Even though the slogan meant different things to different people in Czechoslovakia, opinion polls taken in 1968 revealed that a large majority of Czechs and Slovaks were supportive of Western-style democracy.62 Soviet troops put a forceful end to those aspirations, but the goal never really disappeared. Thus, looking back, we can view the spirited attempts at reform in Czechoslovakia in 1968, and the tragic way in which they ended, as adumbrating the eventual downfall of the Communist Bloc and of the USSR itself.
NOTES
1. U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, DIA Intelligence Supplement: Soviet Electronic Countermeasures during Invasion of Czechoslovakia, DIAIS UP-275-68 (Secret—No Foreign Dissemination), 1 October 1968, declassified October 2002, in Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, National Security File, Europe and USSR, Czechoslovkia, Czechoslovakia Memos, Vol. IV: 9/68–1/69.
2. H. Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976).
3. Karen Dawisha, The Kremlin and the Prague Spring (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
4. “Cesty ke svobodě,” Rudé právo (Prague), 13 May 1968, p. 1.
5. “Rabochaya zapis’ zasedaniya Politbyuro TsK KPSS ot 15 marta 1968 g.,” verbatim transcript (top secret), 15 March 1968, in Arkhiv Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii (APRF), Fond (F.) 3, Opis’ (Op.) 45, Delo (D.) 99, Listy (Ll.) 123–24.
6. “Rabochaya zapis’ zasedaniya Politbyuro TsK KPSS ot 15 marta 1968 g.,” L. 127.
7. “Rabochaya zapis’ zasedaniya Politbyuro TsK KPSS ot 21 marta 1968 g.,” verbatim transcript (top secret), 21 March 1968, in APRF, F. 3, Op. 45, D. 99, Ll. 147–58.
8. “Rabochaya zapis’ zasedaniya Politbyuro TsK KPSS ot 21 marta 1968 g.,” Ll. 148, 151–53, 156.
9. See the materials pertaining to these discussions in Archiwum Akt Nowych (AAN), Warsaw, Archiwum Komitetu Centralnego Polskiej Zjednoczonej Partii Rabotniczej (Arch. KC PZPR), Paczka (P.) 32, Tom (T.) 114.
10. “Protokół z rozmowy Pierwszego Sekretarza KC PZPR tow. Władysława Gomułki z Pierwszym Sekretarzem KC KPCz tow. Aleksandrem Dubczekem,” 7 February 1968 (Secret), in AAN, Arch. KC PZPR, P. 193, T. 24, Dok. 3.
11. A. M. Aleksandrov-Agentov, Ot Kollontai do Gorbacheva: Vospominaniya diplomata, sovetnika A. A. Gromyko, pomoshchnika L. I. Brezhneva, Yu. V. Andropova, K. U. Chernenko i M. S. Gorbacheva (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 1994), 147–49.
12. “Rabochaya zapis’ zasedaniya Politbyuro TsK KPSS ot 23 maya 1968,” verbatim transcript (top secret), 23 May 1968, in APRF, F. 3, Op. 45, L. 262.
13. Cited in “TsK KPSS,” memorandum no. 1/22 (top secret) from P. Shelest to the CPSU Politburo, 21 March 1968, in Tsentral’nyi Derzhavnyi Arkhiv Hromads’kykh Ob’ednan’ Ukrainy (TsDAHOU), Kyiv, F. 1, Op. 25, Sprava (Spr.) 27, Ll. 18–23. See also Emil Šip, “Prvomájové referendum,” Rudé právo (Prague), 3 May 1968, p. 2.
14. “Doklad P. E. Shelesta ‘Ob itogakh aprel’skogo plenuma TsK KPSS,’” speech text (top secret), 25 April 1968, in TsDAHOU, F. 1, Op. 25, Spr. 97, Ll. 8–9.
15. “Doklad P. E. Shelesta ‘Ob itogakh aprel’skogo plenuma TsK KPSS,’” L. 11.
16. I. Aleksandrov, “Ataka protiv sotsialisticheskikh ustoev Chekhoslovakii,” Pravda (Moscow), 11 July 1968, p. 4.
17. See the retrospective comments of Jiří Hájek, who served as Czechoslovak foreign minister in 1968, in Dix ans après: Prague 1968–1978 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1978), 110–15, 163–64, 172–79.
18. See Dubček’s comments on this matter in Hope Dies Last: The Autobiography of Alexander Dubček, trans. by Jiří Hochman (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 178–79.
19. Mark Kramer, “The Soviet Union and the 1956 Crises in Hungary and Poland: Reassessments and New Findings,” Journal of Contemporary History 33, no. 2 (April 1998): 163–214.
20. See, for example, “Projev soudruha Alexandra Dubčeka,” Rudé právo (Prague), 25 April 1968, pp. 1–2.
21. “Dnevniki P. E. Shelesta,” in Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial’noPoliticheskoi Istorii (RGASPI), F. 666, Tetrad’ (Te.) 6, L. 27.
22. See the interview with Josef Smrkovský in “Nedokončený rozhovor: Mluví Josef Smrkovský,” Listy: Časopis československé socialistické opozice (Rome) 4, no. 2 (March 1975): 17; and the interview with Oldřich Černík in “Bumerang ‘Prazhskoi vesnoi,’” Izvestiya (Moscow), 21 August 1990, p. 5. Both Smrkovský and Černík were members of the KSČ Presidium in 1968. Smrkovský was also president of the National Assembly and a leading architect of the Prague Spring; Černík was the Czechoslovak prime minister. Shelest describes an incident in his diary (“Dnevniki P. E. Shelesta,” in RGASPI, F. 666, Te. 4, L. 80) that suggests the overtures may have found a receptive audience in Smrkovský, but no further corroboration of this incident has emerged.
23. For a verbatim transcript of the meeting in Warsaw, see “Protokół ze spotkania przywódców partii i rządów krajów socjalistycznych—Bulgarii, NRD, Polski, Węgier i ZSRR—w Warszawie, 14–15 lipca 1968 r.,” Copy No. 5 (Top Secret), 14–15 July 1968, in AAN, Arch. KC PZPR, P. 193, T. 24, Dok. 4. See also the lengthy interview with the Hungarian leader János Kádár, who took part in these meetings, in “Yanosh Kádár o ‘prazhskoi vesne,’” Kommunist (Moscow), no. 7 (May 1990): 96–103.
24. “Rabochaya zapis’ zasedaniya Politbyuro TsK KPSS ot 6 avgusta 1968 g.,” verbatim transcript (top secret), 6 August 1968, in APRF, F. 3, Op. 45, D. 99, L. 462.
25. A firsthand account of Brezhnev’s medical problems during the crisis can be found in the memoir by Brezhnev’s physician, Evgenii Chazov, Zdorov’e i vlast’: Vospominaniya “kremlevskogo vracha” (Moscow: Novosti, 1992), 74–76.
26. Quoted in an interview with Brezhnev’s closest aides in Leonid Shinkarev, “Avgustovskoe bezumie: K 25-letiyu vvoda voisk v Chekhoslovakiyu,” Izvestiya (Moscow), 21 August 1993, p. 10.
27. “Telefonický rozhovor L. Brežněva s A. Dubčekem, 9.8.1968,” verbatim transcript (top secret), 9 August 1968, in Ústav pro soudobé dějiny, Sbírka Komise vlády ČSFR pro analyzu udalostí let 1967–1970 (ÚSD-SK), Z/S 8.
28. “Rozgovor tovarishcha L. I. Brezhneva s tovarishchom A. S. Dubchekom,” verbatim transcript (top secret), 13 August 1968, in APRF, F. 3, Op. 91, D. 120, Ll. 1–18.
29. “Vypiska iz protokola No. 94 zasedaniya Politbyuro TsK KPSS 13 avgusta 1968 g.,” No. P94/101 (Top Secret), 13 August 1968, in APRF, Prot. No. 38.
30. Cited in Tibor Huszár, 1968: Prága, Budapest, Moszkva. Kádár János és a csehszlovákiai intervenció (Budapest: Szabad Tér, 1998), 180. For a translation into Czech, see “Vystoupení J. Kádára na zasedání ÚV MSDS a rady ministrů 23.8.1968 k mad’arsko-sovětskému jednání v Jaltě, 12.–15.8.1968,” in ÚSD-SK, Z/M 19.
31. Declassified documents reveal that Brezhnev met several times in the Crimea with Aleksei Kosygin, Nikolai Podgornyi, Petro Shelest, Mikhail Suslov, Aleksandr Shelepin, Arvı-ds Pel’she, Kirill Mazurov, Gennadii Voronov, Viktor Grishin, Dinmukhamed Kunaev, Pyotr Masherov, Sharaf Radishov, Vladimir Shcherbitskii, and Konstantin Katushev.