

28. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 5/445, minutes of the session of the HSWP Politburo, 6 February 1968.

29. For details on the Soviet Bloc’s FRG policy, see Csaba Békés, “The Warsaw Pact and the Helsinki Process, 1965–1970,” in The Making of Détente: Eastern and Western Europe in the Cold War, 1965–1975, ed. Wilfried Loth and Georges-Henri Soutou (London: Routledge, 2008), 201–20 and Douglas Selvage, “The Warsaw Pact and the German Question, 1955–1970,” in NATO and the Warsaw Pact: Intrabloc Conflicts, ed. Mary Ann Heiss and S. Victor Papacosma (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2008).

30. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 5/445 (cf. note 27).

31. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 47/743, memorandum of a telephone conversation between Kádár and Brezhnev, 13 February 1968.

32. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 47/743, memorandum of conversation between Kádár Novotný, 26 February 1968.

33. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 47/743, telephone conversation between Kádár and Brezhnev.

34. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 47/743, telephone conversation between Kádár and Brezhnev.

35. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 47/743, telephone conversation between Kádár and Brezhnev.

36. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 47/743, telephone conversation between Kádár and Brezhnev.

37. For details on this, see Wilke, “Ulbricht, East Germany, and the Prague Spring,” in this volume.

38. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 47/743, memorandum of a telephone conversation between Kádár and Brezhnev, 19 March 1968.

39. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 47/743, telephone conversation between Kádár and Brezhnev.

40. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 5/451, minutes of the session of the HSWP Politburo, 19 March 1968.

41. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 47/743, memorandum of a telephone conversation between Kádár and Brezhnev, 19/2 March 1968.

42. SAPMO BA, ZPA, IV 2/201/778, minutes of the Dresden meeting, 23 March 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #21.

43. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 5/452, minutes of the session of the HSWP Politburo, 2 April 1968.

44. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 47/743, memorandum of a telephone conversation between Kádár and Brezhnev, 16 April 1968.

45. Navrátil, The Prague Spring 1968, 138.

46. For Kádár’s entire speech at the meeting of the CPSU leadership with the leaders of the Communist parties of Bulgaria, Hungary, the GDR, and Poland on 8 May in Moscow, see AdBIK, holding “Prague Spring,” minutes of the meeting of the leaders of the CPSU CC with the leaders of the Communist parties of Bulgaria, Hungary, the GDR, and Poland, 8 May 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #77. The quotation as cited above is a translation from the report compiled by Károly Erdélyi, MOL, M-KS-288, F. 5/455, cited in Huszár, 1968, Prága, Budapest, Moszkva, 86.

47. Navrátil et al., Prague Spring, 139.

48. AdBIK, Holdings “Prague Spring,” minutes of the meeting between the leaders of the CPSU CC with the leaders of the Communist parties of Bulgaria, Hungary, the GDR, and Poland, 8 May 1968 (cf. note 46). The quotation as cited above is a translation from the report compiled by Károly Erdélyi, MOL, M-KS-288, F. 5/455, cited in Huszár, 1968, Prága, Budapest, Moszkva, 88. According to the Russian document, Kádár confined himself to saying how good it had been that there were Soviet troops in Hungary in 1956 because they were at hand to save Hungary, and he mentioned the problem of an intervention from outside only in the context of Czechoslovakia. However, there is good reason to believe that the statement cited here, which is found only in the Hungarian version of the report, expresses Kádár’s concerns about the deployment of foreign troops in a more precise and more complex manner.

49. See Csaba Békés, Az 1956-os magyar forradalom a világpolitikában [The 1956 Hungarian Revolution and World Politics] (Budapest: 1956-os Intézet, 2006), 85–86.

50. The Czechoslovak delegation consisted of Alexander Dubček, Oldřich Černík, Vasil Biľak, and Jiří Hájek.

51. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 47/743, memorandum of a telephone conversation between Kádár and Brezhnev, 12 June 1968.

52. Huszár, 1968, Prága, Budapest, Moszkva, 117.

53. Huszár, 1968, Prága, Budapest, Moszkva, 138.

54. Huszár, 1968, Prága, Budapest, Moszkva, 135.

55. Huszár, 1968, Prága, Budapest, Moszkva, 145.

56. Huszár, 1968, Prága, Budapest, Moszkva, 145.

57. Navrátil, Prague Spring, 251.

58. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 47/743, memorandum of a telephone conversation between Kádár and Brezhnev, 9 July 1968.

59. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 47/743, Kádár’s letter to Brezhnev, 10 July 1968; MOL, M-KS-288, F. 47/743, János Gosztonyi’s minutes of a conversation with Oldřich Švestka in Prague, 11 July 1968.

60. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 47/743, minutes of the conversation between György Aczél and Vasil Bil’ak in Budapest, 6 July 1968; MOL, M-KS-288, F. 47/743, minutes of the conversation between Bil’ak and Shelest, 20 July 1968. Bil’ak was in Hungary again on 20 July at Brezhnev’s behest to organize a secret meeting with Petro Shelest, a member of the Politburo of the CPSU.

61. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 47/743 (cf. note 58).

62. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 4/93, minutes of the meeting of the HSWP CC, 7 August 1968; Huszár, 1968, Prága, Budapest, Moszkva, 163.

63. Navrátil et al., Prague Spring, 218, 220–21. Kádár’s entire speech is reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #77.

64. This threat could in no way be regarded as a merely theoretical possibility as indeed, there had been such a precedent not so long ago. Following the failed Hungarian Revolution in 1956, at the Communist summit on 1–4 January 1957 in Budapest, the Soviet, Czechoslovak, Bulgarian, and Romanian leaders forced the Hungarian party to make serious concessions concerning the political development of the country, including vetoing the introduction of a limited pseudo-multiparty system akin to the Czechoslovak model. The same forum also decided on the initiation of a court procedure against members of the Imre Nagy group. Békés et al., The 1956 Hungarian Revolution, 485–95.

65. Navrátil et al., Prague Spring, 229.

66. Navrátil et al., Prague Spring, 216; MOL, M-KS-288, F. 5/462, minutes of the meeting of the HSWP Politburo, 15 July 1968.

67. Huszár, 1968, Prága, Budapest, Moszkva, 228.

68. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 5/467, minutes of the meeting of the HSWP Politburo, 20 August 1968.

69. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 5/467, minutes of the meeting of the HSWP Politburo.

70. MOL, M-KS-288, F. 5/467, minutes of the meeting of the HSWP Politburo.

71. For details of the negotiations of the “Warsaw Five” between 24 and 26 August 1968, see Navrátil et al., Prague Spring, 474–76; MOL, M-KS-288, F. 4/95, minutes of the meeting on 27 August 1968; Huszár, 1968, Prága, Budapest, Moszkva, 272–74.

CHANGES IN 1960

In the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Tito’s Yugoslavia written in April 1967, all U.S. intelligence organizations concluded that Yugoslavia “is a Communist state in name and theory, but in practice it is a fully independent country which has rejected most of the ‘Socialist’ experience of other states, including the USSR and which is deliberately removing its economy from centralized controls and freeing its people from arbitrary authority.”¹ In the foreign psolicy domain, the Yugoslav goal was to retain independence at any cost. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Socijalistička Federativna Republika Jugoslavija or SFRY) was a “model of nonaligned socialist enterprise” achieving goals by “shrewd compromise” and “clever improvisation.” Although still a defender of the Communist creed, Josip Broz Tito, the undisputed leader of Yugoslavia since 1945, became a model for nationalistic Communists who seemed to be appearing in different quarters of the world. The Yugoslav economy was socialist, to be sure. However, in 1965 reforms and decentralization, the lessening of central control in the decisionmaking process, was taking Yugoslavia toward “market socialism.” The Soviet Union was Yugoslavia’s largest single trade partner, but the country stayed free from dependence on the Lager. The SFRY’s foreign trade share with Western and nonaligned countries was 68 percent.² Nevertheless, the U.S. estimate was probably too rosy. Yugoslavia was full of problems. Ups and downs are a constant feature of any country’s development, but Tito had “[o]ver the years… responded to this debate with revisions and reforms designed to satisfy at least some of the people some of the time.”³ Yugoslavia, with its many disparate elements and ethnic groups was interesting and dynamic, but far from the best example to emulate. However, Yugoslav achievements in some fields were very attractive. Some in the Third World and those in the Socialist world who were eager to become more independent, could, nevertheless, find Belgrade leadership inspirational. If such was the impression of the brightest experts in the U.S. intelligence community, why deny that there was a certain appeal for the Socialist leaders squeezed by the Soviets? Ever since the break with Joseph Stalin in 1948, Yugoslavia had been closely observed by the Lager countries. Some were envious, some scared by the heretical socialism supported by the West, but a few Socialist leaders concentrated on the autonomy the Yugoslavs were enjoying. Yet deep-seated political and economic problems did not evaporate after the split with the Soviets, despite positive U.S. estimates to the contrary.⁴

Both Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia were founded after World War I and had enjoyed friendly relations ever since. For a few months during 1912, Tito had worked in Čenkov, a town in the central part of Bohemia. His visit to Prague in 1965 was historic for many reasons. It had been almost two decades since Tito’s previous visit to Czechoslovakia. Comrade Antonín Novotný was Tito’s host in Prague, Alexander Dubček in Bratislava.⁵ In Čenkov, Tito gave a speech in which he praised the Socialist system and his comrade, also a former metal worker, Novotný, “You are happy today just like our people, our working man, are happy. Since they are themselves governing factories, land, and everything they need.”⁶ Before World War II, Czechoslovakia was much more sophisticated and developed than Yugoslavia. But now Belgrade was constantly experimenting, trying to overcome economic weaknesses, national antagonisms, and political factionalisms, developing quickly and successfully.⁷ Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were both complex countries, and similarities between them abounded. In 1966, Slovak linguists in Smolenice had a conference on “Theses Concerning Slovak” that stressed the representational function of the language. In March 1967, the Declaration on the Name and Position of the Croatian Literary Language was signed in Zagreb by many intellectuals, including members of the Communist Party and some members of the Central Committee.⁸ Intellectuals in Czechoslovakia were becoming more and more vocal in criticizing the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia’s (Komunistická strana Č eskoslovenska or KSČ) leader Antonín Novotný. The Yugoslav reforms that began in the mid 1960s gained momentum, especially after the deposition of Alexander Ranković, the strongest Serbian politician in the postwar Yugoslavia. Head of the secret police and minister of the interior and, after Tito, the strongest politician in the party hierarchy, Ranković was deposed as a symbol of the conservative, unitarist forces. Sometimes those forces were using him, sometimes hiding behind him. Although he was not aligned against Tito personally, Ranković became the main obstacle to modernization and reforms. Since his power base was primarily Serbian, he by default antagonized other nationalities.⁹ After 1966 and his replacement, constraints in Yugoslavia were lessened and liberal changes speeded up in different parts of the SFRY. For example in Mostar, the capital of Herzegovina, an advisory party meeting was held at which secret police measures taken against the population were condemned and the belief that Herzegovians ought to be much more included in the party and state positions in Bosnia and Herzegovina advanced.¹⁰ Reform of the economy, issues between different nationalities, and international position (that is, independence) were the most obvious topics connecting Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.¹¹

At the plenary session of the Central Committee (CC) of the KSČ in late 1967, Alexander Dubček asked for the democratization of inter-party relations. He also called for a new party program.¹² In January 1968, Novotný was replaced as the first secretary of the KSČ by “our Sasha,” as an initially happy KGB was calling Dubček.¹³ Things started to change rapidly. During Tito’s week-long visit to Czechoslovakia in 1965, politicians who had accompanied the Yugoslav leader during his brief visit to Bratislava reported how his host, Sasha Dubček, was radiating pleasure. Judging from future developments, he had sincerely admired Tito and was not just being polite. For Moscow, even the remote possibility of being inspired by the Yugoslavs was scary.

After the loss of Albania in 1961 and Romania’s policy that was increasingly independent of Moscow, the Soviets were getting nervous.¹⁴ Since the early 1960s, the Chinese had been trying to foment discord within the Lager. Although Beijing’s efforts in Europe as well as in the Third World were unsuccessful, problems facing the Soviets did not evaporate.¹⁵ With the increasingly disturbing developments in Czechoslovakia—groups who were asking for the revival of the multiparty system and voices who were talking of the Little Entente, a prewar grouping of Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia—danger for Moscow in the ideological and geopolitical realm was still acute.¹⁶ All three Eastern European countries were Socialist. Two were members of the Warsaw Pact, but only Prague was vital in the military considerations for the Soviet Union. Yugoslavia was nonaligned and outside Moscow’s orbit. Taking into account the positive impressions Americans had of Yugoslavia, the liberalization in Czechoslovakia, and the independent attitude of Romania, one could expect Washington to be interested in the further liberalization of those countries. As it turned out, because improved relations between Moscow and Washington occurred at a time when the USSR was becoming its approximate equal and the United States was in crisis, the existence of a peaceful environment in the buffer countries between the West and the East turned out to be much more important to the United States than supporting liberalization in Eastern Europe.¹⁷

YUGOSLAVIA AND CZECHOSLOVAKIA (JANUARY TO AUGUST 1968)

For the Yugoslavs, the 5 January change in Prague was something they had been anticipating since the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. János Kádár, the Hungarian Communist Party boss, stressed at the session of the CC in June 1968 how Belgrade, although not revisionist and not for the counterrevolution in Prague, was supporting developments there in the same way as in Hungary a decade ago. Tito’s final goal, Kádár concluded, was to see these developments fully approach a “Yugoslav type of socialism.”¹⁸ During the mid-1960s, reforms and decentralization of the economy were undertaken in several eastern countries, including the notoriously Soviet-subservient Bulgaria.¹⁹ Hungary was cautious enough to avoid using “Yugoslav terminology,” but in a report written by Kiro Gligorov, the vice president of the Yugoslav government after his April visit, Hungarian hosts were stressing “similarities of their reform, with ours and Czechoslovakia’s.”²⁰ Although Dubček and his allies immediately stressed how no changes in foreign policy were to be expected, many politicians in the Lager were unhappy with the developments in Prague, including Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Suslov, as were others in Berlin, Warsaw, and Bulgaria.²¹ Reforms in and of themselves were, of course, not problematic, but those with the hint of Yugoslav revisionism, especially if conducted by the Soviet-dominated Socialist country, were.

If the Yugoslav example was inspirational for Dubček, it was observed from far and not followed closely. Bilateral cooperation between the Yugoslav League of Communists and the KSČ in the first half of 1968 was nonexistent. Although agreed upon in early February 1968 and despite Czechoslovakia stressing how an exchange of experience was essential, until mid-July none of the agreed upon visits were realized, and all were postponed until the second half of the year.²² On the state level, however, the Yugoslavs were asked to advise their Czechoslovak colleagues on different foreign policy and European issues. Marko Nikezić, state secretary for foreign affairs, was invited to visit Prague in mid-May.²³ Shortly after him, Kiro Gligorov and Marin Cetinić, representatives of the Federal Executive Committee, also paid a visit to Prague. Gratitude for the Yugoslav support was always stressed, but both teams could report only on the numerous possibilities for undertaking cooperation in many fields.²⁴ Still, cooperation remained cautious, more friendly than deep. Probably the Czechs and the Slovaks were unwilling to show any connection with the Yugoslavs, in order to avoid provoking the Soviets.

Tito, however, did a lot. Issued an invitation to visit Moscow while in Japan and Mongolia in April 1968, Tito had agreed to pay a short visit to the Kremlin where he met Leonid Brezhnev, Aleksei Kosygin, Nikolai Podgornyi, and Andrei Gromyko at the very end of April 1968.²⁵ Brezhnev harshly criticized the situation in Prague. Antisocialist elements, foreign influences, restoration of capitalism, and a revival of the bourgeoisie were all at work in Czechoslovakia, the Soviet leader stated.²⁶ Tito’s opinion was totally the opposite: their Czechoslovak comrades were capable of controlling the situation. The only thing they needed was brotherly help. Probably some unfriendly elements existed in Prague, but the Communists in charge were not counterrevolutionaries.²⁷ Tito even recalled his own experiences from Čenkov in 1912. In his opinion, it was unlikely to see the counterrevolutionary forces overwhelming the working class who possessed as glorious a tradition as the Czechoslovaks had. Brezhnev was annoyed by Tito’s comments. He cut the Yugoslav leader short, saying how in his country developments similar to those in Czechoslovakia existed:²⁸

Tito’s reaction to the words that later became known as the Brezhnev Doctrine was harsh. The Soviet leader was, as always, negotiating with a stick and carrot in his hands. Brezhnev asked Tito to talk with Dubček in order to influence him not to be overtaken by liberalism. A few weeks later in the spring of 1968, the secretary general of Tito’s office, Vladimir Popović, had directed all employees to observe the situation in Czechoslovakia with particular care. A special meeting for the Yugoslav ambassadors in Eastern Europe was organized by the Federal Secretariat for Foreign Relations on 24 June. Dubček was described as progressive, striving toward greater democracy within the Bloc.²⁹ The Yugoslavs were to support Dubček unconditionally. In the light of the recently begun maneuvers of the Warsaw Pact countries (without Romania) in Czechoslovakia (22–30 June), the Yugoslavs’ decision to support Dubček was significant.³⁰

The Yugoslav ambassador in Czechoslovakia during 1968 was Trpe Jakovlevski. For being one of many middle-ranked party and state officials with no previous diplomatic experience posted in one of the East European capitals, he did his job rather well.³¹ On 10 July 1968, Minister F. Vlasak informed the Yugoslav ambassador how the Soviet troops had entered the Czechoslovak territory and refused to withdraw.³² Only one day later, on 11 July 1968, Slavik, a member of the Secretariat of the CC KSČ, had informed the Yugoslavs of the conversation between Dubček and Brezhnev. Dubček declined the invitation to participate in the multilateral meeting of the Communist parties in Warsaw, ignoring letters from Sofia, Berlin, Budapest, Warsaw, and Moscow (3 July) advising him to attend.³³ On 12 July 1968, Czechoslovak minister of foreign affairs Jiří Hajek informed Jakovlevski that bilateral meetings in Czechoslovakia should include both the Yugoslavs and the Romanians. Therefore, he was, without previous consultations, asking whether Tito would be ready to pay a visit to Dubček although it was not his turn to come on a state visit.³⁴ Jakovlevski’s answer was positive. After expressing his gratitude, Hajek tried to explain why bilateral relations between the two countries had to have such a low profile. Since the Soviet Union was interpreting developments in Czechoslovakia as being inspired by Yugoslavia, as stated by Andrei Gromyko, with the goal of forming one of the new models of socialism and nonalignment, Prague was very cautious not to behave in a way that supported such an opinion. Nevertheless, it must be clear to Belgrade, Hajek said, that nonalignment had never been an option for Prague.³⁵ Hajek did not fear direct military intervention from the USSR because the Soviets had no forces in Czechoslovakia on which they could rely. The importance of Tito’s help was stressed several times.³⁶ On 14 July 1968, secretary of the president of the Czechoslovak Assembly J. Smrkovský asked Yugoslav ambassador Jakovlevski for Tito to send his letter to the “Five” in Warsaw.³⁷ After the meeting in Poland on 14 July was over, a joint message was sent to the Czechoslovaks.³⁸ For János Kádár, the Hungarian leader, that was the point when he, allegedly, gave up. Dubček, in his opinion, took the same road as Imre Nagy in 1956.³⁹ The two leaders met in Komarno on 13 July. Only one day later, Tito received a message from Jakovlevski based on his conversation with Smrkovski about how Kádár was ready to oppose an already planned intervention. He did not know by then or was deliberately avoiding information that Dubček was almost crying while watching his Hungarian ally change sides.⁴⁰

The letter from Poland published on 17 July 1968 represented the culmination of foreign pressure on Prague. It was addressed to the Central Committee, not the presidency of the KSČ, obviously hoping to cause a rift between them. The “progressive” part of the Czechoslovak leadership was determined to continue with the reforms, but became more vigorous in “visibly decreasing extremist views, liberal and anti-socialist elements,” the Yugoslav ambassador reported to Belgrade.⁴¹ Czechoslovaks were asking comrade Tito to influence Nicolae Ceaus¸escu of Romania and Italian Communist leader Luigi Longo to do the same.⁴²

As agreed, Dubček had mailed Tito on 15 July 1968 to set up a personal meeting in the shortest time possible.⁴³ In the meantime, an answer to the letter received from Moscow was being written in Belgrade. On 19 July 1968 it was published in Yugoslav newspapers, repeating the well-known Yugoslav position. The working classes in Czechoslovakia were being led in the right direction. Each party was responsible for its own politics, and it was the international duty of other parties to support their efforts. Everything else, especially interference in the internal business of independent countries, would be damaging for the overall cause of world communism, went the Yugoslav letter. References to the Belgrade and Moscow Declarations from the mid-1950s were stressed. Even more bluntly, in an interview given to Al Ahram, Tito had expressed his hope that no one in the Soviet Politburo was so short-sighted as to use force in Czechoslovakia.⁴⁴ A few days later, on 30 July 1968 in the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Policy, State Secretary for Foreign Affairs Marko Nikezić went even further. Pressures on Prague, in his opinion, were similar to the pressures put on Yugoslavia in 1948 by the Informburo.⁴⁵

Alexander Dubček’s space for maneuvering, always limited, was becoming painfully narrow. Tito, however, had visited Prague from 9 to 11 August 1968. The bilateral meeting started at 6:45.⁴⁶ In Tito’s notes prepared for the meeting, the only concrete proposal was to found a joint Yugoslav-Czechoslovak Bank.⁴⁷ Everything else was political: full independence, cautious approach to the West, more rights for those who work. That was “far more important and significant” than the “freedom of press” and other “classical political freedoms” read Tito’s notes on the Yugoslav document. Playing with the multiparty system destroyed Nagy. That should be suppressed and a Peoples Front enforced instead.⁴⁸ Federalization and full equality between Czechs and Slovaks was essential. That problem should be solved “definitely” since only then would and could it not be used by “big powers.”

Tito’s treatment in Prague was glorious, comparable only with his first visit in 1946.⁴⁹ Media coverage was big, the reactions of common people fantastic.⁵⁰ Taking into account how organizers wanted to avoid mass gatherings since they could have evolved into anti-Soviet demonstrations and, therefore, did not publicize the times and routes of Tito’s entourage, the number of people on the streets was huge. The U.S. weekly Time magazine reported how Tito’s proposal for economic cooperation was discussed. His idea was for Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia to create a “sort of twocountry common market that will enable each country to draw on the other’s investment capital, labor pool, and special industrial talents.”⁵¹ However, the Yugoslavs did not have any intention of (or possibility for) substituting the Czechoslovak-Soviet cooperation. They were happy to see how Dubček was trying to mend fences and talk. Czechoslovak media analysts were stressing the “calming effect” of the visit in contrast to the dynamic events of recent weeks.⁵² Mladá Fronta, a Czechoslovak daily, nevertheless discouraged those who were seeing parallels between Yugoslavia in 1948 and the Prague Spring. However, Změdělské noviny clearly wrote that the Yugoslav exclusion from the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers’ Parties, informally known as Cominform, gave them the right to and the possibility for understanding what was going on in Prague.⁵³ Lidová demokracie stressed how each country had to determine its own path. The Czechoslovak’s road was agreed upon in January 1968. Therefore, it had to be followed vigorously, relying on those who were open-minded when talking of democracy and socialism. From Prague, Tito had returned to Pula and his summer residence on the Brijuni Islands. The most important goal of the visit—the visible support for Dubček—had been achieved.

A few weeks earlier, Tito’s state secretary for foreign affairs, Marko Nikezić, during a closed session with Serbian journalists had stressed how, in the Soviet’s opinion, Yugoslavia was a country with the most “concentrated revisionist” party program.⁵⁴ In his opinion, developments in Czechoslovakia were contributing significantly to the consolidation of everything already achieved in Yugoslavia. No democratization should ever be expected from Moscow. Therefore, small steps forward in different Socialist countries should be supported in order to achieve democratization, ease tensions, and create a new environment in Europe.⁵⁵ Bearing that in mind, it was clear why the Yugoslavs were so eager to help Dubček. A few days after Tito’s stay in Prague, Nicolae Ceaus¸escu of Romania followed. We know now that on 17 August, the day of the last meeting between Kádár and Dubček, the Soviet Politburo gave the final go-ahead for the invasion. Zdeněk Mlynář claims that Kádár, unable to change Dubček’s mind, had asked almost desperately, “Do you really not know the kind of people you’re dealing with?”⁵⁶

HOW CAN WE HELP YOU, MRS. DUBČEK?

Mrs. Ana Dubček came to Rijeka on 2 August 1968 with two children and a personal driver. She called on the harbor authorities and asked for permission to board the Czechoslovak ship Gojnice. Her oldest son was supposed to get some world experience while traveling along the Mediterranean and working onboard.⁵⁷ Her trip had not been previously announced to the Yugoslav authorities. Only after Radio Prague had asked Radio Zagreb colleagues to do a story on the first lady’s trip had Jože Smole, head of Tito’s office, asked the Croatian police to check her whereabouts. Tito’s personal wish was to have a member of the Croatian authorities pay her a visit. Ana Dubček was one of 50,000 Czech and Slovak tourists who had decided to spend their summer holidays along the Adriatic coast that year. Ota Šik, the vice president of the government, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Hajek were the most prominent among them. Ana Dubček stayed in Crikvenica, a summer resort in the northern part of the country as a guest of the director of the port of Rijeka. She was probably preparing to go to bed when, on 20 August 1968 at 11:40 p.m., Florian Siwicki, the Polish general in charge of the Silesian Military District, received an order to start operation “Danube” from the north.⁵⁸ His colleagues from Hungary and Bulgaria received similar orders from the Soviet general, as agreed in Moscow on 18 August.⁵⁹ From a military standpoint, the occupation of Czechoslovakia was achieved brilliantly.⁶⁰ Savka Dabčević-Kučar, president of the executive council of the government of the Socialist Republic of Croatia, together with Miko Tripalo, member of the highest party organs in Yugoslavia, and Dragutin Haramija, major of Rijeka, went to see her.⁶¹ Mrs. Dubček was depressed, but calm. She did not ask for any help.

General Zlatko Rendulić, commander of the technical service of the Yugoslav Air Force, was near Orebić in southern Croatia when the Warsaw Pact countries invaded Czechoslovakia. He, like all of his colleagues, was called to report to his military unit instantly. First he went to Belgrade, then to the northern city of Sombor. Armed soldiers who were waiting for the Soviets to attack surrounded the large military airport there. Some soldiers were even trying to escape. News came from Subotica, a city at the HungarianYugoslav border, that Soviet tanks were already entering the city. Eventually, it was revealed that the Soviet tanks purchased by the Yugoslavs before the Prague Spring were loaded on the Soviet train. They were waiting for clearance to be shipped to Yugoslavia. It could have been only a coincidence or a sign that in spite of everything, nothing was to change between Moscow and Belgrade.⁶²

At the time of the invasion, Josip Vrhovec, a journalist at Vjesnik, a leading Croatian daily newspaper, but soon-to-become an ideological czar of the Croatian Communists, was with his family in Prague. Leaving Czechoslovakia proved to be tricky. Czechs were changing and replacing road signs to make the Soviet advance more difficult. However, many of the common people in small towns and villages were eager to help people driving Yugoslav cars get back home. Some, seeing Yugoslav license plates, were yelling at the drivers not to forget them, to tell the world what had happened in Czechoslovakia.⁶³

The hottest activity was on the Brijuni Islands. As soon he received news of the invasion, Tito summoned leading politicians from all parts of Yugoslavia.⁶⁴ Also invited were the vice-premier of Czechoslovakia, Ota Šik, State Secretary Hajek, and two other ministers and high party and state officials from Czechoslovakia. All were depressed and scared, but allowed to continue with political work as part of the legal Czechoslovak government.⁶⁵ During the day, a note on the conversation between the U.S. chargé d’affaires in Belgrade with Deputy State Secretary Mišo Pavićević was delivered to Tito. The Yugoslavs were informed about the Soviet ambassador in the United States Anatolii Dobrynin’s conversation with the U.S. president Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of State Dean Rusk. Probably the Soviets’ position, which stressed how no “state interests of the U.S. or any other country” were to be endangered by the “fraternal” intervention of five countries in Czechoslovakia, garnered significant attention.⁶⁶ What the Yugoslav leading politicians probably did not know was how almost indifferent President Johnson’s reaction to Dobrynin’s message was. Johnson had promised to study the paper, immediately changing the conversation to the arms control talks.⁶⁷ Tito had opened the emergency joint session of the presidency and the Executive Committee of the CC of League of Communists of Yugoslavia by saying how a public demonstration must be made, and it was! The very next day, Mijalko Todorović Plavi, secretary of the Executive Committee of the CC League of Communists of Yugoslavia (Savez komunista Jugoslavije or LCY) addressed 250,000 people in Belgrade. During his speech, he used a phrase which eventually became quoted relatively often. The “most glorious flag of world communism,” muddied in 1948, has now fallen.⁶⁸ Tito, who was addressing the gathered delegates on the Brijuni Islands, repeated that there were no reasons for the intervention because West Germany was not threatening Czechoslovakia, and socialism there was not endangered from within:

On 23 August 1968, the party CC met in Belgrade. Before his comrades had a chance to say anything, Tito stressed that the news from Czechoslovakia had made him dizzy.⁷⁰ Later that day, he met Bruce Elbrick, the U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia.⁷¹ The purpose of the “occupation of Czechoslovakia” was to undermine the Socialist development based on the democracy, Tito concluded. Aware that Yugoslav-Soviet relations would not stay as good as they were, Tito was clear-minded regarding how global considerations this time were much more important for the Yugoslavs, which was why Yugoslavia would stay firm on the position of independence, equality, and noninterference.⁷² If relations between the Socialist countries were not based on equality, how could they ask for equal treatment from the capitalist countries, asked Tito. State Secretary for Foreign Affairs Marko Nikezić was more direct in his conversation with the U.S. ambassador a few days later. He reminded Elbrick of their conversation in July when the American had stated how Washington’s goal was not to complicate further the Czechoslovaks’ situation. At the same time, they were not ready to endanger relationships with their “big partner.”⁷³ Closer negotiations between Moscow and Washington were positive, but not at the expense of the small and weak, the Yugoslav secretary concluded.

Less than twenty-four hours later on August 24, on the Romanian’s initiative, Tito met Ceaus¸escu in Vršac, Vojvodina.⁷⁴ The Romanian dictator had informed Tito about the founding of the Patriotic Guard which was tasked with defending the independence of their “Socialist motherland.” Ceaus¸escu went further, asking whether the Yugoslavs would have allowed armed Romanian forces to occupy Yugoslav territory, if they were not planning on shooting at the Soviets if attacked. The Yugoslav leader had promised to receive only unarmed individuals or to disarm soldiers before they crossed the border.⁷⁵ In the report given to the Soviets by the Hungarian diplomats in Belgrade, Tito was very depressed during the meeting. “The good atmosphere we had been creating for years, has suddenly gone,” Tito said.⁷⁶ Moreover,

The Soviets were, as always, unwilling to admit any mistake, which was part of how they suppressed the independence of other countries. As well as the Romanians, Yugoslav politicians were ready to maintain good relations with the Soviet Union. The Yugoslavs were, nevertheless, determined to fight, but not to continue with their provocations. They were aware of the differences between the “Five.” As a matter of fact, the Yugoslav diplomats in Prague were informed of the same. Polish diplomat Stičinski, who was far from friendly when Dubček became the first secretary, had admitted that he was to defend the opinion of his government in spite of the “huge loss of prestige of all Warsaw Pact countries.”⁷⁸ It was impossible to prove or disprove that counterrevolution was taking place in Prague. Certainly, there was no invitation sent to invade Czechoslovakia. Propaganda preparation was bad, and Radio Vltava horrible, Štičinski said.

On 31 August 1968, Tito was back on the Brijuni Islands. Ivan Benediktov, the Soviet representative in Belgrade, came to deliver his demarche protesting the anti-Soviet propaganda. Benediktov was cold and professional. His presumptuous way of talking and the information he shared about the mistreatment of Yugoslavs in Moscow had annoyed Tito. He was interrupting the Soviet ambassador, saying many undiplomatic things. The Kremlin was listening to Walter Ulbricht and Todor Zhivkov, rather than Tito. Lyndon Johnson was probably the only one happy with the intervention, Tito said to the Soviet ambassador. The Soviets were spreading “obvious lies” when talking about Yugoslavia.⁷⁹ Sergei Astavin, head of the Fifth Division in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, while complaining to the Yugoslav diplomats in Moscow about the harsh reactions from Belgrade, expressed his surprise. The Yugoslavs, he said, “were informed” of the Soviet intention to use troops in Czechoslovakia.⁸⁰

Belgrade was determined to resist. The Americans and the British were ready to help, at least to a certain extent. On 27 August 1968, Ivo Sarajčić, the Yugoslav ambassador in London, had approached the British authorities. If the decision was not to interfere in the Lager, what would be the policy toward the states outside the blocs, he asked?⁸¹ Only one day later, Sarajčić was approached by the former British Foreign Office boss George Brown. He wanted Sarajčić to inform Belgrade how any threat to Yugoslav security would be responded to in kind. He was clear that Britain would threaten with force all those who would dare to do the same to Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav ambassador in the United States, Bogdan Crnobrnja, had approached Dean Rusk, the U.S. secretary of state, on 29 August with no particular requests to make, only stressing his country’s determination to fight back if attacked.⁸² The Western countries had promised to help Belgrade in the event of a Soviet military intervention. The “occupation of Yugoslavia or Austria would have a particularly serious effect on NATO interests and it follows from this that any threat to or attack upon either of these countries would create a tense political atmosphere,” said the Chiefs of Staff Committee of the Defense Policy Staff in London.⁸³ Dean Rusk even stressed how the eventual Soviet presence on the Adriatic “was of vital concern to the entire Western world.”⁸⁴ There was a panic in Belgrade and on the Brijuni Islands for a few days. As soon as it became clear how firm the guarantees from the West were and how small the Soviet interest to intervene, big changes began to take place in Yugoslavia.

THE U.S. COMMUNIST ALLY—FOR A SECOND TIME?

After the initial fear and insecurity, a few days after the invasion the Yugoslavs were convinced that their independence still mattered to the world. Early in September 1968, the British Foreign secretary and secretary of defense had agreed that a Soviet attack on Yugoslavia was unlikely. The Prague Spring had been “designed to maintain the status quo,” not to change radically the conservationist policy of the Warsaw Pact.⁸⁵ Anyhow, an invasion of Yugoslavia would change the balance of power on the Old Continent. Therefore, during the meeting with the Americans, the British government concluded: “It should be made clear to the Russians that any attack on Yugoslavia would have the same effect as one on a member of NATO.”⁸⁶ “The occupation of Rumania, serious though it would be, would not in itself touch upon vital Western security interests, but the invasion of Yugoslavia would be quite another matter.”⁸⁷ The U.S. ambassador in Belgrade, Elbrick, after the interview with President Johnson on 14 October, once more stressed how “[t]he President cited our long tradition of assistance to Yugoslavia and expressed his admiration for the Yugoslav people and their dedication to freedom. The President made very clear his continuing interest in that country’s independence, sovereignty, and economic development.”⁸⁸

Since the break with Stalin in 1948, Yugoslavia had sometimes been called an “American Communist Ally.” The West tried to support Yugoslavianstyle communism and to widen the wedge between countries in the Socialist world. If possible, the aim was to develop trends in Eastern Europe detected in the National Intelligence Estimate on Yugoslavia in 1967. However, by the time that things started to change in Czechoslovakia, the overall political environment had already been changed. “[D]espite setbacks to our expectations for détente, the search for secure and peaceful East-West relations leading in time to a European security settlement is the only political goal consistent with Western values,” the British were reporting.⁸⁹ That goal could have been achieved only with cooperation from Moscow. No one in the West was willing to start an even bigger quarrel with the Soviets, let alone serious fighting.⁹⁰ The strategy of driving a wedge between the satellites and Moscow and establishing regimes like Tito’s was an old and unsuccessful plan.⁹¹

In February 1948, Czechoslovakia was the last country in Europe to become Communist and a member of the Soviet Bloc. In June 1948, Yugoslavia was the first Socialist country to change sides, keeping the Socialist regime, but leaving Moscow. In 1956, Hungary was the first Bloc country to try to emulate the Yugoslav example. In 1968, Dubček seemed to be doing the same in Czechoslovakia. The Yugoslavs were helpful to both countries, although far less directly in 1968. Western propaganda was very outspoken during the Hungarian Revolution. One decade later, there was almost a silence. Although the “reawakening of political life” in Czechoslovakia was “obviously” in U.S. interests, as Western observers reported, a policy of nonaction carried the day.⁹² The West Germans, who were in charge of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, chose to seem disinterested in the liberal developments in Czechoslovakia, in a move intended to avoid provoking the Soviets⁹³: “There is absolutely no evidence that either the State Department or the CIA took any measures to use the Prague Spring as a means of destabilizing or subverting the Soviet Bloc, in spite of constant Soviet propaganda about the sinister efforts of Western imperialism to do so.”⁹⁴

Enver Hoxha, the Albanian dictator and one of Tito’s archenemies, softened his position. Tirana had described the intervention in Prague as the “aggression of the Soviet revisionists.”⁹⁵ The anti-Yugoslav campaign was stopped. Semiofficial signals from Tirana aimed at the improvement of relations between the two countries became numerous. Hoxha was afraid of the Soviets, especially since Bulgarians were printing maps of Greater Bulgaria with the San Stephan borders from 1878.⁹⁶ Although the positive trend in Yugoslav-Albanian relations did not last for long, there were some lasting positive improvements. For example, ambassadors were exchanged in February 1971.⁹⁷

Once the Prague Spring was crushed, the Bulgarians, the most bellicose of all neighbors, refused to return the Yugoslav Army missiles they were supposed to mend. The Soviet Army was still on the very edge of the Pannonian Plain. Huge ferries, allegedly for the Soviet tourists, were being built in Odessa.⁹⁸ Some of the most pessimistic analysts were thinking how the Soviets were aiming at creating a Greater Bulgaria at the Albanian and Yugoslavs’ expense.⁹⁹

The answer to the diplomatic problems was to start with an ambitious diplomatic game. The initiative from Addis Abeba to convene a conference of “peace-loving” countries in Belgrade and to condemn the Soviets was politely refused, though. Serious splits among the nonaligned countries had to be ironed out first.¹⁰⁰ The Arabs were pro-Soviet because the Soviets were helping them in the Middle East.¹⁰¹ To revive the nonaligned countries’ unity and to avoid alienating them in the process became a new major task of the Yugoslav diplomacy. The Soviets were aware of the Yugoslavs’ attempts. Therefore, Soviet diplomats were informed of the “active antiSocialist and anti-Soviet” Yugoslav politics in Asia and Africa. The Soviets were to confront the “antisocialist” Yugoslav diplomats because advocating nonalignment, especially among the Socialist countries, was in their opinion nothing but an imperialist strategy aimed at harming the unity of the Socialist world.¹⁰² Only one year before the Prague Spring was crushed, Tito was in Moscow attending an advisory meeting of the Eastern European countries (minus Romania) which was coordinating the Yugoslav assistance to the militarily defeated Egypt in the Six Days War.¹⁰³ After August 1968, Tito was, for a while, traveling only to the West, including an important trip to the Vatican.¹⁰⁴ The (re)imposition of the rigid Communist regime in Prague showed the continuing importance of Yugoslavia for the West.

Dubček was probably inspired by Belgrade’s independence, but he was not directly influenced or led by Tito. Tito and Ceaus¸escu were eager to help the Czechoslovaks achieve not greater liberalism, but their independence form Moscow. While in Bulgaria the reforms of the 1960s were stopped, in Yugoslavia, they were sped up.¹⁰⁵ After the end of the Prague Spring, Tito continued with a program of reforms in order to satisfy different nationalities. The Yugoslav People’s Army went though the most elaborate change. Ivan Gošnjak, ideologically rigid and fully devoted to Tito as commander in chief, was replaced.¹⁰⁶ Territorial units were introduced, and each Socialist republic of Yugoslavia became partially responsible for its own protection.¹⁰⁷ Some of the Marxist dissidents in Yugoslavia saw in the Czechoslovak events “the hope that the evolution they had argued for was now within their grasp…. Tito’s support for Dubček… permitted some of them to predict a second Yugoslav revolution.”¹⁰⁸ Federalization and decentralization of the country led to the so-called Croatian Spring of 1970–1971. When Tito and his number two in the nomenclature, Edward Kardelj, were talking about the reformers they considered too liberal in the second-largest republic (and among some other politicians in all parts of SFRY), they would often call them “Dubček-ites” adding how they would rather see Russian tanks in Zagreb than tolerate their “Dubček-ism.”¹⁰⁹ Yugoslav leadership was quick to forget how pro-Dubček they had been only a few years earlier and even more eager to adopt the Soviet language. With the crash of the Yugoslav “Dubček-ites,” it was all over. That’s when Yugoslavia actually died.

NOTES

1. U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (hereafter NIE) 15–67, “The Yugoslav Experiment,” 13 April 1967.

2. NIE 15–67, “The Yugoslav Experiment,” 13 April 1967. Commercial exchange with the Lager countries was 33 percent, with Western Europe 38 percent, and 10 percent with the United States. A respectable 19 percent was foreign trade with the nonaligned countries. In 1966, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia signed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), a move which emphasized Yugoslav dependence on Western markets.

3. NIE 15–67, “The Yugoslav Experiment,” 13 April 1967.

4. NIE Memo, “The Yugoslav Succession Problem,” 10 March 1969.

5. Blažo Mandić, Tito u dijalogu sa svijetom (Novi Sad: Agencija “MiR,” 2005), 193–202.

6. Vjesnik, 11 August 1965 (“Words of Comrade Tito”); “S Titovim drugom iz Čenkova” [“With Tito’s Comrade in Čenkov”], Borba, 11 April 1965.

7. NIE Memo, “The Yugoslav Succession Problem,” 10 March 1969.

8. R. J. Crampton, The Balkans since the Second World War (Harlow, UK: Longman, 2002), 131.

9. On Ranković and his fall many books were written, some with a visible bias. See, for example, Savka Dabčević-Kučar, ’ 71-hrvatski snovi i stvarnost (Zagreb: Interpublic, 1997), 82–85; Dennison Rusinow, The Yugoslav Experiment 1948–1974 (Berkeley: University of California Press and Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1977), 184–91.

10. Dušan Bilandžić, Propast Jugoslavije i stvaranje moderne Hrvatske (Zagreb: AGM, 2001), 227.

11. KPRI-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br.kutije 82, bilateral cooperation between the Savez komunista Jugoslavije (League of Communists of Yugoslavia, LCY) and the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KPČ) in 1968. Produced in the Central Committee of the League of the Communists of Yugoslavia (hereafter CK SKJ), 18 August 1968.

12. Julius Bartal et al., eds., Slovak History: Chronology and Lexicon (Bratislava: Slovenske Pedagogicke nakladitelsvo, 2002), 156; and Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (London: Pimlico, 2005), 439–40.

13. Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive, The KGB in Europe and the West (London: Penguin Books, 2000), 327. In February 1968, Mišo Pavićević, deputy state secretary for foreign affairs, was informed of the changes in Prague by Ladislav Šimovič, Czechoslovak ambassador in Belgrade. In the ambassador’s opinion, Novotný’s misunderstanding of the mentality of Czechs and Slovaks, his personality, and the methods he used, as well as his relationship with the Slovaks, caused the changes in Prague. KPR I-5-B Čehoslovačka (hereafter KPR) I-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br.kutije 82, from the note on the meeting between the deputy secretary on Foreign Affairs, Ambassador M. Pavićević, with the ambassador of the ČSSR, L. Šimovič, 17 February 1968.

14. See, for example, Mark Kramer’s discussion of this in his articles “Moldova, Romania, and the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin 12, no. 13 (Fall/Winter 2001): 326–33 and “Ukraine and the SovietCzechoslovak Crisis of 1968 (Part 2): New Evidence from the Ukrainian Archives,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin 14, no. 15 (Winter 2003/Spring 2004): 273–368.

15. John W. Young and John Kent, International Relations since 1945: A Global History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 310.

16. Rusinow, Yugoslav Experiment, 240.

17. Thomas Alan Schwartz, Lyndon Johnson and Europe, in the Shadow of Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 218–22.

18. KPR I-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br.kutije 82, Kádár on Yugoslav and Romanian views regarding developments in the ČSSR.

19. Crampton, The Balkans, 172–73.

20. KPR I-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br.kutije 82, visit of the vice president of the Federal Executive Committee (SIV, Savezno izvršno vijeće, that is, the Yugoslav government) Comrade K. Gligorov to the Peoples Republic of Hungary. Kiro Gligorov later became the first president of an independent Macedonia; Roger Gough, A Good Comrade: János Kádár, Communism, and Hungary (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), 153.

21. KPR I-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br.kutije 82, the Bulgarian military attaché in Belgrade was openly criticizing the changes in Prague, noting how revisionism was penetrating some Communist Party of Czechoslovakia members (Komunistická strana Československa or KSČ).

22. KPR I-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br.kutije 82, bilateral cooperation SKJ-KPČ in 1968. Prepared in the Department for International Relations, 18 August 1968.

23. KPR I-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br.kutije 82, from the note on the talk between the advisor of the state secretary, Ljubo S. Babić, with the ambassador of the ČSSR, L. Šimovič, 9 May 1968.

24. KPR I-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br.kutije 82, visit of the State Secretary of Foreign Affairs M. Nikezić to Czechoslovakia.

25. Mandić, Tito u dijalogu sa svijetom, 290.

26. Dabčević-Kučar, ’ 71-hrvatski snovi i stvarnost, 97; Marko Vrhunec, Šest godina s Titom (1967–1973): Pogled s vrha i izbliza (Zagreb: Nakladni zavod Globus/Adamić, 2001), 57; Mandić, Tito u dijalogu sa svijetom, 291. Blažo Mandić, head of the press office in Tito’s cabinet, was less descriptive of Brezhnev’s comments on Dubček. Savka Dabčević-Kučar, at the time head of the Executive Committee of the Socialist Republic of Croatia, had also accompanied Tito to Japan and Moscow. She wrote how Brezhnev had used words like “putsch,” “attempt to destroy communism,” “wild counterrevolution,” and the like.

27. KPR 1.2. SSSR, Put Josipa Broza Tita u SSSR, 28–30, April 1968, minutes of the talk between the chairman of the SFRJ and the chairman of the SKJ, Comrade Josip Broz Tito, and the Yugoslav members of the state party delegation with the Soviet state and party leadership in Moscow, 29 April 1968. “Regarding the situation in Czechoslovakia, we think that their leadership, if fully supported, will manage to reduce the influence of the reactionaries, which are, and here I agree with you, numerous…. [our] Czech comrades need our full support to keep things developing in the right direction,” Tito said to Brezhnev. Dabčević-Kučar, ’ 71-hrvatski snovi i stvarnost, 96.

28. Dabčević-Kučar, ’ 71-hrvatski snovi i stvarnost, 96.

29. Vrhunec, Šest godina s Titom, 58.

30. Andrzej Paczkowski, Pola stoljeć a povijesti Poljske, 1939–1989 (Zagreb: Profil/Srednja Europa, 2001), 295.

31. Jakovlevski’s biography prior to his ambassadorial career was not especially exciting. He was a middle-ranked official in Macedonia. After his tour of duty in Prague, he became a member of the Federal Executive Council, the Yugoslav government in Belgrade. His conduct in Prague was, obviously, regarded as fair. Ranko Petković, Subjektivna istorija jugoslovenske diplomatije 1943–1991 (in cyrillic) (Belgrade: Službeni list SRJ, 1995), 175.

32. KPR I-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br.kutije 82, Sveska II, Information on some aspects of the situation in the ČSSR, 10 July 1968.

33. Gough, A Good Comrade, 166–67; Judt, Postwar, 443.

34. KPR I-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br.kutije 82, information on the situation in the ČSSR given by Minister Hajek to Ambassador Jakovlevski, 12 July 1968.

35. KPR I-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br.kutije 82, information on the situation in the ČSSR given by Minister Hajek to Ambassador Jakovlevski, 12 July 1968.

36. KPR I-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br.kutije 82, Sveska II, Information on several aspects of the situation in the ČSSR, 10 July 1968.

37. KPR I-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br. kutije 82, Sveska II, Information on several aspects of the situation in the ČSSR, 14 July 1968. From the talk between Ambassador Jakovlevski with Smrkovský, 13 July 1968.

38. KPR I-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br.kutije 82, Sveska I, osnovni materijal, estimation of Ambassador Jakovlevski on the situation in the ČSSR after the “Warsaw letter” by the five fraternal parties, 17 July 1968.

39. KPR I-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br.kutije 82, Sveska I, osnovni materijal.

40. Gough, A Good Comrade, 167.

41. KPR I-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br. kutije 82, Sveska I, osnovne informacije, short overview on the development of the situation in the ČSSR made in the State Secretariat for Foreign Affairs (that is, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), 19 July 1968.

42. Marcus Wolf, Čovjek bez lica, Šef špijuna u tajnom ratu (Zagreb: Golden marketing Tehnička knjiga, 2004), 145. The East German secret police were reporting on contacts between the liberal circles in Prague with the Western circles, especially social democrats in Germany and Eurocommunists in Italy.

43. KPR I-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br.kutije 82, full text of the letter sent by the first secretary of the CC KSČ to Comrade Tito, 15 July 1968.

44. Zdravko Vuković, Od deformacija SDB do maspoka i liberalizma: Moji stenografski zapisi 1966–1972 godine (Belgrade: Narodna knjiga, 1989), 202.

45. Vuković, Od deformacija SDB do maspoka i liberalizma, 203; Jože Pirjevec, Jugoslavija: Nastanek, razvoj ter razpad Karadjordjevičeve in Titove Jugoslavije (Koper: Založba Lipa, 1995), 275. After the publication of the letter of “Five,” the Belgrade daily Politika published it in an article entitled “Informbiro 1968.”

46. KPR I-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br.kutije 82, records of the conversation between Tito with Dubček, 9 August 1968 (handwritten by Jože Smole).

47. KPR I-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br.kutije 82, reminder for the talks in Prague.

48. KPR I-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br.kutije 82, censorship of press and electronic media was formally abolished on 26 June 1968. Judt, Postwar, 441.

49. AJ, 507, III/134, records of the XI joint meeting of the presidencies of the Executive Committee and the presidency of the CK SKJ, 21 August 1968, Brioni, 8 p.m.

50. Vjesnik, 13 August 1968 (“Pleasure with the visit of Tito to Prague”); Vjesnik, 10 August 1968 (“Welcome Yugoslav friends”). A personal dossier prepared for Tito before the trip even included letters from common people who were thanking him for not forgetting the Czechoslovaks. Allusions to the treason of 1938 were made all the time.

51. “Prague’s Purposeful Hospitality,” Time International, 23 August 1968. The phenomenon of “guest-workers” was acute in Yugoslavia; hundred of thousands were migrating to West Germany, Austria, and France, among other countries, to find jobs. Although this flood of workers painfully showed how the Socialist economy was not working, their migration was allowed to continue. Since there was a need for masons in Czechoslovakia, it was agreed to allow “tens of thousands” of Yugoslavs to migrate to Czechoslovakia. Since the standard of living in Czechoslovakia was lower than that in Yugoslavia at the time, the big question was how and who would force potential workers to go there? “Tanjugov bilten, Put predsednika Tita, zapadnoeruopski izvori,” Vjesnikova Novinska Dokumentacija (VND), Zagreb, Croatia, 12 August 1968.

52. Vjesnik, 13 August 1968 (“Contribution to the strengthening of Socialism”).

53. Tomislav Buturac, “Praško proljeće: dvadeset godina poslije,” Danas, Zagreb, Croatia, 26 January 1988, p. 4. A series of articles in this leading Yugoslav weekly was written by Buturac, Croatian correspondent from Prague from 1968 to 1970.

54. Vuković, Od deformacija SDB do maspoka i liberalizma, 199.

55. Vuković, Od deformacija SDB do maspoka i liberalizma, 200. Nikezić probably also referred to the April conversation between Tito and Brezhnev in Moscow. The Soviets then stated that there was “no reason to change a system which had been effective for 50 years.”

56. Gough, A Good Comrade, 171.

57. KPR, I-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br.kutije 82 (No title; letters signed by Jože Smole, head of Tito’s office to Croatian police and Spoljnoplitička služba G.S.P.R.).

58. Paczkowski, Pola stolječa povijesti Poljske, 295; Wolf, Čovjek bez lica, 149.

59. Gough, A Good Comrade, 171; Judt, Postwar, 444.

60. NARA, secretary of defense staff meeting, 26 August 1968.

61. Dabčević-Kučar, ’ 71-hrvatski snovi i stvarnost, 98–99. Dragutin Haramija, president of the Parliament of the Council of Rijeka, that is, mayor, was soon to become president of the Executive Council of Croatia (Government), while Savka Dabčević Kučar became president of the CC of the League of Communist of Croatia. Tripalo was one of the most prominent younger politicians in Yugoslavia at the time.

62. Zlatko Rendulić, General Avnojske Jugoslavije, sječanja (Zagreb: Golden Marketing/Tehnička knjiga, 2004), 280–81.

63. Oral history interview, Olga Vrhovec, Zagreb, 19 October 2007.

64. AJ, 507, III/134, records of the XI joint meeting of the presidencies of the Executive Committee and the presidency of the CK SKJ, 21 August 1968.

65. Miko Tripalo, Hrvatsko prolječe (Zagreb: NZMH, 2001), 115. Minister Hajek left for New York shortly after the intervention. Both he and Šik were meeting with their Yugoslav hosts as members of the Czechoslovak government, not as representatives of the government in exile. Some Soviets officials tried to impute how it was no coincidence that Šik and Hajek were on holidays along the Adriatic Sea. At the very end of August, Hajek was allowed to return first to Belgrade and then, together with Šik and the rest, to Prague. They were received by the vice president of the Yugoslav Executive Council Kiro Gligorov and left for Czechoslovakia. KPRI-5-b, Br. Kutije 236, Czechoslovakia; Conversation between the chairman of the Republic with U.S. Ambassador to Yugoslavia B. Elbrick, 23 August 1968; bulletin on the developments in ČSSR, br.1, 24 August 1968; Iljičov, deputy minister of the Foreign Affairs of the USSR; Yugoslavia and the developments in the ČSSR; minutes on the talk of the Deputy State Secretary M. Pavićević with the ambassador of the ČSSR to Belgrade, 29 August 1968.

66. KPR, I-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br.kutije 82.; Pavićević to the cabinet of the chairman of the Republic and the State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Brioni. Almost the same message was delivered orally by Ambassador Smirnovsky to the British prime minister at 1:30 a.m. on 20 August 1968: “Our actions are not directed against any European State and in no way infringe upon anybody’s state interests, including the interests of Great Britain. They are dictated entirely by the concern for strengthening peace in the face of a dangerous growth of tension, which left no choice to the Socialist countries,” National Archives, London, UK, Public Record Office (hereafter PRO), Foreign and Commonwealth Office (hereafter FCO) 28/68.

67. Thomas Alan Schwartz, Lyndon Johnson and Europe, in the Shadow of Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 217.

68. Pero Simić, Tito, svetac i magle: Tito i njegovo vreme u novim dokumentima Moskve i Beograda (in cyrillic) (Belgrade: Službeni list SCG, 2005), 212. Todorović was in Prague together with Tito from 9 to 11 August. In a speech, Norbert Weber, a member of the Central Committee of the Yugoslav League of Communists and a long-time manager of a large metallurgic complex in Sisak, a city fifty kilometers south of Zagreb, said: “Yugoslavia is today exactly what it was in the year 1941 when all of Europe looked to her as she resisted a much stronger enemy; today the international worker’s movement of the world gathers around and looks up to her, because Yugoslavia shows the path which should be taken, Yugoslavia reveals that it is not socialism which the Soviet Union presents with the occupation of Czechoslovakia. Therefore it must be understood that today socialism is much broader… we must once again raise the shaken belief in socialism.” HDA Sisak, Records of the municipal conference of the Savez komunista Hrvatske (League of Communists of Croatia, or SKH), Sisak, 10 September 1968. The Soviets were furious about the meeting in Belgrade. The Yugoslav military attaché in Moscow was verbally attacked by Astavin, head of the Fifth Department of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He expressed his surprise regarding the Yugoslavs’ overall attitude, which was not neutral at all.

69. AJ, 507, III/134, records of the XI joint meeting of the presidencies of the Executive Committee and the presidency of the CK SKJ, 21 August 1968 (Brioni, 8 p.m.).

70. Simić, Tito, svetac i magle, 212.

71. AJ, 507, III/135, conversation of the president of the republic with the U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia, B. Elbrick, 23 August 1968.

72. AJ, 507, III/135, Conversation of the president of the republic with the U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia, B. Elbrick, 23 August 1968.

73. AJ, 507, III/135, minutes of the talk of the State Secretary for Foreign Affairs M. Nikezić with U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia B. Elbrick in Belgrade, 30 August 1968. U.S. secretary of defense Clark M. Clifford explained: “[T]he best policy is to permit the Soviets and the Czechs to adjust their differences. We have a number of items going with the Soviet Union and it would be an exceedingly unfortunate time to get involved.” NARA, secretary of defense staff meeting, 15 July 1968.

74. Pirjevec, Jugoslavija, 276; AJ, 507, III/134, Romanian position; excerpts from the conversation of Ambassador Petrić with the member of the Executive Committee and the secretary of the CK KPR, in Bucharest, 30 August 1968.

75. Tripalo, Hrvatsko proljecé, 123; Stephen Clissold, ed., Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, 1939–1973: A Documentary Survey (London: Oxford University Press for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1975), 81; Pirjevec, Jugoslavija, 276.

76. Russian State Archives for Contemporary History, Moscow (hereafter RGANI) F. 5, op. 60, d. 271, 4 September 1968. (Report from the embassy of the People’s Republic of Hungary on the meeting between Tito and Ceaus¸escu on 24 August 1968). Hungarians got the report from Romanian sources, while the Soviets were informed through the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

77. RGANI, F. 5, op. 60, d. 271, 4 September 1968.

78. KPR, I-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br.kutije 82, excerpts from the conversation with the Polish chargé Stičinski, Prague, 29 August 1968.

79. Simić, Tito, svetac i magle, 212–13; Vuković, Od deformacija SDB do maspoka i liberalizma, 222–23. For example, Ambassador Dobriovje Vidić was stopped by the Soviet police on his way to Kaluga on 17 August 1968. He was kept for forty minutes without explanation and then ordered to return to Moscow. Yugoslav journalists in Moscow were asked to stop reporting on 23 August. KPR, I-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br.kutije 82, conversation between Babić and Benediktov, 24 August 1968.

80. KPR, I-2, 63/J:1107–12, Br.kutije 82, bulletin on the developments in the ČSSR, br.1, 24 August 1968.

81. PRO, PREM 2638 (Foreign Policy), 5 September 1968.

82. PRO, PREM 2638 (Foreign Policy), 31 August 1968.

83. PRO, FCO 46/262, “Chiefs of Staff Committee, Defense Policy Staff, Allied Reactions to Possible Soviet Moves in Eastern Europe,” 27 August 1968.

84. PRO, FCO 28/560, “Yugoslavia: Defense: Security against External Aggression,” 15 October 1968.

85. PRO, FCO 28/559, Downing Street 10, 6 September 1968 and PREM 2638 (Foreign Policy), 5 October 1968.

86. PRO, FCO 28/559, 5 October 1968.

87. PRO, FCO, 28/559, 23 September 1968

88. PRO, FCO 28/560, “Yugoslavia: Defense: Security against External Aggression,” 15 October 1968.

89. PRO, FCO 49/240, “Permanent Undersecretary’s Planning Committee: Long-term Prospects for East-West Relations after the Czechoslovak Crisis.”

90. PRO, FCO 49/240, “Permanent Undersecretary’s Planning Committee.” “In the light of all the trends of the last eighteen months or so it seems clear that the main objective of the Soviet leaders will be the maintenance of their own model for Communism in the Soviet Union itself and in Eastern Europe. They will prefer to do so without embroiling themselves in a major quarrel with the West.”

91. Charles Gati, Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest, and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center/Stanford University Press, 2006), 70. Although there were some similarities between Yugoslavia and Albania, Tirana represents another, and different, Stalinist aberration.

92. Schwartz, Lyndon Johnson and Europe, 214.

93. Gati, Failed Illusions, 6. That line was especially visible vis-à-vis Hungary in 1956.

94. Schwartz, Lyndon Johnson and Europe, 215. As written in Jaromir Navratil et al., The Prague Spring, 1968 (Budapest: CEU, 1998). For different view, see, for example, Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive, 322–41.

95. Paulin Kola, The Search for Greater Albania (London: Hurst, 2003), 128–32.

96. PRO, FCO, “Yugoslav/Albanian Relations” (UK Ambassador Julian Bullard i Jakša Petrić, assistant state secretary at the Foreign Ministry), 27 January 1971; AJ 507, III/136, stenographic notes of the XIII joint meeting of the presidencies of the Executive Committee and the presidency of the CK SKJ, 14 November 1968.

97. PRO, FCO 28/2122, “Yugoslav/Albanian Relations,” 21 May 1971; Crampton, The Balkans, 162–63.

98. Vuković, Od deformacija SDB do maspoka i liberalizma, 546.

99. Rendulić, General Avnojske Jugoslavije, 283, 288–89; Vuković, Od deformacija SDB do maspoka i liberalizma, 526, 542.

100. AJ, 507, III/135, initiative of Ethiopia for an extraordinary conference on the ČSSR, 28 August 1968.

101. AJ, 507, III/135, “Position of the Government of United Arab Republic—Excerpts of Our Chargé in Cairo with the Undersecretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” UAR, 28 August 1968.

102. RGANI, F. 3, op. 72, d. 215, pp. 50–52, Politburo decision of the CC CPSUP 106 (48), “To all Soviet ambassadors, to the Soviet representative in Wellington, to all representatives of the USSR at international organizations,” 23 October 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #171.

103. KPR I-2; 54/j:1050–55; Br. kutije 73, note on the meeting of the leaders of the KP and heads of states or governments of the socialist countries held in Moscow on 9–10 June 1967, 91. Mandić, Tito u dijalogu sa svijetom, 293–444; Vjekoslav Cvrlje, Vatikanska diplomacija: Pokoncilski Vatikan u međunarodnom odnosima (Zagreb: Školska knjiga/Kršćanska sadašnjost, 1992), 116–26.

104. Mandić, Tito u dijalogu sa svijetom, 293–444; Vjekoslav Cvrlje, Vatikanska diplomacija: Pokoncilski Vatikan u međunarodnom odnosima (Zagreb: Školska knjiga/Kršćanska sadašnjost, 1992), 116–26.

105. Mandić, Tito u dijalogu sa svijetom, 173.

106. AJ 507, III/135, authorized stenographic notes from the XII joint meeting of the presidencies of the Executive Committee and the presidency of the CK SKJ, 2 September 1968.

107. The change in the defense doctrine turned out to be essential for the break up of Yugoslavia two decades later. However, similar ideas with the armed people were adopted in Albania and Romania at the same time. Crampton, The Balkans, 162. Mark Kramer, in his paper “The Soviet-Romanian Split and the Crisis with Czechoslovakia: Context, Reverberations and Fallout,” presented at the conference in Dobiacco, Italy (26–28 September 2002), talked of the doctrine of “Total People’s War for the Defense of the Homeland.”

108. CIA intelligence report, 20 November 1970. Dabčević-Kučar, ’71-hrvatski snovi i stvarnost, 600.

109. See Dabčević-Kučar, ’ 71-hrvatski snovi i stvarnost.

The situation with which Austria found itself confronted in 1968 recalled in an uncanny way the one that had prevailed after the crushing of the Hungarian uprising. Even though the Soviet Union had respected Austria’s neutral status in 1956, fears arose again in 1968 that the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops might not be limited to Czechoslovakia and could spill over to Yugoslavia and Romania, with collateral damage being inflicted on Austria. It became obvious again how close Austria was to the fault lines created by the Cold War. The military invasion of Czechoslovakia took place against a political and economic backdrop that was characterized in Austria by the country’s increasingly successful efforts to intensify its economic contacts with Comecon countries. These efforts were due in part to the way Austria’s negotiations for membership in the European Economic Community (EEC) developed or rather failed to develop: Rome blocked any progress because of the persistent South Tyrolean problem. Central and Eastern Europe played an increasingly important role in the economic policy of the Austrian federal government. On 1 June 1968, Austria became the first Western country to clinch a long-term deal with the Soviet Union regarding gas supplies; a pipeline via Bratislava was scheduled to come online on 1 September 1968 and to pump natural gas to Austria and the West across the Iron Curtain, which had shown its first signs of being lifted during the “Prague Spring.” The invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops put the policies of détente and rapprochement to the test and awakened in Austria memories of the country’s Soviet occupation (1945–1955).¹ At the same time, Austria had to fulfill its self-imposed duties of playing host to Czechoslovak refugees and informing the world via its media about the events in the neighboring country. This was the backdrop for Austria’s policies in 1968.

At 7 a.m. on 21 August 1968, a few hours after the troops of the “Warsaw Five” had invaded Czechoslovakia, Josef Klaus, Austria’s federal chancellor at the head of an ÖVP single-party government since 1966, issued a communiqué on the tragic events that were unfolding in the country with which Austria shares a border in the north and northeast. Klaus lost no time; in the very first sentence, he underlined Austria’s commitment to a policy of neutrality and independence, which rightly served as the basis of “the trust in Austria of all the four signatories of the State Treaty as well as… of the trust of its neighbors.”² The chancellor went on to say that the country was “far from indifferent to the fate of other nations and peoples.” These words were attuned almost perfectly to the occasion. On one hand, Klaus had to bear in mind, in the interest of his country, that sending a wrong signal or striking—in Moscow’s ears—a wrong note might cause the crisis to leap over Austria’s border; on the other, his words were an unambiguous token of empathy with the Czechoslovak people, even though they stopped short of condemning the invasion as such.

A few hours later, at 12:30 p.m., the Soviet ambassador in Vienna, Boris F. Podtserob,³ called on the chancellor in his capacity of representative of the Soviet government in Austria to explain the reasons for the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops.⁴ The ambassador stated that the turn events had recently taken in Czechoslovakia had impinged on “vital interests of the Soviet Union” and “the threat to the construction of the Czechoslovak state jeopardized at the same time the principles of European peace and international security.” Using the Kremlin’s official diction, the ambassador interpreted the invasion as no more than the Soviet reaction to the calls for help that had come from Czechoslovak comrades loyal to Moscow.⁵ Podtserob ended his remarks to the Austrian chancellor with the assurance that the invasion of Czechoslovakia was not going to reflect adversely on Soviet-Austrian relations. Podtserob said:

The Austrian federal chancellor responded to this by saying that “Austria was committed to unambiguously abiding by its policy of neutrality, as it had been in the past; however, Austrians were not indifferent to the fate of their neighbors.”⁷ Klaus went on to say:

Klaus also pointed out that Austria “had no intention of interfering in the internal affairs of other sovereign nations, for the simple reason that we ourselves would have to reject most categorically any such attempt, should it be forthcoming. As a small neutral country, Austria is particularly sensitive in matters concerning sovereignty and non-interference.”⁹ Klaus asked Podtserob to make sure Austrian tourists were free to leave Czechoslovakia as they saw fit and also brought the border violations by Soviet aircraft to the ambassador’s attention without, however, protesting them. Podtserob entered the following note in his official log:

The Soviet ambassador assured Klaus that “his statement” would duly be passed on to the Soviet government and expressed his regret at the violation of Austria’s airspace by Soviet forces. He added “that these incidents had not been intentional.” At the end of the fifteen-minute conversation, the Soviet ambassador asked the head of the Austrian government to discourage potentially violent demonstrations outside the offices of Soviet diplomats, which Klaus agreed to do.¹⁰

Shortly afterwards, the Council of Ministers was convened for another extraordinary session at the Chancellery,¹¹ in which Klaus informed the members of his government about his meeting with the Soviet ambassador.¹² This meant that within hours after the invasion it was clear that the events in Czechoslovakia were not going to affect Austria directly. The Kremlin was not going to call the country’s neutrality into question; there was no immediate danger. During the day, several more violations of Austria’s airspace occurred; over the following days, the incursions began increasingly to look like reconnaissance flights.¹³ On the evening of 21 August, Minister for Foreign Affairs Kurt Waldheim asked the Soviet ambassador to call on him. He, too, pointed out the violations of Austrian airspace but, like Klaus before him, did not enter a formal protest. Speaking in the name of Austria’s federal government, Waldheim expressed “his concern” at the incidents and requested that “the Soviet side undertake all measures to prevent future violations of Austria’s borders.” If there were no end to the incursions, which Waldheim also presumed to be due to “technical reasons,” the Austrian government would be forced to lodge a formal protest.¹⁴ Ambassador Podtserob assured Waldheim that planning did not include further incursions. Waldheim for his part informed Moscow’s representative “that according to a decision taken by the Austrian government today” there would be “a troop redeployment with a view to strengthening the garrisons north of the Danube.”¹⁵ Waldheim was astonishingly frank in explaining the rationale behind this decision: “This redeployment of troops did not mean that troops were amassed near the border; the sole objective was to reassure the population.” Podtserob took note of Waldheim’s statement and assured him that Moscow would be duly informed.¹⁶

Waldheim also cautiously signaled to the Soviet ambassador the Austrian government’s lack of information on the actual position of the Czech government because contradictory statements were emerging from Prague. Podtserob pointed out that official statements were often made by people who were not authorized to do so.¹⁷ In the evening, the Czechoslovak ambassador, Pavel Novotný, called on Waldheim and informed the Austrian minister for foreign affairs of the positions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and of the Presidium of the National Assembly. Novotný subsequently reported to Prague that “the Austrian population” had expressed “concern and sympathy for us in general terms.”¹⁸

In an Austrian Television (ORF) evening news bulletin, Federal Chancellor Klaus stated once again that “the State Treaty and the Neutrality Law… are the unalterable foundations on which our state rests” and that “we… will not meddle in the internal affairs of other states.”¹⁹ This was the end to an eventful day that had had a hectic beginning for the Austrian federal government. It was the holiday season, and the federal chancellor had been staying at his house in Wolfpassing, which was not even connected to the telephone network. The armed forces, meanwhile, followed a coordinated contingency plan that had already been worked out on 23 July together with the Ministry for the Interior and were ready for deployment within hours; the first meeting at the Chancellery did not start until 7:45.²⁰

“A SERIOUS SETBACK FOR DÉTENTE”: WHAT ELSE?

On the morning of 22 August, Minister for Foreign Affairs Waldheim gave the Austrian Press Agency an assessment of events in Czechoslovakia. He referred to what the federal chancellor had already said on the subject and explained:

On the evening of the same day, Federal Chancellor Klaus addressed via TV the Austrian people with remarks made in a similar vein. Klaus assured his audience that the government had taken measures that “reflect our unique vital interests as a permanently neutral state.” In more concrete terms, he mentioned stepping up the protection of the borders and preparations for the reception and accommodation of refugees, the need for which was a distinct possibility. Klaus criticized the invasion of Czechoslovakia indirectly as a “blow to the policy of détente of the last few years, to peaceful coexistence, and to the development of amicable relations between the peoples of Europe.” He wound up by expressing the hope that “all possibilities will be used that may exist even at this late hour in order to bring about a normalization of the situation in Czechoslovakia.”²⁴

FLIGHT TO AUSTRIA

As opposed to Hungary in 1956, the Warsaw Pact troops had received orders this time not to prevent people from leaving Czechoslovakia. On 18 August, Leonid Brezhnev told the Communist leaders of the “fraternal states” not to stop “defectors wishing to depart for the West. We herd these renegades together, and then we don’t know what to do with them. Should we sentence them to imprisonment, hang them, or let them go? After all, no upright guys will want to flee anywhere and if they’re counterrevolutionaries, let them go.”²⁵

When a large number of Czechs turned up at the Austrian embassy on the morning after the invasion to apply for visas, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Vienna was contacted for guidelines. A day later, on 22 August, a directive arrived from the Ministry of the Interior: “The embassy building is to be locked… and access to be granted only to Austrian passport holders. Czechoslovak citizens who are inside the building at this stage are to be informed that the embassy is reserved for the exclusive use by Austrians,and they are to be persuaded to leave the building of their own accord.”²⁶ When Austrian Ambassador Rudolf Kirchschläger returned to Prague on 22 August, he decided to ignore this order: “I must confess that I would end up in the most dreadful moral quandary if I were to carry out this directive.” When a cache of 10,000 blank ČSSR passports was found, another security directive arrived from Vienna on 25 August that remained similarly unheeded: no more visas for Czech passport holders. Kirchschläger cabled to Vienna on 30 August: “There is widespread apprehension and despair here, which is reflected in the rising number of applications for visas: 2,006 have been issued today and the number is still rising.” The number of refugees was to rise to 208,000 by the end of 1968.

After 30 August, the number of refugees was augmented by the 50,000 or so Slovak and Czech holidaymakers who had been vacationing on the shores of the Adriatic or the Black Sea and were caught unawares by the invasion. The wife of Czech leader Alexander Dubček, who was one of them, was offered protection by President Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, which she declined.²⁷

Vienna and Lower Austria bore the brunt of coping with the influx of refugees with help from the United Nations (UN). According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, approximately 70,000 Czechoslovak citizens were in Austria between 26 August and 6 September, most of whom were refugees.²⁸ Of these, 53,314 were put up in temporary housing, 1,650 in private homes, 5,074 in hotels in Vienna, and another 10,737 outside of Vienna, mostly in Lower Austria. The majority of refugees were young, talented, and well educated. Quite a few decided in the end to remain in Austria, including people of the caliber of Karel Krautgartner, Zdeněk Mlynář, and Pavel Kohout.

VIOLATIONS OF AIRSPACE AND NO END IN SIGHT

No end was yet in sight for the violations of Austria’s borders. In the first days after the invasion of Czechoslovakia, several incidents took place. On 23 August, a Soviet helicopter gunship landed near Unterretzbach, and two Soviet jets penetrated approximately ten kilometers into Austrian airspace near Altnagelberg. Yet these and other comparable incidents still failed to draw protests from the Austrian government. In the manner that had already become almost a routine, the Soviet ambassador was, in his own words, “invited” to the Austrian Foreign Ministry.²⁹ That day, at 10:45 a.m., the Foreign Ministry general secretary, Wilfried Platzer, acting at Waldheim’s behest, handed the Soviet diplomat a list of the border incidents. He explicitly stated that “this was not to be interpreted as a note”; the Austrian purpose was to inform the Soviets as to the precise timing and location of the incidents.³⁰ Podtserob once again expressed “regret at the violations of Austria’s borders,” adding “that these were not intentional.” He renewed his assurance to “inform Moscow so that adequate measures would be taken.”³¹ In the further course of the meeting, the Soviet diplomat also mentioned the Austrian chancellor’s televised address of the previous night. He asked Platzer whether it was the chancellor’s intention “to call Austria’s policy of neutrality into doubt.”³² In his reply, Platzer averred that “reducing tensions and enhancing security and cooperation in Europe were longstanding political objectives of the Austrian government” and “that Austria is committed to a policy of neutrality and determined not to be deflected from this course.” Platzer also assured Podtserob that he was going to discuss this issue with Chancellor Klaus. At the end of the conversation, Platzer thanked Podtserob for the fact that Austrians were free to leave Czechoslovakia without permission or hindrance and that Austria’s ambassador to the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (ČSSR), Rudolf Kirchschläger, had likewise been enabled to return safely to Prague by car.³³

After this meeting between Ambassador Podtserob and General Secretary Platzer, a certain amount of hectic activism seems to have taken hold of the Ballhausplatz. Foreign Minister Waldheim repeatedly tried in vain to reach the Soviet ambassador on the phone. His failure was due to the fact that the diplomat had left the meeting at the Foreign Ministry to attend a function at the Romanian embassy on the occasion of Romania’s National Day. On his return to the Soviet embassy, Podtserob was informed of Waldheim’s urgent wish to speak to him. In the phone call that followed, Waldheim once more underscored the statements made by Chancellor Klaus in his televised address and Platzer’s assurances as to Austria’s commitment to neutrality. Waldheim added that Austria was going to “adhere to its course of neutrality and would not consider other options under any circumstances.” The Austrian Foreign Minister made it explicitly clear that his statement was official in character.³⁴

In this way, positions were made quite clear immediately after the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Moscow had informed Vienna of the reasons that had motivated it to make this move and had given assurances that Austria was not going to be affected by it in any way. Vienna, in turn, had explicitly repeated its commitment to a strict course of neutrality several times vis-àvis the Soviet Union in the days following the invasion of Czechoslovakia.

VIENNA LODGES A PROTEST AFTER ALL: DIPLOMATIC SPARRING WITH CONSEQUENCES?

All the clarifying talks with the Soviet ambassador notwithstanding, the Austrian government mandated its envoy to Moscow, Walter Wodak, on the same day, 23 August, “to register formal protest with the Foreign Ministry on account of repeated violations of Austrian sovereignty.”³⁵ It is said to have taken Wodak three days before he was granted an appointment at the Soviet Foreign Ministry. Waldheim was also mandated to protest formally on behalf of the federal government to the Soviet ambassador, but, as Waldheim put it in an interview later, the latter “did not turn up at my office for three days—under the pretext of having fallen ill.”³⁶ For this reason, the official protest was not entered until 26 August. The Soviet Foreign Ministry representative is said to have expressed regret at the border incidents and to have asserted that care would be taken “to prevent a repetition of such incidents.”³⁷

Three days later, the tone on the part of the Soviet embassy became much more direct. In a démarche made by the Soviet embassy counselor, the diplomat conceded on one hand that “the Soviet Union was gratified to take note of the official statements issued by the Austrian federal government” but criticized the fact that “the Austrian press as well as radio and TV had shown themselves to be partisan in a thoroughly non-objective and tendentious manner, which was incompatible with the standards of a neutral country. They had in fact become mouthpieces of the counterrevolution in the ČSSR.”³⁸ Ambassador Podtserob had been informed two days before by the president of Parliament, Alfred Maleta, that “there [was] going to be a meeting involving the Federal Chancellor, the Vice-Chancellor, the Minister for the Interior, and [ORF] Program Director Gerd Bacher.” The Soviet envoy conveyed to the Ballhausplatz that the Soviet Union was aware of the concept of freedom of the press; at the same time he made it clear, if almost apologetically, how important it was for the Austrian government to keep an eye on the “line taken by the mass media.”³⁹

The Ballhausplatz reached the conclusion that the démarche was not meant “as a protest against Austria’s state authorities” and that it was obvious that the Soviet side “had been intent from the start to avoid any hostility or acrimony in their dealings with Austrian authorities.” This was also the reason why Austria had deliberately waived the opportunity to focus on negative reports on Austria that were appearing in the Soviet press.⁴⁰

In the afternoon of the same day, Kurt Waldheim invited the Soviet ambassador to the Foreign Ministry, where they discussed a recent Literaturnaya Gazeta article in which Austria was accused of turning a blind eye to the presence of North Atlantic Treaty Organization special commandos on its territory.⁴¹ Waldheim had been alerted to the article only a few days before by the U.S. ambassador.⁴² He assured Podtserob once more that Austria was not tolerating any activities on its soil that were incompatible with its neutrality. Austria, as Waldheim told the diplomat, “appreciated friendly relations with the Soviet Union very much and was doing its utmost to keep them from being tarnished.”⁴³ In the conversation he repeatedly queried the purpose of the Literaturnaya Gazeta article. Podtserob replied that the journal apparently had contact to credible sources and added that the Gazeta was published by the Union of Soviet Writers, which was neither the mouthpiece of a party organization, nor of any other state institution of the USSR. As opposed to reports in Austria’s media on the Soviet Union, the article in question had been “a very moderate reaction.” Waldheim subsequently repeatedly clapped his hands together and remarked that its freedom made the press immune against government influence. Off the record, he confided to the Soviet ambassador “that he had repeatedly talked to newspaper editors… and had instructed them to take into account in their reports on events in Czechoslovakia the limits imposed by Austria’s neutrality. These people, however, were not accountable to the Austrian government; they were de facto independent.” Waldheim agreed with Podtserob “that the actually existing freedom of the press had limits, which were imposed by Austria’s obligations resulting from the State Treaty.” It is not surprising that the Soviet sources contain no clues as to whether the Soviet ambassador actually submitted an apology to Waldheim for the conduct of the Soviet government.⁴⁴

VIENNA AS A SECRET SERVICE HUB

The Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB) leveled a great number of charges against Austria in 1968: twenty-two radio transmitters, arms, and money had been smuggled into Czechoslovakia from Austria, sometimes in ambulances; German and U.S. elite commandos (Green Berets) had stopped off at Salzburg’s Schwarzenberg Barracks before being smuggled into the ČSSR in the guise of tourists; 500 Austrian plainclothes policemen were active in Czechoslovakia; Austrian agents had infiltrated the ČSSR People’s Army; Western intelligence services had made Vienna their base for operations directed against the Eastern Bloc; since the Prague reformers opened the borders with the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and Austria, there was a daily influx of up to 40,000 so-called tourists; there had been more than 370,000 in spring 1968, many of whom, according to an angry Brezhnev, undertook liaison missions.⁴⁵

The KGB took for granted the active role played by the Austrian secret service in countermeasures against the invasion of the ČSSR. From the end of World War II, Eastern and Western secret services had been using Austria as a hub for their operations; in 1968, there was a significant increase in their activities, notably on the part of the KGB, which was tracking and observing more and more Austrians. A case in point is Simon Wiesenthal, who had blown the cover of several ex-Nazis working in German Democratic Republic (GDR) government agencies. The Soviet news agency TASS claimed that the Austrian military secret service was active, primarily against the ČSSR. These claims were rebutted by Federal Chancellor Klaus and Foreign Minister Waldheim.⁴⁶

How important Vienna was as a secret-service hub in 1968, particularly for Eastern secret services, is demonstrated by the high degree of infiltration of Austria’s secret services.⁴⁷ Forty-seven members of the Staatspolizei were suspected of engaging in espionage on behalf of foreign secret services, and many arrests led to convictions. The first to be arrested were Josef A., Johann A., and Norbert K. Josef A., an editor of the Federal Press Agency, had been recruited in Vienna by a Prague secret service officer and correspondent of the ČSSR news agency ČTK. Private detective Johann A., a former civil servant, had passed on the records of the interrogations of Czechoslovak refugees to a Communist Party organization. All three were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. The same was true of the press spokesman for the minister of the Interior Franz Soronics, Alois E., who had spied both for the German Bundesnachrichtendienst and for the Czechoslovak secret service. A parliamentary commission of inquiry was set up to shed light on his connections, and he was sentenced to three and a half years of hard labor in 1969.

Much information came from a very dubious source: Major Ladislav Bittman, employed at the Czechoslovak embassy in Vienna since 1966 and formerly of the disinformation department of the ČSSR secret service.⁴⁸ Many of Bittman’s pieces of information, which were taken at face value in 1968, turned out to be false. On 7 September 1968, for instance, more than a fortnight after the invasion, the head of the Military Secret Service, Peterlunger, informed Federal Chancellor Klaus on the basis of information passed on by Bittman on the intention of the Soviet Army to blockade the Austrian-Czechoslovak border in order to dislodge armed ČSSR troops and push them onto Austrian territory. An outbreak of hostilities was to serve as a pretext for the occupation of eastern Austria. The so-called Polarka plans, which were supposed to serve the Soviet army as it crossed eastern Austria en route to Yugoslavia, also belonged under the heading “Deza” (disinformation).

MOSCOW CHARGES AUSTRIA WITH BREACHING ITS NEUTRALITY

On 31 August 1968, the Soviet ambassador paid a call on Josef Klaus at his country refuge in Wolfpassing near Vienna in order to hand him a note from the Soviet government. The note repeated that the invasion of Czechoslovakia was “an act of fraternal help to the Czechoslovak people that would have suffered no delay” and that the intervention was not directed against any other state.⁴⁹ The Soviet envoy informed Klaus on the conclusion of the “negotiations” a few days earlier between the government delegations of Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. After a lengthy explanation of the agreement achieved on the “normalization” of the situation in Czechoslovakia, the Soviet envoy launched into an open criticism of Austria. Previously, as we have already seen, it was reporting in the Austrian media that had provoked Soviet criticism; now Podtserob openly accused the Austrian government of having breached the country’s policy of neutrality. The fact that “Austrian TV, which was state controlled, as well as the Austrian press” had become vehicles of an anti-Soviet and antisocialist position was in “direct and open contrast to Austria’s status as a neutral country…. This could not but damage Austria’s foreign policy.”⁵⁰ The Soviet ambassador, however, also stressed that the USSR had taken note of Austria’s repeated official statements affirming its neutrality and pointed out that it was in Austria’s interest “that the policy of European states be built on the unshakable acceptance of existing borders in Europe and the rejection of attempts to undermine the principles of European security.” Klaus affirmed again in his reply that Austria was irrevocably committed to its neutrality policy. “Having said that,” Klaus added, “it is equally clear that the Austrian government cannot remain indifferent to the fate of a neighboring country that Austrians feel close to on account of historical and kinship grounds. This is the reason why Austria, motivated by purely humanitarian considerations, has provided material help to those Czechoslovaks who are at present on Austrian soil due to the recent developments.”

The federal chancellor rebutted the Soviet ambassador’s charge that the press was under the control of the government, saying that “in view of the legal situation… the government… was unable to control the press,” despite the fact that he had recently been holding “almost daily meetings with the heads of radio and TV” in order to “instruct them to take the government’s neutral position as the basis from which to report on events in Czechoslovakia.” Klaus committed himself to continuing to exert this kind of influence on the media and shared with the Soviet ambassador the story of how he himself had become the butt of criticism in a recent Presse editorial, even though he had been on friendly terms with the writer of the article for twenty years. The federal chancellor also addressed the topic of Soviet press reports on Austria—without explicitly mentioning the Literaturnaya Gazeta article—and called them devoid of any factual basis.

Klaus explicitly mentioned the Soviet charges that Austria had supported “counterrevolutionary forces” in the ČSSR with radio transmitter stations and stated emphatically “that the government was not aware of any actions whatsoever that might have infringed Austria’s neutrality and the State Treaty.” The Soviet ambassador, who had been prepared for this reply as part of his briefing by the Politburo of the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Kommunisticheskaya Partiya Sovetskogo Soyuza or CPSU), was quick to use this cue and suggested that the Austrian government might possibly “not be aware of such developments even though they did exist.” There might, after all, be “dishonest individuals among Austrian customs officials.”⁵¹ Klaus took this as a facetious remark.⁵²

Generally speaking, the Soviet ambassador’s call on Chancellor Klaus fell short of a downright “protest” on the part of Moscow against the course taken by the Austrian government. On the previous day, the Moscow Politburo had charged Soviet ambassadors all over the world to communicate clearly the Soviet point of view “regarding the latest developments centering on Czechoslovakia.” Some indication of how important it was in Moscow’s eyes that Austria should maintain its neutral position in 1968 derives from the fact that in the distribution schedule of this brief, which comprised dozens of countries, Austria ranked in fifth place, after the United States, France, Great Britain, and West Germany.⁵³

NO DAMAGE DONE TO SOVIET-AUSTRIAN RELATIONS

Austria’s avowals of intending to keep to a strictly neutral course amounted to more than empty words during the following weeks. At the UN Conference of Nuclear-Free States in Geneva, Waldheim reiterated on 6 September 1968 that “Austria has always asserted its special interest in the creation of a climate of détente and international cooperation that is free from the dangers of armed conflict and confrontation.” “Austria,” Waldheim went on to say, “deplores any acts of violence as they jeopardize the order which is the foundation of security for all of us. We condemn these acts in the most categorical manner.”⁵⁴ Diplomatic words like these were apt to meet with all around approval. In the West, they could be interpreted as a condemnation of the invasion of Czechoslovakia, even though Waldheim was not explicitly referring to the Czechoslovak crisis, and there was no need for Moscow to feel incriminated since the Soviet government was painting the invasion as a means of enhancing security in Europe. A “counterrevolutionary” victory would have endangered that security by impinging on the USSR’s vital interests. Waldheim was already positioning himself for the role of UN secretary-general, the post that he assumed on 1 January 1972, and was able in this manner to grow in stature in the Kremlin’s eyes. That Waldheim managed in this crucial phase of Austrian foreign politics to build a good relationship with the Soviets without having much explicit knowledge of internal Soviet deliberations that have only recently become apparent and intuitively to steer the correct course—correct also in light of the principles of Austrian neutrality which were not even hammered out yet—is evidenced by the confidential talk he had with the Soviet ambassador on 28 September, immediately before his trip to Yugoslavia as a member of the entourage of Federal President Franz Jonas.⁵⁵ Waldheim explained to Podtserob that the forthcoming visit was a purely ceremonial one and only served for Vienna to reciprocate Tito’s visit.⁵⁶ Podtserob, in turn, professed that while the peoples of the USSR entertained special feelings for the peoples of Yugoslavia on account of the war in which they had fought side by side against National Socialism and while Moscow was interested in good relations with Belgrade, these feelings only made sense on a basis of reciprocity. Waldheim, appearing immediately to have spotted a role for himself as a mediator, underlined the significance of his partner’s utterances, particularly because “rumors were being circulated by the media as regards Soviet military measures against Yugoslavia.”⁵⁷ The Soviet ambassador disclaimed any such rumors. He and Waldheim agreed that it must be Yugoslavia that was spreading such rumors. Waldheim also mentioned the report circulated by the Deutsche Presse Agentur about a hypothetical demand put forward by Moscow to be granted the right to march through Austria to Yugoslavia. He claimed he had denied the existence of such a demand in the strongest of terms, which had even provoked the expression of a certain uneasiness toward him on the part of several West German politicians.

The extremely conciliatory course that Waldheim opted for in his encounter with the Soviet ambassador made the latter remark that the reporting on developments in Czechoslovakia in Austrian media, above all in the ORF, had become less partisan.⁵⁸ The state visit of the Soviet minister for the gas industry, Aleksei Kortunov, in Austria had contributed noticeably to a consolidation of Soviet-Austrian relations.⁵⁹ Podtserob thanked Waldheim for the hospitality with which Minister Kortunov and his entourage had been met in Austria and “for the amicable atmosphere.” Waldheim replied by expressing the hope that it would be possible to continue intensifying the economic ties between Austria and the Soviet Union, and somewhat bluntly pointed out to the Soviet diplomat that such a development might strengthen the position of the Austrian government, which was facing increasing pressure to secure the country’s accession to the European Communities (EC) at the earliest possible date.⁶⁰ According to the ambassador’s notes, Waldheim said, “Some people vociferously complain that the end of Austria’s industry is imminent in case the country does not join the EC. The development of economic ties with the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries would deal a blow to these critics.” In this way, Waldheim clearly conveyed the impression to Moscow that EC accession was not a top priority of the Austrian government for the time being and that, as far as the economy was concerned, Austria was prepared to cooperate more closely with Eastern Europe.⁶¹ Finally Waldheim also addressed the issue of South Tyrol and informed the ambassador of the latest developments. He did so presumably in the hope that the Soviet Union’s position on this issue might change one day. Having pointed out that the South Tyrol issue was, after all, a product of World War I, he added that Italy had been allotted South Tyrol for strategic reasons (“The Brenner Pass is now in Italian hands”). Podtserob asserted that the Soviet Union did not want “this controversy to be exploited for objectives that were at odds with the interests of peace in Europe.”⁶² In this way, the postponement of the trip to the Soviet Union of the president of the Austrian Parliament, Alfred Maleta, was Austria’s only concrete reaction to the invasion of Czechoslovakia.⁶³ Even accusations against Austria in KGB reports that look bizarre in retrospect and that surfaced in part in the “White Book” published in the autumn of 1968 remained without impact on the bilateral level.⁶⁴

CONCLUSION

In his study on the foreign policy of Austria’s Second Republic, Michael Gehler concludes that the hesitant, tactically motivated way in which the Austrian government reacted to the invasion of Czechoslovakia led to a sense of bewilderment in the population and ultimately to a loss of stature for the Klaus government. Whether Austria’s politicians really felt out of their depth is another matter. Yet Gehler is no doubt right when he asks whether history would have taken a different course if the Austrian government had managed to appear more sure of itself and more resolute.⁶⁵

Austria’s cautiousness with regard to the invasion of the troops of the Warsaw Pact’s pro-interventionist coalition may ultimately be explained by the absence of a U.S. security guarantee. In 1956, just such an explicit guarantee had existed. At that time, Washington would not have tolerated an infringement of Austrian sovereignty. In the crucial days of August 1968, no such guarantee materialized, presumably because the U.S. government took it for granted that the Warsaw Pact military action was going to remain confined to Czechoslovakia. Austrian diplomats are said to have lobbied for a U.S. guarantee; it is unlikely, however, that in this matter they got much support from the foreign minister. The assessment of the newly created situation that Waldheim made was a sober and unexcited one, and he attempted to make the most of it for Austria. The crisis in Hungary, which occurred barely a year after Austria declared everlasting neutrality, tested that neutrality to the full on the stage of world politics. In 1968, the situation was entirely different. Not only was Austria’s interpretation of neutrality “more comprehensive and more consistent than in 1956,” but the country in general and the Klaus government in particular were pursuing their own interests.⁶⁶ The intensive shuttle diplomacy between Austria and the countries of the Eastern Bloc was beginning to bear fruit, which exposed the government to opposition criticism for its “Eastern bias.” From a purely economic perspective, Austria could easily have ended up in a cul-de-sac if it had behaved differently toward Moscow. Closing the gap that separated the country from accession to the EC remained a dubious undertaking on account of the issue of South Tyrol.

Against this backdrop, it is understandable that in November 1968 Waldheim, in a diplomatically brilliant, indirect manner, rebutted in Brussels the statement of U.S. secretary of state Dean Rusk that Austria and Yugoslavia touched on U.S. security interests. He did so by pointing out that safeguarding Austrian independence and territorial integrity was an obligation shared by all four signatories of the State Treaty. Waldheim’s words were ultimately greeted with approval in the Soviet press.⁶⁷

After the Warsaw Pact invasion of 1968, Austria followed lines similar to those of the major powers in its reactions. Priority was given to avoiding anything that might provoke the “Russian bear.” For this reason, the army was stationed thirty kilometers away from the Austrian border, and units that had originally been deployed in the immediate vicinity of the border were pulled back to avoid the outbreak of border-related hostilities of the kind that had led to the killing of a Soviet soldier during the Hungarian crisis in 1956.

Austria’s policies were politically, if not ideologically, consistent with its neutral status. The Czech and Slovak reformers enjoyed a tremendous reputation in Austria, which was at least partly the result of the reports on Austrian television.

In 1968, most Austrians viewed Czechoslovakia as a country that was being deprived of its legitimate freedom; they were severely criticized for this view by the Soviets. There were also allegations that Austria had veered from its course as a neutral country. These allegations were a cause for considerable concern, especially for people in the gas industry. Would the Soviets still consider themselves bound by their contract to supply Austria with natural gas? They would. On 1 September 1968, gas deliveries started via a pipeline that pierced the Iron Curtain. What had looked like a test of Austria’s neutrality in the crucible of the Cold War left behind no more than a mild sense of irritation, which evaporated in no time.

NOTES

Translated from German into English by Otmar Binder, Vienna.

1. For further information on the Soviet occupation of Austria, see Die Rote Armee in Österreich: Sowjetische Besatzung 1945–1955, vol. 1, Beiträge, vol. 2, Dokumente, ed. Stefan Karner et al., Veröffentlichungen des Ludwig Boltzmann-Instituts für Kriegsfolgen-Forschung, Sonderband 4, 5 (Graz: Oldenbourg, 2005).

2. Text of a statement delivered by Federal Chancellor J. Klaus, on Austrian television (ORF), 21 August 1968 (7:00 a.m.), Ktn. 1347, 129.266-6 (Pol.) 68, Austrian State Archives, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vienna (hereafter abbreviated as ÖStA, BMfaA).

3. Podtserob was a long-serving Soviet diplomat. Active in the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs from 1937, he had worked for Molotov from 1943. In 1952, he was promoted to deputy foreign minister, became head of the 1st European Department and ambassador to Turkey and, in 1956, to Austria, where he remained until 1971. For more details, see G. P. Kynin and J. Laufer, SSSR i germanskii vopros: 22 iyunya 1941g.–8 maya 1945, SSSR i germanskii vopros 1941–1949, Tom I. (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 1996), 750.

4. Cf. the instructions for the Soviet ambassadors in different countries prepared by the Politburo of the CC CPSU. Politburo resolution of the CC CPSU P 96 (V), “On the declarations of the government of the USSR addressed to foreign governments concerning the events in Czechoslovakia,” 19 August 1968, F. 3, op. 72, d. 198, pp. 4, 20–30, Russian State Archives of Contemporary History, Moscow (hereafter abbreviated as RGANI), reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #165.

5. At the beginning of August, a group of Czechoslovak Communists loyal to Moscow around Vasil Bil’ak handed a “request” written in Russian to Leonid Brezhnev in Bratislava asking the Soviet leadership for “assistance.” For details, see the Prozumenshchikov chapter in this volume.

6. From the official log of the ambassador of the USSR in Austria, B. F. Podtserob, 21 August 1968, F. 66, op. 47, p. 100, d. 6, pp. 163–64, Archives of the Foreign Ministry of Affairs, Moscow (hereafter abbreviated as AVP RF). In his 1968 Krisen an Österreichs Grenzen, Reiner Eger concluded that on the basis of the sources available at the time it was impossible to say with certainty whether on 21 August the Soviet ambassador had already given Chancellor Klaus “an assurance… that no Soviet moves of any kind would be taken against Austria,” but he inferred quite correctly that this must have been the case. See Reiner Eger, Krisen an Österreichs Grenzen: Das Verhalten Österreichs während des Ungarnaufstandes 1956 und der tschechoslowakischen Krise 1968. Ein Vergleich (Vienna: Herold Verlag, 1981), 90–91.

7. ÖStA, BMfaA, Ktn. 1350, 124.434-6 (Pol.) 68.

8. ÖStA, BMfaA, Ktn. 1350, 124.434-6 (Pol.) 68.

9. ÖStA, BMfaA, Ktn. 1350, 124.434-6 (Pol.) 68; From the official log of the ambassador of the USSR in Austria, B. F. Podtserob, 21 August 1968, AVP RF, F. 66, op. 47, p. 100, d. 6, pp. 163–64. The transcript was made on 25 August 1968 and dispatched to Moscow by the Soviet embassy on 31 August 1968.

10. From the official log of the ambassador of the USSR in Austria, B. F. Podtserob, 21 August 1968, AVP RF, F. 66, op. 47, p. 100, d. 6, pp. 163–64. In the afternoon of the previous day, the first demonstrations outside the Soviet embassy occurred, which had resulted in two Molotov cocktails being thrown against the door of the embassy. One man was arrested. Arbeiter-Zeitung, 22 August 1968, p. 1 and 4.

11. Minutes no. 91a of the extraordinary session of the Austrian Council of Ministers, 21 August 1968 (1:25 p.m.). ÖStA, BMfaA, Ktn. 1347, 129.266-6 (Pol.) 68.

12. ÖStA, BMfaA, Ktn. 1347, 129.266-6 (Pol.) 68, official communiqué on the session of the Council of Ministers, 21 August 1968. Owing to the visit of the Soviet ambassador, the beginning of the session of the Council of Ministers was delayed until 1:30 p.m. Arbeiter-Zeitung, 22 August 1968, p. 1.

13. Andreas Steiger, “‘zum Schutz der Grenze bestimmt’? Das Bundesheer und die CSSR/Krise 1968,” ÖMZ 5 (1998): 540–41.

14. From the official log of the ambassador of the USSR in Austria, B. F. Podtserob, 21 August 1968, AVP RF, F. 66, op. 47, p. 100, d. 6, pp. 165–66. The transcript was made on 29 August 1968 and dispatched to Moscow by the Soviet embassy on 31 August 1968. Waldheim had not lodged a formal protest, as Eger claims. Cf. Eger, Krisen an Österreichs Grenzen, 91.

15. For details, see the article by Horst Pleiner and Hubert Speckner, “Das österreichische Bundesheer und die ČSSR-Krise,” in Karner et al., Beiträge, 1007–23; the Federal Army was prepared for an emergency and ready for deployment at 8:00 a.m. The marching order was not given until 4:00 p.m. See Eger, Krisen an Österreichs Grenzen, 108–9.

16. From the official log of the ambassador of the USSR in Austria, B. F. Podtserob, 21 August 1968, AVP RF, F. 66, op. 47, p. 100, d. 6, pp. 165–66.

17. From the official log of the ambassador of the USSR in Austria, B. F. Podtserob, 21 August 1968, AVP RF, F. 66, op. 47, p. 100, d. 6, pp. 165–66.

18. Cable of the Czechoslovak ambassador in Austria, P. Novotný, on the reaction of the Austrian government to Czechoslovakia’s invasion by Warsaw Pact troops, Tlg. došlé, 7764/1968, Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Prague (hereafter abbreviated as A MZV), reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #174.

19. Text of the statement made by Chancellor J. Klaus on Austrian television (ORF) on 21 August 1968 (evening news), ÖStA, BMfaA, Ktn. 1347, 129.266-6 (Pol.) 68.

20. See Eger, Krisen an Österreichs Grenzen, 194–96.

21. The words “serious setback” (schweren Rückschlag) were added by hand, with the word “serious” being crossed out again.

22. The word “fortunately” was added by hand.

23. File memo and circular note on Waldheim’s communiqué to APA, ÖStA, BMfaA, Ktn. 1350, 124.435-6 (Pol.) 68; Text of the APA report, 22 August 1968, ÖStA, BMfaA, Ktn. 1347, 129.266-6 (Pol.) 68.

24. Ibid.

25. Stenographic transcript of a meeting of the Communist and Workers’ Parties of Bulgaria, Hungary, the GDR, Poland, and the USSR in Moscow, 18 August 1968, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #87. For details, see Silke Stern, “Die tschechoslowakische Emigration: Österreich als Erstaufnahme-und Asylland,” in Karner et al., Beiträge, 1025–42.

26. Stern, “Die tschechslowakische Emigration,” in Karner et al., Beiträge, 1025–42.

27. For details, see the Jakovina chapter in this volume.

28. Report of the head of the Central British Fund for Jewish Relief and Rehabilitation, 10 September 1968, UNHCR Archives, Geneva, 1.AUS.CZE/4, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #184; Report of the regional office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to Geneva, 9 September 1968, UNHCR Archives, Geneva, 1.AUS.CZE/2, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #183.

29. From the official log of the ambassador of the USSR in Austria, B. F. Podtserob, 23 August 1968, AVP RF, F. 66, op. 47, p. 100, d. 6, pp. 167–68. The transcript was made on 30 August 1968 and dispatched to Moscow by the Soviet embassy on 31 August 1968.

30. From the official log of the ambassador of the USSR in Austria, B. F. Podtserob, 23 August 1968, AVP RF, F. 66, op. 47, p. 100, d. 6, pp. 167–68; ÖStA, BMfaA, Ktn. 1350, 124.545 (Pol. 6) 68.

31. From the official log of the ambassador of the USSR in Austria, B. F. Podtserob, 23 August 1968, AVP RF, F. 66, op. 47, p. 100, d. 6, pp. 167–68.

32. The following words presumably led to irritation on the Soviet side: “In view of its strictly observed policy of neutrality the Federal Government can only express its disappointment that the events of the last 48 hours should call such a policy in doubt.” From the official log of the ambassador of the USSR in Austria, B. F. Podtserob, 23 August 1968, AVP RF, F. 66, op. 47, p. 100, d. 6, 167–68; Chancellor J. Klaus’s statement in the ORF evening news, 22 August 1968, ÖStA, BMfaA,., Ktn. 1347, 129.266 (Pol. 6) 68.

33. From the official log of the ambassador of the USSR in Austria, B. F. Podtserob, 23 August 1968; AVP RF, F. 66, op. 47, p. 100, d. 6, pp. 167–68. Kirchschläger had been recalled to Vienna from Yugoslavia, where he was on holiday, and was subsequently dispatched to Prague. See Klaus Eisterer, “The Austrian Legation in Prague and the Czechoslovak Crisis of 1968,” in Neutrality in Austria, vol. 9, Contemporary Austrian Studies, ed. Günter Bischof et al. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2001), 225.

34. From the official log of the ambassador of the USSR in Austria, B. F. Podtserob, 23 August 1968. The transcript was made on 30 August 1968 and dispatched to Moscow by the Soviet embassy on 31 August 1968, AVP RF, F. 66, op. 47, p. 100, d. 6, p. 171.

35. ÖStA, BMfaA, Ktn. 1350, 124.545 (Pol. 6) 68.

36. Michael Gehler, Österreichs Außenpolitik der Zweiten Republik: Von der alliierten Besatzung bis zum Europa des 21. Jahrhunderts (Innsbruck: Böhlau, 2005), 342.

37. Waldheim’s report to the Executive Committee of Austria’s parliament, 29 August 1968, ÖStA, BMfaA, Ktn. 1347, 129.266-6 (Pol.) 68.

38. On this occasion, the Soviet embassy counselor pointed out that the Czechoslovak ambassador had been given the opportunity to appear on Austrian television while in 1967 the request of the Soviet ambassador to be allowed to speak on TV on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution had been denied. What prompted this meeting was the latest edition of the Deutsche Nationalzeitung destined for sale in Austria, which in the words of the Soviet diplomat, “was brimful of highly insulting statements about the Soviet Union.” The Austrian Foreign Ministry followed up on the matter and came to the conclusion that the Austrian edition of the periodical was produced entirely in Munich. See the file memo about a call paid to the Foreign Ministry by the Soviet embassy counselor, Bushmanov, 29 August 1968, ÖStA, BMfaA, Ktn. 1349, 124.904 (Pol. 6) 68.

39. File memo, 29 August 1968, ÖStA, BMfaA, Ktn. 1349, 124.904 (Pol. 6) 68.

40. File memo, 29 August 1968, ÖStA, BMfaA, Ktn. 1349, 124.904 (Pol. 6) 68.

41. Washington lodged an official protest with the Soviet Union regarding the “absurd claim” that the United States was violating Austrian neutrality. For details, see the article by Günter Bischof, “‘No Action’: Die USA und die Invasion in die Tschechoslowakei,” in Karner et al., Beiträge, 340.

42. Folder “8/28/68,” cable of the secretary of state, D. Rusk, to the U.S. embassies in Vienna, Moscow, Prague, all NATO capitals, CINCEUR and USEUCOM, 28 August 1968, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files 1967–1969, POL 27-1 COM BLOC-Czech, Box 1995, NARA, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #180; for details see Günter Bischof, “‘No Action,’” in Karner et al., Beiträge, 319–54.

43. From the official log of the ambassador of the USSR in Austria, B. F. Podtserob, 29 August 1968, AVP RF, F. 66, op. 47, p. 100, d. 6, pp. 177–78. The transcript was made on 30 August 1968 and dispatched to Moscow by the Soviet embassy on 31 August 1968.

44. Kurt Waldheim, Im Glaspalast der Weltpolitik (Düsseldorf: Econ, 1985), 64; Waldheim told the story also in an interview. See Gehler, Österreichs Außenpolitik der Zweiten Republik, 342, 346; AVP RF, F. 66, op. 47, p. 100, d. 6, pp. 177–78 (cf note 43).

45. Minutes of a meeting of the leadership of the CC CPSU with the leaders of the Communist parties of Bulgaria, Hungary, the GDR, and Poland, 8 May 1968, KC PVAR, p. 193, t. 24, Archivum Akt Nowych, Warsaw (hereafter abbreviated as AAN), reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #77.

46. For details, see also report on the visit paid by the Soviet ambassador in Austria, Podtserob, to Austrian federal chancellor Klaus, 31 August 1968, AVP RF, F. 66, op. 47, p. 100, d. 6, 179–83, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #182.

47. See the article by Dieter Bacher and Harald Knoll, “Österreich als Drehscheibe ausländischer Geheimdienste?” in Karner et al., Beiträge, 1063–74.

48. For details on Ladislav Bittman, see Pavel Žaček, “Vzestupy a pády Bohumíra Molnára. Kariéra generála Státní bezpečnosti,” in Oči a uši strany: Sedm pohled do života StB, ed. Petr Blažek et al. (Šenov, Ostrava: Nakl. Tilia, 2005), 95–99; Wendell L. Minnick, Spies and Provocateurs: A Worldwide Encyclopedia of Persons Conducting Espionage and Covert Action 1946–1991 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1992), 17–18; Ladislav Bittman, Zum Tode verurteilt: Memoiren eines Spions (Munich: Roitman, 1984); Ladislav Bittman, Geheimwaffe D (Bern: SOI, 1973); on the basis of these two publications, Bittman’s activities were analyzed in Harald Irnberger, Nelkenstrauß ruft Praterstern, Am Beispiel Österreich: Funktion und Arbeitsweise geheimer Nachrichtendienste in einem neutralen Staat (Vienna: Verlag Promedia, 1983), 112–14.

49. From the official log of the ambassador of the USSR in Austria, B. F. Podtserob, 31 August 1968, AVP RF, F. 66, op. 47, p. 100, d. 6, pp. 179–83. The transcript was made on 2 September 1968 and dispatched to Moscow on the same day by the Soviet embassy.

50. From the official log of the ambassador of the USSR in Austria, B. F. Podtserob, 31 August 1968, AVP RF, F. 66, op. 47, p. 100, d. 6, pp. 179–83. Decidedly more inclined to criticism than Chancellor Klaus was Secretary for Information Karl Pisa in an interview he gave to the Austrian Press Agency (APA) on 28 August 1968 on the topic of the events in Czechoslovakia. He noted that there was no need for him to “hold forth” on the “nature of communism” now as he had “criticized both the communist idea and the encroachments of the Soviet occupying forces repeatedly even during Austria’s occupation.” ÖStA, BMfaA, Ktn. 1347, 129.266-6 (Pol.) 68.

51. From the official log of the ambassador of the USSR in Austria, B. F. Podtserob, 31 August 1968, AVP RF, F. 66, op. 47, p. 100, d. 6, pp. 179–83.

52. Transcript of a conversation between the Soviet ambassador B. F. Podtserob and Chancellor Klaus, 31 August 1968, reprinted in Eger, Krisen an Österreichs Grenzen, 213.

53. RGANI, F. 3, op. 72, d. 201, pp. 22, 41–55.

54. Excerpt from a statement by Kurt Waldheim at the UN Conference of NuclearFree States in Geneva, 6 September 1968, ÖStA, 129.266-6 (Pol.) 68.

55. Jonas was in Yugoslavia from 30 September to 5 October 1968. For details, see Eger, Krisen an Österreichs Grenzen, 103, and Gehler, Österreichs Außenpolitik der Zweiten Republik, 341.

56. Tito had paid Austria a state visit from 13 to 17 February 1967.

57. From the official log of the ambassador of the USSR in Austria, B. F. Podtserob, 28 September 1968, AVP RF, F. 66, op. 47, p. 100, d. 6, pp. 195–98. The transcript was made on 30 September 1968 and dispatched to Moscow on the same day by the Soviet embassy. See also Tvrtko Jakovina, “Tito, the Bloc-Free Movement, and the Prague Spring” in this volume, and Bischof, “‘No Action,’” in Karner et al., Beiträge, 319–54.

58. From the official log of the ambassador of the USSR in Austria, B. F. Podtserob, 28 September 1968 (cf. note 56). A discussion on Austrian television (ORF) on 12 September 1968 was even mentioned in a report to the CC CPSU. According to its report, the Soviet embassy was reasonably pleased with the program. See the report of the deputy chairman of APN, V. Larin, to the Propaganda Department of the CC CPSU, RGANI, F. 5, op. 60, d. 38, p. 107, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #187.

59. For details, see Eger, Krisen an Österreichs Grenzen, 101.

60. In the 1966 declaration of its program, Austria’s new federal government gave top priority to speeding up its negotiations for the country’s accession to the EC. By linking the South Tyrolean question to the EC negotiations, Rome compromised these negotiations. Paris subsequently adopted Moscow’s proposal, which provided for Vienna to conclude a trade treaty with the EEC’s member states. The USSR considered Austria’s potential EC membership as incompatible with the State Treaty (on the basis of the interdiction of the Anschluß with Germany). Similar fears surfaced in Moscow before Austria’s accession to the European Union. For details, see Gehler, Österreichs Außenpolitik der Zweiten Republik, 310–58, and Robert Kriechbaumer, “Die Ära Klaus: Aufgeklärter Konservatismus in den ‘kurzen’ sechziger Jahren in Austria,” in Gehler and Kriechbaumer, eds., Die Ära Josef Klaus: Austria in den ‘kurzen sechziger Jahren, vol. 1, Document, Schriftenreihe des Forschungsinstitutes für politisch-historische Studien der Dr.Wilfried-Haslauer-Bibliothek, vol. 7/1 (Vienna: Böhlau, 1998), 63.

61. From the official log of the ambassador of the USSR in Austria, B. F. Podtserob, 28 September 1968, AVP RF, F. 66, op. 47, p. 100, d. 6, pp. 195–98.

62. From the official log of the ambassador of the USSR in Austria, B. F. Podtserob, 28 September 1968, AVP RF, F. 66, op. 47, p. 100, d. 6, pp. 195–98.

63. Eger, Krisen an Österreichs Grenzen, 97.

64. A KGB report mentioned that “500 Austrian plain-clothes policemen [had infiltrated the ČSSR] and had smuggled weapons into the country.” The only charge ever mentioned by the Soviet ambassador in his meetings with Federal Chancellor Klaus concerned the smuggling of German-made mobile radio stations into the ČSSR via Austria. See the official call by the Soviet ambassador in Austria, B. F. Podtserob, on the Austrian federal chancellor, J. Klaus, 31 August 1968, AVP RF, F. 66, op. 47, p. 100, d. 6, pp. 179–83, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #182. In an even more bizarre claim, the KGB reported that Austria’s military intelligence had activated its agents in the ČSSR, “especially among the officers of the Czechoslovak army.” According to the head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, “the agents were given the task to set up underground organizations and carry out acts of terrorism against those who impeded the process of liberalization.” See the report of the head of the KGB, Y. Andropov, to the CC CPSU, 13 October 1968, RGANI, F. 89, op. 61, d. 5, pp. 1–60, reprinted in Karner et al., Dokumente, #121.

65. Gehler, Österreichs Außenpolitik der Zweiten Republik, 342–51.

66. Gehler, Österreichs Außenpolitik der Zweiten Republik, 345–51.

67. Eger, Krisen an Österreichs Grenzen, 98.