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Alexander Stykalin

Institute of Slavic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow

The reforms of 1968 in Czechoslovakia, stopped by the August 21 intervention, continue to attract attention of historians in Russia, as we can see from the considerable number of documentary publications as well as scholarly studies based on archives research.1 The published documents reveal the dynamics of the view of the Soviet leadership towards the internal processes in Czechoslovakia, the measures taken to disturb the reforms (especially the reforms of political structure which threatened the monopoly of the Communist Part), the preparation for military action, its propaganda and political support, as well as the response of intellectuals and wider circles of the Soviet society on the intervention.2 The documents provide a more complete picture of the position of the Soviet political elite concerning all the sides of the development in Czechoslovakia, including the settlement of relations between Prague and Slovakia3. The documents let us see whether there was complete unity in the highest Soviet leadership on the use of force in Czechoslovakia, or there were some differences in the positions of individual representatives of the Soviet elite.

According to various sources, Kremlin anxieties at the situation in Czechoslovakia—including worries about Czech ideological and cultural policy Soviet leaders deemed too liberal—was manifested a few years before the Prague Spring. In 1966, Leonid Brezhnev visited the 13th Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and, returning to Moscow, shared his impressions with his comrades at the meeting of party activists. He expressed displeasure with too sharp criticism in the speeches of some speakers at Prague’s Congress. “Here in Moscow we need to protect ourselves from such things”, he noted.4

Nevertheless, there was not too much anxiety, and if anybody who visited Czechoslovakia tried to sound such an alarm, it was not supported. One Komsomol functionary, who visited Czechoslovakia in 1964, wrote in his report that the Communist Party had completely lost its influence over Czechoslovak youth, who took their lead now from Western values. As the result he was accused of spreading slander and attempting to undermine the Czech-Soviet youth relations. The case was closed and he was not expelled from the Communist party only because his information about the weakening of party control over the youth in Czechoslovakia was confirmed from other influential sources5.

Soviet leaders were well informed of the increasingly active demands by Slovak people for reform—and of the need for decentralization (felt and expressed by party members too), The sharp criticism of Antonín Novotný by Alexander Dubček in the fall of 1967 was no of secret in Moscow especially since Dubček on his own initiative had contacts with Soviet journalists and made them clear his position both on the Slovak question and the necessary reforms in the whole country6. In December 1967, when Brezhnev himself went to Prague to see with his own eyes and to assess the state of affairs, the question of the relationship between the center and Slovakia seemed to him one of the priorities in terms of stability in the country7.

It is known that on the eve of the final session of the plenum of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, where in early January 1968 Novotný’s successor was chosen, Dubček’s candidacy as the first secretary of the Communist Party did not raise opposition of the official Moscow8. In childhood, he lived a long time in the USSR, he was a veteran of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, had long-standing and close ties with Soviet party functionaries and was not considered to be a politically unpredictable person. He was known as one of Antonín Novotný’s active opponents but Novotný was not perceived at that time to be a guarantee of stability and his support as the party leader has long ceased to be an axiom for Moscow. Brezhnev, during his conversations with high-ranking Czechoslovak Communists, qualified the question of re-electing the party’s first secretary as an internal Czechoslovak affair.9

This made the subsequent disappointment in Dubček all the stronger. Moscow’s anxiety over the course of events in Czechoslovakia was manifested later, in March, under the influence of information received from the Soviet Embassy. The weakening of censorship and the resignation of many functionaries who were considered to be reliable partners of Moscow caused the greatest concern in the Kremlin, where they were afraid not only to lose control over Czechoslovakia but that the Czeh and Slovak reformers would set an example to those elsewhere in the USSR who were tempted by the prospect of liberalizing the Soviet system. It is well-known however that on March 23rd in Dresden (Eastern Germany), where the first meeting of the Soviet and East-European Communist Party leaders was held to assess the situation in Czechoslovakia, Brezhnev’s speeches were much more calm and moderate than Walter Ulbricht’s and Władysław Gomułka’s. This is confirmed by some lesser known sources, including the notes of the leader of the Ukrainian Soviet Communist Party organization in 1968 Petro Shelest, one of the main hawks in the Soviet leadership, who took part in Dresden talks as a member of the CPSU delegation. Shelest in his notes strongly criticized Brezhnev’s position (including that on the Dresden talks) as not too resolute and irreconcilable10. If we would try to explain the roots of his position, it must be taken into account the KGB information from Eastern Slovakia concerning some attempts to revitalize the Greece-Catholic Church11—that was the principal question for Western Ukraine where this Church was one of the foundation stones of Ukrainian anti-communist national movement. The Ukrainian Communist elite feared that impulses from Czechoslovakia, especially from Slovakia, will provoke national trends in Western Ukraine.

It is known that in early April the Action Program of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was adopted—the main conceptual document that brought the views of the Prague Communist reformers into system. The reaction in Moscow was quite negative. The document was qualified as the challenge to the indisputable right of the CPSU to form the guidelines of the Communist movement and the basic concepts of Socialism. It is precisely after the publication of the Action Program that Moscow’s view on the reform process in Czechoslovakia became tougher—the program of the Czechoslovakian reformers was criticized at the April Party plenum of the Central Committee CPSU12, the campaign of criticism in the central Soviet press of the entire reform process in Czechoslovakia was launched at that time. According to some sources as early as in April the Soviet military headquarters intensified the working out of concrete plans for military action in Czechoslovakia in case the political leadership would prefer the force variant of actions to stop “revisionist” trends. It is known from the memoirs of general A. Maiorov who was in 1968 the commander of the Karpatian military district that as early as in middle-April the instructions were got how to act in the case of the preparation of the military operation13. On April 8, 1968, the commander of the airborne troops, General V. Margelov, according to the directive received, began to elaborate the plan of using airborne forces in Czechoslovakia14.

On April 28, 1968 the Yugoslavian leader Iosip Broz Tito came to Moscow after a long tour of the Asian countries and the next day had a long conversation with Brezhnev. The situation in Czechoslovakia became the main subject of discussion between leaders of the two countries15. The Soviet side hoped for the proximity of the Soviet and Yugoslav viewpoints, bearing in mind that relations between the USSR and Yugoslavia had been improving since 1965—Yugoslavia supported the Soviet view on the middle-Eastern crisis of June 1967 (the six day war between Izrael and three Arabian countries) and in November Tito visited Moscow and took part in the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Bolsheviks’ revolution. Moscow attached importance to the Yugoslav view on the reform processes in Czechoslovakia, taking into account the international prestige of Tito as not only one of the founders and leaders of non-alignment movement, but as a person who at one time had the courage to challenge Stalin. Brezhnev did not hide from the Yugoslav leader his concern about the weakening of the CPCz leadership’s control over the political processes in the country, and at that time, for 4 months before the intervention, frankly expressed his opinion. In many respects, that opinion corresponded to the so-called Brezhnev doctrine (the doctrine of limited sovereignty), formulated later in the Declaration of Communist Parties in Bratislava in early August 1968 and—especially—in a number of the Soviet program declarations, ‘Pravda’ articles and the speeches by Soviet leaders after August 21. On April 29, 1968, during the talks with Tito, Brezhnev noted:

We need some radical steps on our part in order to help Czechoslovakia stand on the positions of socialism. Do not be afraid of the word ‘intervention’. After all, we are proletarian internationalists and we are not indifferent to the fate of socialism in other countries. There are issues that can not be regarded as purely Soviet or purely Yugoslav. We have common tasks and responsibilities arising from the principles of proletarian internationalism. We are very concerned and we are not indifferent to how our friends are doing, including in Yugoslavia, ‘where economic reform,’ in comradely terms, it seems to us, has not yet yielded positive results.16

In such remarks, Tito could see the exposition of the program, which posed a challenge not only for Czechoslovakia, but also for Yugoslavia. For his part, the Yugoslavian leader made some critical remarks on the policy of Dubček and his team, but at the same time made it clear that he supported the current Czechoslovak leadership, suggesting that, if assisted, it could cope with the situation. Thus, the Soviet leaders had to take note that any military or otherwise coercive action against Czechoslovakia would hardly find the support of the Yugoslav side. The negative reaction of Titoist Yugoslavia as well as of the national-Communist Romania on the August Intervention is well known. Recently published documents give us some new details. His extremely negative attitude to the intervention (which dealt in his opinion a severe blow to the idea of Socialism on the international level), Tito expounded to the Soviet ambassador Ivan Benediktov, whom he received on August 31. As for Yugoslavia, Tito made it clear to the ambassador that the Yugoslavs themselves solve their problems and will not allow anyone from outside to interfere in their affairs. If anybody threatens, it does not matter from the West or from the East, “Yugoslavia,—as Tito put it,—will fight resolutely, defending its independence. This can not be doubted”.17

Some months later this line changed to some extent. The next meeting with Benediktov Tito held on October 19. By this time, under pressure of Moscow an agreement on the temporary stay of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia had already been signed (following the results of the bilateral Soviet-Czechoslovak summit meeting held on October 3–4, 1968). This somewhat calmed the Yugoslav leader, who apparently decided to stop raising the Czechoslovak question. Tito told the Soviet ambassador: “Goodwill is important now. I said today that I see no reason that every day in our newspapers be written about Czechoslovakia. In Moscow, an agreement was signed. We would not want to interfere in its implementation”.18 And on September 4, 1969 (already after considerable personnel changes in the party-state apparatus, the removal of many reformers from responsible positions) Tito, receiving the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR Andrei Gromyko developed his position. He confirmed his and the entire Yugoslav leadership’s view that the military invasion caused “great damage both to socialism in Czechoslovakia and to socialism in general”. “We spoke”, he continued, “we took our principled position on the events in Czechoslovakia and we do not back down from it. But at the same time, we considered that the situation around Czechoslovakia should not be dramatized, and we were able to minimize publications in our press. In the end, we cannot be more Czech than the Czechs. Let the Czechs and Slovaks themselves decide this question. And with Czechoslovakia, despite the fact who is now in power, we seek good relations”.19 By the autumn of 1971, when the first meeting between Brezhnev and Tito after a 3-year interval took place, the disagreements on the Czechoslovak issue were not more a factor which seriously affected the Soviet-Yugoslav relations.

In May 1968, Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin visited Czechoslovakia, hе met with many members of the Communist elite and came to the conclusion that the positions of those whom Moscow considered to be some kind of alternative to the reform line of Dubček’s team were very weak. The idea of conducting military maneuvers on the territory of Czechoslovakia in order to exert forceful pressure on its leadership was not abandoned (the maneuvers took place in late June). At the same time, the decision was made to influence Dubček and his team, in order to correct their course, which was considered in Moscow to be unacceptable. In June such kind of line was dominant in Moscow. It was reassessed only in the end of June after the publication on June 27 of the program document of the Czech non-communist intellectual opposition “2000 thousand words”, written by Ludvík Vaculík This document was perceived by the Soviets as a sign that the communist leadership in Czechoslovakia had absolutely lost the control over the situation, the non-Communist opposition had seized the initiative in developing a reform program, and this created a real threat to the Communist monopoly on power20.

In July, the leaders of the USSR prepared military action—covering all details, including propaganda. The declarations of the new Czechoslovak government were worked out and approved at the Politburo session on July 26–27,21 but the Soviets also gave Dubček’s team the last chance to “improve” the situation according their expectations. As is known well, new attempts to exert pressure on him were made in late July during bilateral talks at Čierna nad Tisou and in early August at a multiparty summit in Bratislava (the final declaration, which anticipated some of the theses later at the core of the Brezhnev doctrine)22.

The views of all the members of the Soviet leadership can be reconstructed on the basis of records of their notes both at meetings of the Soviet Politburo and during bilateral talks at Čierna nad Tisou.23 Without exception, all were sure that it was necessary to put an end to the reform processes in Czechoslovakia, since they were leading to a weakening of the monopoly power of the Communist elite. However, there were some differences in assessing the methods of action. This was manifested, for example, in a clash at a Politburo meeting by the more moderate Kosygin with a more radical Yurii Andropov, KGB chief. Andropov was at that time only a candidate member of the Politburo, but the comrades paid special attention to his opinion because they knew that he had a real experience in Hungary as the Soviet ambassador during the 1956 revolution24. Andropov often turned to the experience of the Hungarian events, trying to draw parallels with what was happening in Czechoslovakia. He used to remind his colleagues that the so-called “counterrevolution” was preceded by a lengthy ideological preparation led by writers, journalists, intellectuals25.

As for Brezhnev, caution and indecisiveness were fully manifested in all his activities before intervention. On the one hand, he knew very well that if Communist power in Czechoslovakia were to weaken and the political system and economic model were to be reformed and become less like Soviet models, his party comrades would use it against him as the party leader. His position at the head of the party was not yet sufficiently strong in 1968 and the weakening of Soviet influence in Czechoslovakia could be used by his rivals as an occasion for removing him from office, as well as Khruschev just four years before. On the other hand, Brezhnev for a long time did not see in Czechoslovakia any strong and influential alternative to Dubček’s team which would be realistically supported by Moscow. Gustáv Husák was supported as the candidate for the top position in the party only after August 21 when—after the examining other candidates—Moscow came to the conclusion that they were even weaker and unacceptable for various reasons (not least their unpopularity, the lack of minimal support from below). We can also deduce that in the Kremlin they could realize that it was possible to make more active use of Slovak nationalism against the Prague reformers, and that this was an important argument in favor of Husák.

When in July 1968 the Soviets started to prepare the decisive forceful action, the naturally cautious Brezhnev showed repeatedly at Politburo meetings his concern about the fact that poorly prepared intervention could only complicate the situation. Even in August, after the Bratislava summit, he exerted considerable effort (during telephone conversations) to influence Dubček in order to take control of the media, to limit the public activity of intellectuals and replace the most unacceptable for Moscow members of his team, including František Kriegel. Brezhnev’s hesitation was a factor slowing to some extent the decision-making on military intervention. Thus, on July 19 he exclaimed at the session of the Politburo: have we exhausted all the means from the arsenal of political influence; have we done everything to avoid the extreme measures?26 The delay over a military solution which might take place as early as in late July, just after the summit in Warsaw (July 14–15), was not the result of any polemics in the Soviet leadership, but primarily the internal doubts from Brezhnev himself, who by 1968 had become the first number in the country’s leadership and used the opportunity to demonstrate to his comrades his political will and weight. Prone to hesitation, he was inclined to take extreme measures only under the pressure of immutable circumstances.

Brezhnev made his final choice when it became clear to him that he had not succeeded in persuading the Czechoslovak side to reject the idea of holding the extraordinary party congress where, as it was expected, would be made decisive personnel changes.

As early as on August 21 they realized in Moscow that the plan to lead the new government to power had failed and it would be necessary to resume negotiations with the acting political team. Famously, Dubček’s team, in its desire to avoid bloodshed, went on a far-reaching compromise with Moscow. Brezhnev from his side clearly feared a lot of bloodshed, which can cause new complications. It was just his initiative to send to Prague on the eve of the intervention Kirill Mazurov: one of the members of Politburo should leave for Prague for control the whole operation, otherwise the generals would act too rudely. It is known also that during long discussions on Czechoslovak issue on August 20 Berzhnev expressed his principal view that the borders would be opened: if anticommunists and “counter-revolutionaries” would prefer to leave the country, the Soviets would welcome. Otherwise, they would have to intern too many people and would not know what to do with them—a problem that indeed never existed for Stalin. Brezhnev’s caution and indecision made it possible to prevent additional troubles that could occur due to the low level of political culture and to the political mood of the Soviet communist elite of that time.

Today, from the historical distance of 50 years we try to define the processes that took place in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and to reveal their main content. But even if we now read the attempts by Dubček and his associates to create socialism with a human face as utopian, we must nevertheless recognize that these people were motivated by sincere and noble intentions. The task of giving the existing system a more human face will never lose its relevance, even with respect to the most sophisticated political systems.

1 The most important volume of studies in Russian is: 1968 год. “Пражская весна”. Историческая ретроспектива [1968. The Prague Spring. The Historical Retrospective]. Москва (М.), 2010. The book is based on the reports of the large-scale international conference held in October 2008, the studies touch the main aspects of the subject and especially the Soviet-Czechoslovak relations at the high level, the activities of the Soviet Embassy, the international context of the intervention, the reaction of the Western communist movement, the response of the Soviet public and especially of the intellectuals. The view of the official Moscow on the problem of Czechoslovak federalism and the settlement of relations between Prague and Slovakia was also reflected in the volume.

2 See the collections of documents: “Пражская весна” и международный кризис 1968 года. Документы [The Prague Spring and the International Crisis of 1968 in Czechoslovakia. Documents] М., 2010; Чехословацкий кризис 1967–1969 годов в документах ЦК КПСС [The Crisis of 1967–1969 in Czechoslovakia in the documents of the Central Committee of the Soviet Union]. М., 2010. These publications are based first of all on the documents of the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI), former Archive of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party. The first of these projects was realized by RGANI and Ludwig Boltzmann-Institut für Kriegsfolgen-Forschung (Graz, Austria), headed by Stefan Karner. The other joint project was realized by RGANI in cooperation with the Czech colleagues. The volumes contain some hundreds of documents—the records of the meetings of the Soviet and Eastern-European Communist leaders where the situation in Czechoslovakia was discussed since March 1968, the interparty correspondence, the reports of the Soviet Embassy in Prague, the instructions for the internal party organizations aimed at the explanation of the Soviet policy at a lower level of the Soviet Communist Party.

3 We refer here first of all to the records of the sessions of the Politburo of the Soviet Communist Party, of the Soviet-Czechoslovakian high-level talks and of the summits of the leaders of the Soviet and Eastern-European Communist Parties.

4 Testimony of the well-known Russian journalist Alexander Bovin, who in the 1960s was a speechwriter for Brezhnev: Бовин А. XX век как жизнь [XX century as a life]. М., 2003. С. 175.

5 На идеологическом посту: 1960-е. Воспоминания сотрудников ЦК КПСС [On the ideological post: 1960s. Memories of the functionaries of the CPSU Central Committee] // Неприкосновенный запас. Дебаты о политике и культуре. М., 2008. № 4. С. 154–158.

6 See the testimony of V. Krivosheev who was the correspondent of “Izvestiya” in Prague in 1965–1968: Вторжение: Взгляд из России. Чехословакия, август 1968 [Intervention: the view from Russia. Czechoslovakia, august 1968]/Составитель Й. Паздерка. М., 2016. С. 131–138.

7 Brezhnev visited Prague on December 8, 1967. See: Латыш М.В. “Пражская весна” 1968 г. и реакция Кремля [The Prague Spring of 1968 and the reaction of the Kremlin]. М., 1998. С. 17–18.

8 See about the reaction of the Soviet Embassy on the election of Dubček as the first secretary of the Party: Ibid., p. 23.

9 Ibid., p. 18.

10 See: Шелест П.Е. Да не судимы будете: Дневниковые записи, воспоминания члена Политбюро ЦК КПСС. [Let not be judged. The Notes of Diaries, the Memories of the member of the Politbiuro CC CPSU]. М., 1995. С. 301.

11 30 Октября [October 30] (издание общества “Международный Мемориал”). М., 2008. № 89. История инакомыслия. С. 7.

12 On April 10, Brezhnev spoke at the plenum with the report “On the actual problems of the international situation and the CPSU’s struggle for the unity of the world communist movement”, which was not fully published in the Soviet press in order to avoid aggravating the Soviet-Chinese controversy. The report also criticized the Czechoslovak Communists for their concessions to revisionism and the weakening of the role of the ruling party.

13 Майоров А. Вторжение. Чехословакия 1968. Свидетельства командарма [Intervention. Czechoslovakia 1968, The Testimonies of the Commander of the Army]. М., 1998. С. 19–21.

14 Кыров А. Десантники в операции “Дунай” (Советско-чехословацкие военно-политические отношения, 1968 [Paratroopers in Operation Danube (Soviet-Czechoslovak military-political relations, 1968]. М., 1996.

15 Встречи и переговоры на высшем уровне руководителей СССР и Югославии в 1946–1980 гг. [Meetings and negotiations at the highest level of the leaders of the USSR and Yugoslavia in 1946–1980] Том второй. 1965–1980. М., 2017. С. 211–230.

16 Ibid., p. 223–224.

17 Ibid., p. 236.

18 Ibid., p. 243.

19 Ibid., p. 263.

20 We can also note that it was precisely after the publication of the ‘2000 words’ that the position of the Hungarian leadership, and in particular of János Kádár, who so far generally supported the economic component of the Czechoslovak reforms, became noticeably tougher. This follows both from public speeches by Kádár, including that he made during his visit to Moscow in early July, and from his position, outlined at his talks with Dubček, not long before the Warsaw meeting of leaders of the Communist Parties which took place in middle June (the Czechoslovak delegation did not come to Warsaw). Despite the increasing convergence of positions of Brezhnev and Kádár it was Kádár who tried to persuade the communist leadership of Czechoslovakia to seek a compromise demonstrating to Moscow the desire to take measures against non-communist opposition, but Kádár’s mission was not successful (see in this volume the study of Miklós Mitrovics).

21 See the materials: Чехословацкий кризис 1967–1969 годов в документах ЦК КПСС.

22 See: Суверенитет и интернациональные обязанности социалистических стран [Sovereignty and international obligations of socialist countries] // Правда, 1968, 26 сентября.

23 The first study where the subject was deeply examined is: Латыш М.В. “Пражская весна” 1968 г. и реакция Кремля.

24 For more on his position and his activities in Hungary of 1956, see: Советский дипломат перед национал-коммунистическим вызовом. Ю.В. Андропов в Венгрии (1953–1957) [Soviet diplomat in front of the national communist challenge. Yu.V. Andropov in Hungary (1953–1957)] // Стыкалин А.С. Венгерский кризис 1956 года в исторической ретроспективе. М., 2016. С. 33–78.

25 See in detail: Стыкалин А.С. Память о венгерских событиях 1956 г. в период Пражской весны 1968 г. [The memory of the Hungarian events of 1956 in the period of the Prague Spring of 1968] // Социальные последствия войн и конфликтов XX века: историческая память. М.–Спб., “Нестор”, 2014. С. 279–287.

26 Пихоя Р.Г. Чехословакия, 1968. Взгляд из Москвы. По документам ЦК КПСС [Czechoslovakia, 1968. View from Moscow. According to documents of the Central Committee of the CPSU] // Новая и новейшая история, 1995. № 1. С. 35.