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Soviet Security and the Role of the Military: The 1968 Czechoslovak Crisis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2009
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One of the major issues surrounding the perennial debates over Soviet alliance management is whether the Soviet leadership considers its military position vis-à-vis Western Europe to be a more important determinant of policy than the political stability of its East European allies. Moscow showed itself willing to use force to achieve its objectives in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, but analysts are not agreed either on the nature of those objectives or on the wider priorities governing Soviet policy. Before 1968 it was widely believed that security considerations relating to the unity and strength of the Warsaw Pact dominated Soviet thinking. It was assumed that East European regimes would be allowed to undertake some, primarily economic, reforms provided they did not repeat the mistake made by the Hungarians in 1956 of calling for a withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. This belief in the supremacy of strategic considerations led the Czechoslovaks, and many Western analysts, to miscalculate both the extent of the Soviet Union's ideological disagreement with the reform movement and the interrelationships between political and strategic considerations.
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References
1 Among the many speeches by Soviet leaders and articles in the Soviet press on these subjects, perhaps the clearest statements can be found in Alexandrov's 11 July 1968 Pravda article; the Warsaw letter in Pravda, 18 07 1968Google Scholar; Konstantinov, , Pravda, 24 07 1968Google Scholar; Rodionov, , Pravda, 9 08 1968Google Scholar; Pomalev, , Pravda, 14 08 1968Google Scholar; and the major Pravda editorial on 22 August 1968 justifying the invasion. In their own speeches and articles, Soviet leaders did not usually condemn Czechoslovakia by name. Yet the fundamental principles underlying socialist society which were seen to be threatened by events in Czechoslovakia were dealt with by Suslov in a speech published in Pravda on 29 February 1968, Grishin in a speech published in Izveslia on 23 April 1968, by Brezhnev in speeches published in Pravda on 23 February, 20 March and 5 and 8 July 1968, and by Shelest in Pravda on 5 July 1968.
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4 Speech by Kosygin to the 16th Minsk Province Party Conference, in Sovetskaya Belorussia, 15 02 1968Google Scholar. Also, see Gromyko's speech to the June Supreme Soviet Session in Pravda, 28 06 1968.Google Scholar
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11 The Czechoslovaks never tired of reminding the USSR of these provisions, as in the ČTK release of 7 May 1968 (EE/2766/C1/7) replying to rumours that the Soviets were prepared to respond to an appeal for help from Communists within Czechoslovakia, and in Prchlik's press conference, reported in Rudé právo, 16 07 1968.Google Scholar
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28 Konev's speech was carried on Prague radio's home service, 9 May 1968, EE/2767/C/3. (Italics added.)
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39 Author's interview with Mlynář, 1 June 1979. He claimed that information available when he became Secretary of the KPČ in April 1968 suggested that the Ministry had a total of 147,000 agents and informers throughout the country; and an apparat of 20,000 with 10,000 working in Prague alone. Of the 10,000 Mlynář claims one third were Soviet agents.
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