The Prague Spring and its Aftermath: Czechoslovak Politics, 1968-1970

285 Pages·1997·12.38 MB·English

by  Kieran Williams

The Prague Spring of 1968 was amongst the most important episodes in
post-war European politics. In this book Kieran Williams analyses the
attempt at reform socialism under Alexander Dubcek using materials
and sources which have become available in the wake of the 1989 revo-
lution. Drawing on declassified documents from party archives, the
author readdresses important questions surrounding the Prague Spring:
why did liberalization occur? What was it intended to achieve? Why did
the Soviet Union intervene with force? What was the political outcome
of the invasion? What part did the reformers play in ending the experi-
ment in reform socialism? What was the role of the security police under
Dubcek? The book will provide new information for specialists as well as
introductory analysis and narrative for students of East European poli-
tics and history and Soviet foreign policy.

The Prague Spring and its aftermath

The Prague Spring
and its aftermath
Czechoslovak politics, 1968-1970
Kieran Williams
School of Slavonic and East European Studies
University of London
| CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Kieran Williams 1997
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1997
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Williams, Kieran.
The Prague Spring and its aftermath : Czechoslovak politics,
1968-1970 / Kieran Williams,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0 52158226 1 - ISBN 0 52158803 0 (pbk.)
1. Czechoslovakia — History — Intervention, 1968.
2. Czechoslovakia — Politics and government — 1968-1989. I. Title.
DB2232.W55 1997
943.71'2042-dc20 96-43920 CIP
ISBN 978-0-521-58226-1 Hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-58803-4 Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or
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the accuracy of such information thereafter.
Contents
Preface page ix
List of abbreviations xii
Part I Liberalization, intervention, and normalization
1 Liberali2ation 3
2 Intervention 29
3 Normalization 39
Part II January 1968-December 1970
4 The erosion of Soviet trust 63
5 The failure of Operation Danube 112
6 Dubcek's normalization 144
7 The realist ascendancy 192
8 The security police in the Dubcek period 210
9 After Dubcek 226
Select bibliography 254
Index 266
vu

Preface
The events of 1968 in Czechoslovakia, usually referred to as the Prague
Spring, remain among the most important in the political history of post-
war Eastern Europe, and of Europe as a whole. Not surprisingly, a size-
able literature has arisen dealing with those events, and another study
might not immediately appear needed. There are several interrelated
reasons, however, to warrant it. The first is the change of perspective
made possible by the passage of three decades, the revolution in
Czechoslovakia after November 1989, the end of Soviet hegemony in
Central Europe, and the discrediting of the idea of reform communism
with the failure of perestroika.
Secondly, many of the existing studies of 1968, though of high quality
and enduring value, date from the mid-1970s and are coloured by the
prevailing concerns of that period, and many have been long out of print.
A third reason is that events in the former Soviet bloc have allowed the
release of thousands of previously classified documents, which gives us a
new opportunity to go beyond speculation based on limited public
sources or partial memoir material when analysing elite strategies and
interaction.
Finally, there is a new, post-1989 generation of students and lay readers
who have become interested in the history of Czechoslovakia and the
Soviet bloc, and who require a reasonably concise introduction to a
period that shaped the entire second half of the communist era in
Czechoslovakia and still generates controversy in the successor states.
The analysis that follows of the events of 1968-70 draws on the many
strengths of earlier scholarship but concentrates mostly on the new
sources that have become available since 1989. These materials include
newly released files from the Czechoslovak and Slovak Communist
Parties, the government and interior ministry of the former
Czechoslovakia, and from Hungarian, Polish, German, and Russian
archives. Most of these documents were collected by the Czechoslovak
Federal Government's Commission for Analysis of the Events of
1967-70 and its Slovak counterpart; the federal files are now housed at
ix