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