[This is a primary-source analysis/research piece I wrote for my Cold War history class this past semester. The subject was a series of declassified Soviet communiques regarding the invasion of Czechoslovakia. I could have written much more as there were quite a few documents I didn’t get a chance to cover, but I was limited to seven pages in print. I may revisit it for fun at a later date.]
January 1968 brought a breath of fresh air to the Czech and Slovak peoples as it marked the election of Alexander Dubček as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Dubček announced his intentions to move along with extensive reforms within Czechoslovakia. These reforms brought about what was to be known as the Prague Spring, where Dubček’s government attempted to implement a policy he termed as “socialism with a human face.” The ultimate intended result of the Prague Spring was to be a moderate liberalization of political life in Czechoslovakia, as well as a decentralization of power from Prague. The news was very well received with the Czechoslovak people, as well as with reformist and intellectual elements within the Czechoslovak Communist Party. Dubček, who had been seen as a compromise upon which both reformist and more orthodox party members could agree, was proving himself to be an effective force of change within Czechoslovakia. It is well known, however, how the Prague Spring ultimately ended: on an August night the armies of the Warsaw Pact surged across their borders to “help” the Czechoslovakians suppress subversive elements. The invasion resulted from a buildup of distrust and disapproval from the Soviet hegemon and her satellites: the Prague Spring was the largest threat to Soviet authority east of the Iron Curtain since the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The reality of that threat was the fact that unlike the Hungarian Revolution, the Prague Spring was a revolution from the top down: it was initiated by the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia. Because of this, it shook the legitimacy of the Soviet government along with its other satellites, which feared that liberalization in Czechoslovakia would lead to similar demands in their own nations. The buildup of tensions is apparent in a collection of declassified documents published by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in its Cold War International History Project’s Digital Archive. This collection of documents, ranging from the end of February 1968 up until the autumn after the invasion, is a series of reports and correspondences, mostly from within the Ukrainian wing of the Soviet Communist Party, discussing the events in Czechoslovakia. The documents dealing with the lead up to the invasion, from February until the night of the invasion, show firsthand the paranoia exhibited on the part of the powers that were in control in the face of what they saw as a direct challenge to their authority and ability to rule.
The first of the documents, dated 28 February 1968, is a short correspondence from Petro Shelest, First Secretary of the Communist Party in the Ukrainian SSR, to the CPSU Central Committee. In it, Shelest reports that an “unknown person” who identified himself as a Czech diplomat from the consulate in Kiev, in a drunken state, struck up a conversation with two Soviet train conductors about the Soviet hockey team. He “asserted that Soviet hockey players do not know how to play and will lose again next year, all things being equal.”1 The translator notes underneath that the hockey rivalry between the USSR and CSSR often took on a nationalistic or political overtone, as evidenced by the “diplomat’s” next statement: “…The Czechs would be better off doing business with the West than with the Soviet Union. The Soviet people have us by the neck. … You Communists are worse than the imperialists.”2 The man was confirmed to be the Czechoslovak Consul-General in Kiev, Josef Gorak, who was a frequent recipient of Shelest’s criticism.
This example was only the first event which foreshadowed future troubles in Czechoslovakia’s relations with its Communist brethren, despite Dubček’s best efforts to stay in their favor. On March 18, 1968, Secretary of the Ukrainian Transcarpathian Oblast Yuri Ilnytskyi met with Jan Koscelanský, First Secretary of the KSC’s East Slovakia regional committee, one-on-one at the Ukrainian-Czechoslovak border. Koscelanský described to him the troubles within the KSC’s Central Committee, where “sharp criticism was directed against the old methods of leadership, which had given rise to a cult of Novotny.” The report explains that the Czechs under Dubček sought to establish “free” (but still single party) democracy and eliminate censorship and repression within the CSSR.3 These revelations likely alarmed the central Soviet party apparatus, whose power would have been threatened by such reforms in a neighboring Communist country. Koscelanský had to assure Ilnytskyi that it was “not a repetition of the events of 1956 in Hungary,” because the reforms were instituted by the KSC Central Committee, rather than through a popular uprising against the Party: he clarified that the masses supported the Party in instituting reforms. Koscelanský, however, also felt the need to emphasize that, “beginning with Comrade Dubček and going through every rank-and-file Communist, they will do everything possible to strengthen friendship with the Soviet Union and to advance the cause of socialism on the basis of the principles of Marxism-Leninism.”4 Koscelanský appeared to try to placate Soviet concerns over the reforms within his country by playing up the CSSR’s friendship with the USSR: he could doubtlessly see for himself the growing dilemma that his country was finding itself in.
Josef Gorak, meanwhile, was again immortalized in official Soviet records as he had a meeting on April 23 with B. Baklanov, Third Secretary of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. During the conversation, the Consul-General played up his relationship with Dubček, and mentioned that he (Gorak) was to take over as head of the Soviet Department in the CSSR Foreign Ministry.5 This likely did not bode well for the perception of Comrade Dubček in Moscow, considering Shelest’s previous report on Gorak’s drunken encounter with two train conductors. During their conversation, Gorak further told Baklanov that the KSC would be adopting a similar outlook as the Italian and French Communist parties, as the CSSR wished to assume leadership of the industrialized, Central European Communist countries, which were closer culturally to the Western nations.6
A report delivered at the April Plenum of the CPSU on the 25th of April, 1968 by Petro Shelest offered a bleak view of the events occurring in Czechoslovakia, and concurrently offered several scapegoats on which to place blame. The section regarding Czechoslovakia opens: “Comrades! The Communists and all workers of our country are especially alarmed about events in Czechoslovakia and the stepped-up activity of revisionist, Zionist, and anti-socialist forces in that country.”7 Shelest blames these elements for being behind a petit bourgeois conspiracy to influence the Czechoslovak leadership to accept, as Shelest puts it, “’unlimited’ democratization.” The language in Shelest’s report tries to paint the situation as one where the Czechoslovak leadership is losing its grip and being misled by a few subversive internal elements, rather than willfully moving towards democracy. As a result, despite a few “negative points,” Shelest points out that Dubček’s public speeches show the KSC leadership understands the “necessity of waging a struggle against anti-socialist forces.”8 Shelest’s report then turns its lens towards the West: he accuses the American and West German imperialists of making an effort to destabilize the internal situation in Czechoslovakia by manipulating nationalist sentiments among the Czech and Slovak peoples. He additionally accuses the West of supporting a gradual, step-by-step dismantling of the Communist infrastructure in Czechoslovakia; Shelest suggests that the imperialists learned from Hungary in 1956 that a sudden, violent attack to seize power would not work, and instead were pursuing a policy of gradual, peaceful change.9 Shelest closes his report by stating that the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia contains “healthy forces,” and that the task of the Soviet Union is to provide “comprehensive assistance” to these forces in order to thwart the efforts of their imperialist enemies. Shelest’s report is a sign that, relatively early on, elements of the Soviet party apparatus were already finding ways to rationalize future action in the defense of Communism in Czechoslovakia, and it is a thinly veiled attempt to shift the attention, and blame, away from the central party in Czechoslovakia.
Four days later, Yuri Ilnytskyi again met with Koscelanský in a one on one meeting at the border as a follow-up to their previous meeting on March 18. At this meeting, Koscelanský inquired about what had been discussed at the April Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee; Ilnytskyi replied that the Plenum had not specifically discussed Czechoslovakia, but had instead briefly brushed upon problems on the international scene regarding unity in the Communist movement. (The translator notes that this statement is not false, as numerous other issues were discussed at the Plenum; however it must be said that P. Shelest’s April 25th report delivered at the Plenum suggests a great deal of concern was given to the “subversive elements” at work in the CSSR).10 Ilnytskyi also reported that Koscelanský discussed developments in Czechoslovakia: mainly that censorship of the press had been totally lifted, and that all leaders within the CSSR were subject to criticism. Ilnytskyi remarks that this is foolish; that he could not imagine why they would allow such “immature people” to spread propaganda.11 At the conclusion of his report, Ilnytskyi declares that, at this meeting, Koscelanský’s behavior had changed: he was no longer as animated or lively. Ilnytskyi cited that he believed Koscelanský, as one of the original proponents of the reforms, had lost faith in how they were being carried out as the CSSR appeared to be drifting more “to the right;” it appears Ilnytskyi was trying to absolve Koscelanský of some of the responsibility for what seemed like the eventual collapse of Czechoslovak Communism.
May was a busy month for the Ukrainian Soviets. On May 12th, Ilnytskyi filed a report regarding the Czechoslovak media to the CPSU CC.12 In it he described a few items he found troubling: the border between West Germany and Czechoslovakia was opened to tourists (who Ilnytskyi referred to as spies, and accused of bringing anti-socialist ideas across the border). Another main point he discusses is, with the lifting of censorship, the Czechoslovak press is reporting on unsavory truths within the CSSR (and, more importantly, within other Communist nations: the Czechoslovak press criticized the weak points of Soviet tank production and released relevant technical data).13 A report filed on the seventeenth of May suggested that, much as they may criticize the handling of the German-Czechoslovak border, the Ukrainians had problems of their own. V. Nikitchenko, Chairman of the Committee on State Security under the Ukrainian SSR, cited “the growing influx of foreigners from capitalist countries” and the “opening of new routes for tourists in automobiles” in a list of matters which required greater attention from counterintelligence assets.14 Nikitchenko’s memorandum requested 208 additional personnel to tackle these issues in the border Oblasts, as the increase in hostile activity was too much for the current staff to keep up with. Five days later, on the 22nd, KGB Chiefs Ivanov and Kozlov issued a report to Petro Shelest regarding the status of the Czechoslovak-Ukrainian border. The border control checkpoints had been especially busy seizing “ideologically harmful literature:” in the first quarter of 1968, they seized 11,833 items. The previous year they had seized 33,570 items total; four years earlier they had seized 1,500 items total.15 Shelest cited these statistics in a memorandum to the Politburo dated on the same day, and echoed Nikitchenko’s earlier request by requesting 1,500 additional border patrol personnel for the Western district and 200 additional KGB operational counterintelligence agents.16 It is apparent here that, with the statistics he cites, Shelest wanted to portray the situation in Czechoslovakia in as negative a light as possible in order to rally support for his cause of securing the border and keeping revolutionary ideas out.
Shelest’s paranoia in the lead up to invasion is also apparent in a series of documents published throughout the rest of May and early June. In them, Shelest requested of the KGB apparatus in Ukraine to report on the activities of the average Ukrainian, as well as his reaction to the events unfolding in the CSSR. The first of these reports is basically gossip collected by both common people residing in the Ukraine and, in the case of the last two examples, statements overheard from Soviet citizens visiting the CSSR. The individuals cited in the first report range from all different professions and ethnic backgrounds: school teachers, factory workers; even a dentist is quoted (it is also specified that said dentist, Jozef Ida-Mois, is a Jew and non-member of the Party).17 Shelest’s interest in the opinions of common folk on the matter, while hardly out of the ordinary in a totalitarian state, is important: considering the concern he had shown towards the situation in the CSSR, Shelest had an interest in keeping the popular sentiments sweeping Czechoslovakia from sweeping his own jurisdiction. Two subsequent reports outline the reactions to the situation by Soviet citizens visiting the CSSR. On May 30, a report was published by Shelest on the activities of Ukrainian journalists who visited the CSSR on a goodwill tour, who reported encountering widespread anti-Soviet sentiments and shocking displays of anti-socialist behaviors.18 The second report was published on the fourth of June, and described a group of Soviet workers who participated in an exchange with the CSSR, and encountered locals who described the situation as having gotten worse with time, rather than better.19
The latter two reports are, more than likely, selective reports of what Shelest wanted to portray: a country in distress, and in need of assistance. It is easy to draw conclusions about Shelest’s intentions from the reports he published, conclusions which could not be drawn from a secondary source: his antipathy towards the reform movement in the CSSR was readily apparent, as was his concern that the movement could spread to his own domain. Fear of losing power, along with losing a valuable ally and buffer in the struggle against the West, pushed Shelest and the other officials within the Soviet Union to work against the tide of reform in Prague. This series of documents illuminates the causes of the Soviet invasion by providing a window through which to peer directly into the internal structures and workings of the CPSU: a perspective a history textbook or second-hand account could not provide. By examining these reports sequentially, the documents in this collection can be strung together in a way that shows the causal links leading up to the ultimate decision to roll back Dubček’s Spring.
Endnotes
1 P. Shelest, Note from P. Shelest to CPSU Central Committee (28 Feb 1968), Wilson Center Cold War International History Project, Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia Collection
3 Yu. Il’nyts’kyi, Memorandum from the Secretary of the Transcarpathian Oblast, Ukrainian CP about tensions in Czechoslovakia (21 Mar 1968), Wilson Center CWIHP, Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia Collection
5B. Baklanov, Conversation with the Consul-General of the CSSR in Kyiv, J. Gorak (23 Apr 1968), Wilson Center CWIHP, Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia Collection
7 P. Shelest, Report by P. Shelest on the April 1968 Plenum of the CC CPSU (25 Apr 1968), Wilson Center CWIHP, Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia Collection
10 Yu. Il’nyts’kyi, Transcarpathian Oblast First Secretary Yu. Il’Nyts’Kyi’s Report to P. Shelest (5 May 1968), Wilson Center CWIHP, Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia Collection
12 Yu. Il’nyts’kyi, Yu. Il’Nyts’Kyi Reports on Items from the Czechoslovak Media (12 May 1968), Wilson Center CWIHP, Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia Collection
14 V. Nikitchenko, A Memorandum to the Ukrainian Committee on State Security Regarding Counterintelligence Difficulties (17 May 1968), Wilson Center CWIHP, Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia Collection
15 KGB Chiefs Ivanov and Kozlov, KGB Border Report to P. Shelest (22 May 1968), Wilson Center CWIHP, Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia Collection
16 P. Shelest, Memorandum to CPSU Politburo on Western District Border Controls (22 May 1968), Wilson Center CWIHP, Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia Collection
17 A. Zhabchenko, Summation of Informers from the Transcarpathian Oblast, Ukrainian SSR (25 May 1968), Wilson Center CWIHP, Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia Collection
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