When Kádár set out for the meeting in Warsaw on 14 and 15 July he did so equipped with a resolution of the HSWP Politburo that continued to call for a political settlement for Czechoslovakia and that was designed to keep the leaders of the “fraternal parties” from opting for a “military solution.”
In Warsaw, Kádár stuck to his brief in his first speech. He reported on the meeting in Komárom and underlined the danger inherent in the country’s situation, which had, however, not yet reached the stage of counterrevolution. In the debate, Ulbricht and Zhivkov allowed themselves to be carried away in the moment for which there had been no parallel up to then: they not only resolutely and openly condemned Kádár’s point of view, but added (the former overtly, the latter indirectly) that it might well be the case for Hungary’s internal problems to be next in line for a solution at a comparable meeting of the “fraternal parties.”63 This was evidence for the emergence of a dangerous tendency that entitled “fraternal parties” to act as joint trouble shooters not only in crucial crises, but also in the context of developments or reforms that did not endanger socialism as such but were considered undesirable by the others. There was no doubt that Hungary was a case in point at that time.64 Kádár therefore thought it advisable to repeat in front of the present company the “declaration of loyalty” he had issued two weeks before in Moscow in order to calm everyone down. He unexpectedly rose to his feet a second time and announced: “We unreservedly agree with the explanations and conclusions of our Soviet comrades and are prepared to take part in any joint action.”65 Although this was a serious violation of the HSWP’s resolution, taking this step was arguably facilitated for Kádár by Brezhnev’s making it clear in his speech that despite pressure from the others no final decision would be reached at the meeting itself. Kádár was, therefore, still free, even though he had “publicly” committed himself to agreeing in principle to an ultimate military solution, to work toward a political settlement in the background. Yet the chances for such a settlement were dwindling.
FROM WARSAW TO MOSCOW: KÁDÁR’S LAST EFFORTS FOR A POLITICAL SETTLEMENT
After the Warsaw meeting, Kádár concentrated on persuading Brezhnev to make one more effort, to stage one more Soviet-Czechoslovak meeting in order to make it quite clear to Dubček and his comrades that in case they continued to do nothing to stop a development that bore all the hallmarks of total disintegration, there would have to be outside intervention to save the Socialist system. Kádár had the impression that he had succeeded in frightening Dubček and Černík in Komárom; at the end of the meeting, when they realized the danger they faced, both men burst out crying.66 He hoped that a last warning to the leadership by the Soviets would prove effective and trigger at long last the administrative measures required for a consolidation of the Communist system. The Soviet-Czechoslovak meeting in Čierna nad Tisou at the end of July was mainly the result of Kádár’s tireless efforts at mediation. At the ensuing meeting in Bratislava, Kádár confronted Dubček quite openly with the alternatives the KSČ had to choose between: either they themselves used force to stop certain tendencies or force would be applied from outside. He illustrated this with his own example and underlined that in 1956 it had been necessary to use deeply unpopular measures to save the Communist system in a context that was much more difficult; yet he had done what had to be done.67
At Brezhnev’s invitation, Kádár went to Yalta on 15 August. During the ensuing negotiations, everyone knew that a decision in favor of a military solution was in the offing. Kádár now concentrated on the time after the intervention. The situation being as it was, he consented to the military solution, yet he emphasized that, in the long-term, only a political settlement can ensure success. The struggle for the correction of the mistakes made before January 1968 had to be continued, and the KSČ must not relinquish its two-front struggle. Kádár felt that the difficult situation the Soviets were in might provide him with an opportunity to criticize the policy of the CPSU in a constructive manner. He said the Soviet leadership had been impatient in its dealings with the Czechoslovak party and that this impatience had been a key factor in the escalation of the crisis; a more patient approach might have rendered military intervention unnecessary. In this context, he formulated a question that rose far above the present context: “When the CPSU is perceived as rigid by the world, by the global communist movement, who is going to play the role of the standard bearer in the global communist movement?”68 He praised Soviet policy after 1956 and said the Soviet leadership had then shown trust in the Hungarian and Polish party leaders and had allowed them to seek new solutions. This had brought a handsome dividend, for they were able to consolidate the situation in their countries.69 With these lessons from history Kádár was pursuing two goals. He was first of all trying to make sure that postinvasion Czechoslovakia would be allowed to reestablish order with minimum interference from the Soviets; second, he was trying to broaden with these arguments the maneuvering space in terms of domestic policies in the states of the Soviet Bloc.
In Yalta, Brezhnev entrusted a last mediation mission to Kádár, saying that the Hungarian party was the only one in addition to the CPSU to which Dubček might be prepared to listen. The meeting took place in Komárno on 17 August. It made one thing abundantly clear: the Czechoslovak leaders seemed completely unaware that they were sitting in a train that was heading for the abyss. Even if they suspected their predicament, they preferred resignedly to wait for the catastrophe; none of them had the courage to pull the emergency brake. It is little wonder that Kádár, who was notorious for his pragmatism, described the meeting as “embarrassing, ill tempered, sterile, pointless.”70
After the invasion on 21 August, an unexpected opportunity arose for Kádár to influence the course of events positively. On the first day of the crisis management negotiations of the “Five,” which took place parallel to the Soviet’s talks with the captive Czechoslovak “delegation” between 24 and 26 August in Moscow, he was a fervent advocate of the need to find a compromise with the legitimate Czechoslovak leadership. In order to give emphasis to this Hungarian point of view, he first submitted it to the Soviets in writing.
Ulbricht and Zhivkov clearly advocated a dictatorial solution, the formation of a revolutionary government of workers and peasants in keeping with the Hungarian model of 1956. Gomułka, who was apparently completely out of his depth, went as far as to claim that the situation in Czechoslovakia was much worse than the one in Hungary at the time of the “counterrevolution.”71 In view of the fact that there were a number of influential supporters of a radical solution among the Soviet leaders themselves, Kádár, with his plea for Dubček and his comrades, came down clearly on the side of the realistic solution also favored by Brezhnev and Aleksei Kosygin. He thereby contributed in the end to a political compromise being hammered out that involved the legitimate Czechoslovak leaders and culminated in the signing of the Moscow Protocol.
NOTES
Translated from German to English by Otmar Binder, Vienna.
1. For an overview of the history of the Prague Spring, see H. Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976); Karen Dawisha, The Kremlin and the Prague Spring (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); Jaromír Navrátil et al., eds., The Prague Spring 1968 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1998); Kieran Williams, The Prague Spring and Its Aftermath: Czechoslovak Politics, 1968–1970 (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 1997). On Hungary’s economic reform in 1968, see Ivan T. Berend, The Hungarian Economic Reforms, 1953–1988 (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 1990).