Soviet forces invade Czechoslovakia: 20-21 August 1968 Posted on: 20 August 2018
1968 wall slogan (Fortepan / Konok Tamás id)
This is not the action of strong ‘expansionist’ leaders, but of frightened men reacting indecisively to a situation which they judged to be crucially dangerous, but with which they did not know how to deal.1 On the night of Tuesday, 20 August 1968, Soviet military units crossed the borders of Czechoslovakia: at 1.30am. On 21 August a message was delivered informing Prime Minister Harold Wilson, that the Czechoslovak government had asked the Soviet Union for ‘fraternal assistance’ in the face of a threat to the Socialist order. Soon, with the help of East German, Bulgarian and Polish ground forces, Czechoslovakia was firmly under Soviet control. Many people—in Moscow, as well as in London and Washington—had calculated that the Politburo might draw back from the brink. Later, a general consensus formed that the reform movement spearheaded in Czechoslovakia in 1968 by Alexander Dubcek, First Secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, had pushed the Soviet regime beyond the limits of tolerance. Though Dubcek had been educated in the USSR, understood the system and assured Moscow that his programme of free socialist development, toleration of dissent and the secret ballot would not affect external policy, the Prague Spring appeared an unacceptable threat to Communist solidarity. But the decision to invade was a complex one, as the context shows. The view from the East After the end of World War II the USSR sought to secure its position as a victorious superpower by dominating most of Eastern Europe. This was defensive as well as offensive, since the Soviet regime distrusted what it regarded as American imperialism, and saw Western security arrangements like NATO as a threat. Tight control over the Eastern bloc was essential, particularly in the 1960s at a time of slow economic growth and industrial discontent in the USSR. Yet meanwhile, the Soviet Union was pursuing a parallel policy of engagement with the West in areas like trade, proposals for a European security conference and negotiations with the USA for a non-proliferation treaty. This twin-track approach to policy produced some initial ambiguity in the Eastern response to the reform movement in Czechoslovakia.
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