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Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia

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Prague Spring, 1968

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Eastern Europe

Czechoslovakia

Soviet soldier taking a photograph of another soldier in Red Square, Moscow, 1959

Eastern Europe

Soviet Union

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Shelest, P. IU. (Petro IUkhymovych)

1908- 1996

Ukrainian Motherland Monument, Kyiv

Eastern Europe

Ukraine

Warsaw Pact

Warsaw Pact Military Planning

Portrait of Mao Zedong on Tiananmen Gate in Beijing, China, 1972.

East Asia

China

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Eastern Europe

Poland

Sino-Soviet Relations

Sino-Soviet Split, 1960-1984

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Sawczuk, Wlodzimierz

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Photograph of Zhou Enlai in 1972.

Zhou, Enlai

1898- 1976

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Eastern Europe

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Il’nyts’kyi, Yu. V.

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Leonid Brezhnev, 1974.

Brezhnev, Leonid Il'ich

1906- 1982

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Jaruzelski, W. (Wojciech)

1923- 2014

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July 25, 1989	Report of the President of Hungary Rezso Nyers and General Secretary Karoly Grosz on Talks with Gorbachev in Moscow (excerpts) President of People’s Republic of Hungary, Rezso Nyers, and General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party, Karoly Grosz, report on their talks with Gorbachev in Moscow, 24-25 July, 1989. The excerpts contains economic reformer Nyers’ assessment of the political situation in Hungary, and first among the factors that "can defeat the party," he lists "the past, if we let ourselves [be] smeared with it." The memory of the revolution of 1956 and its bloody repression by the Soviets was Banquo’s ghost, destroying the legitimacy of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party, just as 1968 in Prague and 1981’s martial law in Poland and all the other Communist "blank spots" of history came back in 1989 to crumble Communist ideology. For their part, the Communist reformers (including Gorbachev) did not quite know how to respond as events accelerated in 1989, except not to repeat 1956.
March 24, 1989	Conversation between M.S. Gorbachev and Karoly Grosz, General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party, March 23-24, 1989 These conversations reveal Gorbachev’s contradictions, as the Soviet leader proclaims again that the Brezhnev doctrine is dead and military interventions should be "precluded in the future, yet at the same time, tries to set "boundaries" for the changes in Eastern Europe as "the safekeeping of socialism and assurance of stability."
November 5, 1968	Report Relayed by Andropov to the CPSU Central Committee, 'Students and the Events in Czechoslovakia' KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov presents a secret, 33-page report to the CPSU Central Committee about the mood of Soviet college students. The report had been completed sometime before the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and had been circulating within the KGB. It is not clear precisely who drafted the report, but Andropov’s cover memorandum and the report itself indicate that the author was a college student in Odessa who had recently finished his degree.
August 22, 1968	Prague Embassy Urges Caution on Radio Free Europe and Voice of America In Prague Embassy Dispatch No. 3079, Ambassador Jacob Beam urges the US Radios to provide factual reporting and neither encourage nor discourage Czechoslovak youth opposed to the invasion
August 22, 1968	CIA-State Consultations on Czechoslovak Crisis Consulted by Cord Meyer, Deputy Undersecretary of State Charles Bohlen approves RFE’s cautious approach to covering the Soviet invasion and also agrees to use of RL transmitters to reach Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia
August 30, 1968	Cipher Message 3235-8/223, Warsaw to Minister of National Defense of the Polish People's Republic Division General Cde. W. Jaruzelski Because the Warsaw Pact has recently conducted a large number of military exercises and the costs of doing so, and given the present military occupation of Czechoslovakia, Soviet Marshal Yakubovsky proposes postponing the October joint military exercise to the following year. Yakubovsky solicits Polish General Jaruzelski's opinion on the matter.
August 30, 1968	Cipher Telegram 3234-8/220, Warsaw to Minister of National Defense of the Polish People's Republic Division General Cde. W. Jaruzelski Following the successful completion of the first stage of the joint military exercise in Czechoslovakia, Soviet Marshal Yakubovsky gives orders to Polish General Jaruzelski concerning the second stage. Four specific orders are given: the Polish military leadership must maintain friendly relations with the political bodies and civilians of occupied Czechoslovakia; maintain military preparedness; ensure the maintenance of proper living conditions for the Polish troops; and maintain adequate food supply and medical support for the Polish troops.
August 1968	Letter from Czech Communist Politicians to Brezhnev Requesting Soviet Intervention in Prague Spring In August 1968 a small group of pro-Moscow hardliners in the Czechoslovak Communist Party, led by Vasil Bilak, wrote two letters requesting urgent assistance from the Soviet Union to thwart the imminent "counterrevolution" in Czechoslovakia. Both letters were addressed to Leonid Brezhnev, the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party (CPSU), and both were written in Russian to ensure that they would be read promptly. The first (and more important) letter was signed by Bilak and four of his colleagues: Drahomir Kolder, Alois Indra, Oldrich Svestka, and Antonin Kapek. Brezhnev later used the letter as a formal justification for the impending military invasion of Czechoslovakia.
August 21, 1968	Letter from the Central Committees of the Bulgarian, East German, Hungarian, Polish, and Soviet Communist Parties regarding the Warsaw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia Letter from the Central Committees of the Communist Parties of East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Soviet Union explaining the need for intervention in Czechoslovakia. The letter lays out the rationale behind the Brezhnev Doctrine.
August 20, 1968	Secret Decree of the Council of Ministers of the PR of Bulgaria for the Participation of Bulgarian Troops in the Warsaw Pact Operation in Czechoslovakia