On the night of August 21, 1968, troops from five Warsaw Pact countries (USSR, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany and Poland) were brought into Czechoslovakia. The operation, codenamed "Danube", was aimed at stopping the process of reforms taking place in Czechoslovakia, initiated by the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Alexander Dubcek - the "Prague Spring".
From a geopolitical point of view, a dangerous situation arose for the USSR in one of the key countries of Eastern Europe. The prospect of Czechoslovakia withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact, which would result in an inevitable undermining of the Eastern European military security system, was unacceptable for the USSR.
Within 36 hours, the armies of the Warsaw Pact countries established complete control over Czechoslovak territory. On August 23-26, 1968, negotiations took place in Moscow between the Soviet and Czechoslovak leadership. Their result was a joint communique, in which the timing of the withdrawal of Soviet troops was made dependent on the normalization of the situation in Czechoslovakia.
On October 16, 1968, an agreement was signed between the governments of the USSR and Czechoslovakia on the conditions for the temporary presence of Soviet troops on the territory of Czechoslovakia, according to which part of the Soviet troops remained on the territory of Czechoslovakia “in order to ensure the security of the socialist commonwealth.” In accordance with the agreement, the Central Group of Forces (CGV) was created. The headquarters of the Central Military Command was located in the town of Milovice near Prague. The treaty contained provisions on respect for the sovereignty of Czechoslovakia and non-interference in its internal affairs. The signing of the agreement became one of the main military-political results of the entry of troops of five states, which satisfied the leadership of the USSR and the Warsaw Department.
On October 17, 1968, the phased withdrawal of allied troops from the territory of Czechoslovakia began, which was completed by mid-November.
As a result of the entry of troops into Czechoslovakia, a radical change in the course of the Czechoslovak leadership occurred. The process of political and economic reforms in the country was interrupted. In 1969, at the April plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Gustav Husak was elected first secretary. In December 1970, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia adopted the document “Lessons of the crisis development in the party and society after the XIII Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia,” which generally condemned the political course of Alexander Dubcek and his circle.
In the second half of the 1980s, the process of rethinking the Czechoslovak events of 1968 began. In the “Statement of the leaders of Bulgaria, Hungary, the GDR, Poland and the Soviet Union” dated December 4, 1989 and in the “Statement of the Soviet Government” dated December 5, 1989, the decision to introduce Allied troops to Czechoslovakia was considered erroneous as unjustified interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.
On December 10, 1989, after the victory of the Velvet Revolution (the bloodless overthrow of the communist regime as a result of street protests in November-December 1989), Czechoslovak President Gustav Husak resigned and a new coalition government of national accord was formed, in which the communists and the opposition received the same number of places. A “reconstruction” of the parliament was carried out, where the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia lost its majority. On December 28-29, 1989, the reorganized parliament elected Alexander Dubcek as its chairman.
Operation Danube. This is exactly what the documents called the strategic exercise of the troops of the five member countries of the Warsaw Pact, the purpose of which was “to protect the socialist gains in Czechoslovakia.” Under Gorbachev, the entry of troops into Czechoslovakia on August 21, 1968 was written as “the suppression of the construction of socialism with a human face,” and after the collapse of the USSR, these events are described only in a sharply condemning and rude form, the foreign policy of the USSR is considered aggressive, Soviet soldiers are called “occupiers” and so on…
Today's publicists do not want to take into account the fact that all events in the world took place, and are still taking place, in a specific international or domestic situation in a given period of time, and they judge the past by the standards of today. Question: could the leadership of the countries of the socialist camp and, first of all, the Soviet Union at that time make a different decision?
International situation
At that time, there were two worlds in Europe, opposite in ideologies - socialist and capitalist. Two economic organizations - the so-called Common Market in the West and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance in the East.
There were two opposing military blocs - NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Now they only remember that in 1968 in the GDR there was a Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, in Poland there was a Northern Group of Soviet Forces and in Hungary there was a Southern Group of Forces.
But for some reason they don’t remember that troops from the United States, Great Britain, and Belgium were stationed on the territory of Germany and that the army corps of the Netherlands and France were ready to move out if necessary. Both military groups were in a state of full combat readiness.
Each side defended its interests and, observing external decency, tried by any means to weaken the other.
Social and political situation in Czechoslovakia
At the January 1968 Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the mistakes and shortcomings of the country's leadership were fairly criticized, and a decision was made on the need for changes in the way the state's economy is managed.
Alexander Dubcek was elected General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, who led the implementation of reforms, later called “the construction of socialism with a human face.” The country's top leadership changed (except for President L. Svoboda), and with it, domestic and foreign policy began to change.
Using the criticism of the leadership voiced at the Plenum, opposition political forces, speculating on demands for the “expansion” of democracy, began to discredit the Communist Party, government structures, state security agencies and socialism in general. Hidden preparations for a change in the political system began.
In the media, on behalf of the people, they demanded: the abolition of the party's leadership of economic and political life, the declaration of the Communist Party of Human Rights as a criminal organization, a ban on its activities, the dissolution of state security agencies and the People's Militia. (People's Militia is the name of the armed party workers' detachments, preserved since 1948, reporting directly to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.)
Various “clubs” arose throughout the country (“Club 231”, “Club of Active Non-Party People”) and other organizations, the main goal and task of which was to denigrate the history of the country after 1945, rally the opposition, and conduct anti-constitutional propaganda.
By mid-1968, the Ministry of Internal Affairs received about 70 applications for registration of new organizations and associations. Thus, “Club 231” (Based on Article 231 of the Law on the Protection of the Constitution, anti-state and anti-constitutional activities were punishable) was established in Prague on March 31, 1968, although it did not have permission from the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
The club united over 40 thousand people, among whom were former criminals and state criminals. As the newspaper Rude Pravo noted, the club’s members included former Nazis, SS men, Henleinites, ministers of the puppet “Slovak State,” and representatives of the reactionary clergy.
At one of the meetings, the general secretary of the club, Yaroslav Brodsky, stated: “The best communist is a dead communist, and if he is still alive, then his legs should be pulled out.” Branches of the club were created at enterprises and in various organizations, which were called “Societies for the Defense of Word and Press.”
One of the most striking anti-constitutional materials can be considered the appeal of the underground organization “Revolutionary Committee of the Democratic Party of Slovakia,” distributed in June in organizations and enterprises in the city of Svit.
It put forward demands: to dissolve collective farms and cooperatives, distribute land to peasants, hold elections under the control of England, the USA, Italy and France, stop criticism of Western states in the press, and focus it on the USSR, allow the legal activities of political parties that existed in bourgeois Czechoslovakia, to annex “Transcarpathian Rus” to Czechoslovakia in 1968. The appeal ended with the call: “Death of the Communist Party!”
On May 6, the French weekly Express quoted Antonin Lim, editor of the foreign department of the newspaper Literary Listy, as saying: “Today in Czechoslovakia there is a question of taking power.” The Social Democratic Party and the Labor Party revived their activities underground.
In order to create some kind of counterbalance to the Warsaw Pact, the idea of creating the Little Entente was revived as a regional bloc of socialist and capitalist states and a buffer between the great powers.
Publications on this topic were picked up by the Western press. Notable was the remark of an analyst for the French newspaper Le Figaro: “The geographical position of Czechoslovakia can turn it both into a bolt of the Warsaw Pact, a pact, and into a gap that opens up the entire military system of the Eastern bloc.”
In May, a group of employees of the Prague Military-Political Academy published "Remarks on the development of the Action Program of the Czechoslovak People's Army." The authors proposed “the withdrawal of Czechoslovakia from the Warsaw Pact or, possibly, joint actions of Czechoslovakia with other socialist countries to eliminate the Warsaw Pact as a whole and replace it with a system of bilateral relations.” As an option, there was a proposal to take a position of “consistent neutrality” in foreign policy.
Serious attacks from the standpoint of “sound economic calculation” were also made against the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance.
On June 14, the Czechoslovak opposition invited the famous “Sovietologist” Zbigniew Brzezinski to give lectures in Prague, in which he outlined his “liberalization” strategy, called for the destruction of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, as well as the abolition of the police and state security. According to him, he fully “supported the interesting Czechoslovak experiment.”
Calls for “rapprochement” with Germany, heard not only in the media, but also in the speeches of some of the country’s leaders, directly undermined the national interests of Czechoslovakia.
It wasn't just about words.
The western borders of Czechoslovakia were opened, and border barriers and fortifications began to be eliminated. According to the instructions of the Minister of State Security Pavel, the spies of Western countries identified by counterintelligence were not detained, but were given the opportunity to leave. (In 1969, Pavel was put on trial and shot by the Czechoslovak authorities.)
Activities of foreign authorities, military and media
During this period, consultative meetings of representatives of NATO countries were held, at which possible measures were studied to bring Czechoslovakia out of the socialist camp. The United States expressed its readiness to influence Czechoslovakia on the issue of obtaining a loan from capitalist countries, using Czechoslovakia's interest in returning its gold reserves.
In 1968, the Vatican intensified its activities in Czechoslovakia. Its leadership recommended directing the Catholic Church's activities to merge with the "independence" and "liberalization" movements, and to take on the role of "support and freedom in the countries of Eastern Europe", focusing on Czechoslovakia, Poland and the German Democratic Republic.
The population of Czechoslovakia was persistently instilled with the idea that there was no danger of revanchism from the Federal Republic of Germany, and that one could think about returning the Sudeten Germans to the country. The newspaper “General Anzeiger” (Germany) wrote: “The Sudeten Germans will expect from Czechoslovakia, liberated from communism, a return to the Munich Agreement, according to which in the fall of 1938 the Sudetenland ceded to Germany.”
In the program of the National Democratic Party of Germany, one of the points read: “The Sudetenland must again become German, because they were acquired by Nazi Germany within the framework of the Munich Treaty, which is an effective international agreement.” This program was actively supported by the Sudeten German Community and the neo-fascist organization Witikobund.
And the editor of the Czech trade union newspaper Prace, Jirczek, told German television: “About 150 thousand Germans live in our country. One can hope that the remaining 100-200 thousand could return to their homeland a little later.” Of course, no one anywhere recalled the persecution of the Czechs by the Sudeten Germans.
Correspondence from the ADN agency reported that Bundeswehr officers were repeatedly sent to Czechoslovakia for reconnaissance purposes. This applied, first of all, to the officers of the 2nd Army Corps, whose units were stationed near the border of Czechoslovakia.
Later it became known that in preparation for the “Black Lion” exercise of the German troops planned for the fall, the entire command staff of the 2nd Corps, up to and including the battalion commander, visited Czechoslovakia as tourists and traveled along the likely routes of movement of their units.
With the start of the “exercise,” it was planned to take a short push to occupy the territories seized by Germany in 1938 and present the international community with a fait accompli. The calculation was based on the fact that if the USSR and the USA did not fight over the Arab territories captured by Israel in 1967, then they will not now.
In order to create a situation in Czechoslovakia that would facilitate Czechoslovakia's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, the NATO Council developed the Zephyr program.
An article in the Finnish newspaper Päivän Sanomat dated September 6, 1968 reported that in the region of Regensburg (Germany) “an organ has worked and continues to function to monitor Czechoslovak events. In July, a special Monitoring and Control Center began operating, which American officers call “Strike Group Headquarters.” It has more than 300 employees, including intelligence officers and political advisers.
The center reported information about the situation in Czechoslovakia to NATO headquarters three times a day.” An interesting remark by a representative of NATO headquarters: “Although due to the entry of Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia and the conclusion of the Moscow Agreement, the special center did not solve the tasks assigned to it, its activities were and continue to be valuable experience for the future.”
Choice
Thus, by the spring of 1968, the countries of the socialist camp were faced with a choice:
- allow opposition forces to push Czechoslovakia off the socialist path;
- open the way to the East for a potential enemy, jeopardizing not only the Warsaw Pact troop groups, but also the results of the Second World War;
OR
- by the efforts of the commonwealth countries to defend the socialist system in Czechoslovakia and provide assistance to the development of its economy;
- put an end to Munich politics once and for all, rejecting all claims of Hitler’s revanchist heirs;
- put a barrier in front of the new “Drang nach Osten”, showing the whole world that no one will be able to redraw the post-war borders established as a result of the struggle of many peoples against fascism.
Based on the current situation, at the end of July 1968, the second was chosen. However, if the leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia had not shown such weakness and tolerance towards the enemies of the ruling party and the existing political system, nothing like this would have happened.
The military-political leadership of the USSR and other Warsaw Pact countries closely followed the events in Czechoslovakia and tried to convey their assessment to the authorities of Czechoslovakia. Meetings of the top leadership of the Warsaw Pact countries took place in Prague, Dresden, Warsaw, Cierna nad Tisou. During the meetings, the current situation was discussed, recommendations were given to the Czech leadership, but to no avail.
In the last days of July, at a meeting in Cierna nad Tisou, A. Dubcek was told that if the recommended measures were refused, the troops of the socialist countries would enter Czechoslovakia. Dubcek not only did not take any measures, but also did not convey this warning to the members of the Central Committee and the government of the country.
From a military point of view, there could be no other solution. The separation of the Sudetenland from the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, and even more so of the entire country from the Warsaw Pact, and its alliance with NATO put the grouping of Commonwealth troops in the GDR, Poland and Hungary under flank attack. The potential enemy received direct access to the border of the Soviet Union.
From the memoirs of the commander of the Alpha group of the KGB of the USSR, Hero of the Soviet Union, retired Major General Gennady Nikolaevich Zaitsev (in 1968 - group leader of the 7th Directorate of the KGB of the USSR during Operation Danube):
« At that time, the situation in Czechoslovakia looked like this.
... It was no longer even the “progressives” from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia that began to come to the fore, but non-party forces - members of various “social” and “political” clubs, which were distinguished by their orientation towards the West and hatred of Russians. June marked the beginning of a new phase of aggravation of the situation in Czechoslovakia and the leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and in mid-August the Dub-chek team completely lost control over the situation in the country.
It is also noteworthy that some leaders of the Prague Spring believed that the sympathies of the West would certainly materialize in the form of a tough anti-Soviet position of the United States in the event of forceful actions by the Soviet Union».
The task was set: the group led by G.N. Zaitsev to enter the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and take control of it. The Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs I. Pavel managed to escape the day before. According to numerous testimonies, I. Pavel, as the Prague Spring developed, gradually liquidated state security agencies, getting rid of communist cadres and supporters of Moscow.
He threatened his employees who tried to work to neutralize the so-called “progressives” (the Club of Non-Party Activists and the K-231 organization) with reprisals. Before the government's decision, they were given an order: to immediately stop jamming foreign broadcasts and begin dismantling the equipment.
... The documents contained information that the Minister of Internal Affairs I. Pavel and the head of the department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, General Prhlik, “prepared a project for the creation of a leading Center, which should take all state power into its own hands during times of political tension in the country.” It also spoke of the implementation of “preventive security measures aimed against protests by conservative forces, including the creation of labor camps.”
In other words, the country was carrying out hidden, but very real preparations for the creation of concentration camps, where all forces opposing the regime “with a human face” were to be hidden... And if we add to this the titanic efforts of some foreign intelligence services and agents of Western influence, who intended to tear off the Czechoslovakia from the Eastern Bloc, then the overall picture of events did not look as clear as they are trying to convince us of it.
... How did you manage to capture a by no means small European country in the shortest possible time and with minimal losses? The neutral position of the Czechoslovak army (which was about 200 thousand people armed with modern military equipment at that time) played a significant role in this course of events. I want to emphasize that General Martin Dzur played a key role in that very difficult situation. But the main reason for the low number of casualties was the behavior of Soviet soldiers, who showed amazing restraint in Czechoslovakia.
... According to Czech historians, about a hundred people died during the entry of troops, about a thousand were wounded and injured.
... I am convinced that at that time there was simply no other way out of the crisis. In my opinion, the results of the Prague Spring are very instructive. If it were not for the harsh actions of the USSR and its allies, the Czech leadership, having instantly passed the stage of “socialism with a human face”, would have found itself in the arms of the West. The Warsaw bloc would have lost a strategically important state in the center of Europe, NATO would have found itself at the borders of the USSR.
Let's be completely honest: the operation in Czechoslovakia gave peace to two generations of Soviet children. Or is it not? After all, by “letting go” of Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union would inevitably face a house of cards effect. Unrest would break out in Poland and Hungary. Then it would be the turn of the Baltic states, and after that the Transcaucasus.”
Start
On the night of August 21, troops of five Warsaw Pact countries entered the territory of Czechoslovakia, and troops landed at the Prague airfield. The troops were ordered not to open fire until they were fired upon. The columns walked at high speeds; stopped cars were pushed off the roadway so as not to interfere with traffic.
By morning, all the advanced military units of the Commonwealth countries reached the designated areas. Czechoslovak troops were ordered not to leave the barracks. Their military camps were blocked, batteries were removed from armored vehicles, fuel was drained from tractors.
It is interesting that in early August, representatives of the People’s Militia units met with their commander A. Dubcek and presented an ultimatum: either he changes the leadership’s policy, or on August 22, the People’s Militia will put all important objects under its control, take power into their own hands, and remove him from his post Secretary General and will demand the convening of a party congress. Dubcek listened to them, but did not answer anything concrete.
The main thing is that he did not tell the commanders of the armed party units subordinate to him personally about the ultimatum he received in Cierna nad Tisou from the leaders of the GDR, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and the USSR. Apparently he was counting on something. And when the Warsaw Pact troops entered Czechoslovakia on August 21, the leadership of the detachments and ordinary communists considered this an insult.
They believed that they could cope with the situation in the country themselves, without bringing in foreign troops. Life showed that then they overestimated their strength. Only after the defeat of the opposition in August 1969 did opponents of the regime go underground for a long time.
Attitude of the local population
At first, the attitude of the local population towards the military personnel of the Commonwealth countries was bad. Intoxicated by hostile propaganda, the duplicitous behavior of the top officials of the state, the lack of information about the true reasons for the deployment of troops, and sometimes intimidated by local oppositionists, people not only looked askance at the foreign soldiers.
Stones were thrown at cars, and at night the troops' locations were fired upon from small arms. Signs and markers on the roads were demolished, and the walls of houses were painted with slogans such as “Occupiers, go home!”, “Shoot the occupier!” and so on.
Sometimes local residents secretly came to military units and asked why Soviet troops came. And it would be okay if only Russians came, otherwise they also brought “Caucasians” with “narrow-eyed” people with them. In the center of Europe (!) people were surprised that the Soviet army was multinational.
Actions of the opposition forces
The entry of Allied troops showed the Czech opposition forces and their foreign inspirers that hopes of seizing power were dashed. However, they decided not to give up, but called for armed resistance. In addition to shelling of cars, helicopters and locations of allied troops, terrorist attacks began against Czech party workers and intelligence officers.
The evening edition of the English newspaper The Sunday Times on August 27 published an interview with one of the leaders of the underground. He reported that by August “the underground numbered about 40 thousand people armed with automatic weapons.” A significant part of the weapons was secretly supplied from the West, primarily from Germany. However, it was not possible to use it.
In the very first days after the entry of the Allied troops, in cooperation with the Czech security authorities, several thousand machine guns, hundreds of machine guns and grenade launchers were seized from many hiding places and basements. Even mortars were found.
Thus, even in the Prague house of journalists, which was led by extreme opposition figures, 13 machine guns, 81 machine guns and 150 boxes of ammunition were discovered. At the beginning of 1969, a ready-made concentration camp was discovered in the Tatra Mountains. Who built it and for whom was unknown at that time.
Information and psychological warfare
Another evidence of the existence of organized anti-constitutional forces in Czechoslovakia is the fact that by 8 o’clock on August 21, underground radio stations began operating in all regions of the country, on some days up to 30-35 units.
Not only radio stations that were pre-installed on cars, trains and in secret shelters were used, but also equipment seized from MPVO agencies, from branches of the Union for Cooperation with the Army (such as DOSAAF in the USSR), and from large rural farms.
Underground radio transmitters were combined into a system that determined the time and duration of operation. Capture teams discovered working radio stations deployed in apartments, hidden in the safes of leaders of various organizations. There were also radio stations in special suitcases along with tables of wave transmission at different times of the day. Install the antenna supplied with the station and work.
Radio stations, as well as four underground television channels, disseminated false information, rumors, and calls for the destruction of Allied troops, sabotage, and sabotage. They also transmitted encrypted information and code signals to the underground forces.
The radio transmitters of the West German 701st Psychological Warfare Battalion fit well into this “choir”.
At first, Soviet radio intelligence officers were surprised that a number of anti-government stations were taking direction in the west, but their guesses were confirmed on September 8 by the Stern magazine (Germany).
The magazine reported that on August 23, the newspaper Literary Listy, followed by underground radio, reported that “allied troops fired at the children’s hospital on Charles Square. Windows, ceilings, expensive medical equipment were broken...” A German television reporter rushed to the area, but the hospital building was undamaged.
According to Stern magazine, “this false information was transmitted not from Czech, but from West German territory.” The magazine noted that the events of these days "provided an ideal opportunity for practical training for the 701st Battalion."
If the first leaflets announcing the entry of Allied troops were issued by official government or party bodies and printing houses, then the subsequent ones did not contain any output data. In many cases, the texts and appeals were the same in different parts of the country.
A change of scenery
Slowly, but the situation changed.
The Central Group of Forces was formed, Soviet military units began to settle in the Czech military towns liberated for them, where the chimneys were filled with bricks, the sewers were clogged, and the windows were broken. In April 1969, A. Dubcek was replaced by G. Husak, and the country's leadership changed.
Emergency laws were adopted, according to which, in particular, showing a fist to a Russian “cost” up to three months of imprisonment, and a provoked fight with Russians - six. At the end of 1969, military personnel were allowed to bring their families to the garrisons where construction battalions had built housing. Construction of housing for families continued until 1972.
So, what kind of “occupiers” are these who sacrificed their lives so that civilians would not die, did not respond with a shot to the most blatant provocations, and saved people unknown to them from reprisals? Who lived in hangars and warehouses, and the beds, even in the officers' and women's (for medical staff, typists, waitresses) dormitories, were in two tiers? Who preferred to act not as soldiers, but as agitators, explaining the situation and their tasks to the population?
Conclusion
The deployment of troops from the Warsaw Pact countries into Czechoslovakia was a forced measure aimed at preserving the unity of the countries of the socialist camp, as well as preventing the entry of NATO troops onto the borders of the USSR.
Soviet soldiers were not occupiers and did not behave like invaders. No matter how pretentious it may sound, in August 1968 they defended their country at the forefront of the socialist camp. The tasks assigned to the army were completed with minimal losses.
No matter what modern political scientists say, in that situation the government of the USSR and other countries of the socialist camp made a decision that was adequate to the current situation. Even the current generation of Czechs should be grateful to the Soviet army for the fact that the Sudetenland remained part of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and their state exists within modern borders.
"Notes in the Margins"
But here’s what’s interesting and raises questions.
The soldiers who were the first(!) to be called “Internationalist Warriors” are not even recognized as such in Russia, although by Order of the Minister of Defense, Marshal of the Soviet Union A. Grechko No. 242 dated October 17, 1968, they were thanked for fulfilling their international duty.
By order of the USSR Minister of Defense No. 220 dated July 5, 1990, “The list of states, cities, territories and periods of combat operations with the participation of citizens of the Russian Federation” was supplemented by the Republic of Cuba.
For unknown reasons, Czechoslovakia (the only one!) was not included in the list, and, as a result, the relevant documents were not handed over to former military personnel who performed international duty in this country.
The issues of whether or not to recognize the participants in the operation as internationalist soldiers and combat veterans were repeatedly discussed at various levels.
A group of scientists, having analyzed the materials available for study and after meetings with direct participants in the Czechoslovak events, stated that “in 1968, a superbly planned and flawlessly executed military operation was carried out in Czechoslovakia, during which combat operations were carried out. Both from the point of view of military science and the real situation in the use of forces and means.”
And the soldiers and officers who fulfilled their duty during Operation Danube have every right to be called internationalist warriors and fall under the category of “combatants.”
However, the Russian Ministry of Defense does not recognize them as such, and in response to questions and requests from regional organizations of participants in Operation Danube, it replies that there were “only military clashes,” and they were thanked for “fulfilling an international duty,” and not for participating in hostilities.
Today, the youngest participants in Operation Danube are already 64 years old, and every year their ranks become thinner. The last, according to the author of the article, appeal only from the Rostov organization of participants in Operation Danube was sent to the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation in January of this year. Let's wait to see what the new minister will answer.
At two o'clock in the morning on August 21, 1968, a Soviet An-24 passenger plane requested an emergency landing at Prague's Ruzyne Airport. The controllers gave the go-ahead, the plane landed, and servicemen from the 7th Guards Airborne Division stationed in Kaunas disembarked. The paratroopers, under the threat of using weapons, seized all the facilities of the airfield and began receiving An-12 transport aircraft with paratrooper units and military equipment. Transport An-12s landed on the runway every 30 seconds. This is how the operation to occupy Czechoslovakia, carefully developed by the USSR, began and ended with the so-called. The Prague Spring was a process of democratic reforms carried out by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia under the leadership of Alexander Dubcek.
The operation to capture Czechoslovakia, which was called the Danube, involved the armies of four socialist countries: the USSR, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria. The GDR army was also supposed to enter the territory of Czechoslovakia, but at the last moment the Soviet leadership was afraid of the analogy with 1939 and the Germans did not cross the border. The main striking force of the grouping of troops of the Warsaw Pact countries was the Soviet Army - these were 18 motorized rifle, tank and airborne divisions, 22 aviation and helicopter regiments, with a total number, according to various sources, from 170 to 240 thousand people. About 5,000 tanks alone were involved. Two fronts were created - the Carpathian and Central, and the size of the combined group of troops reached half a million military personnel. The invasion was, according to the usual Soviet habit, presented as assistance to the fraternal Czechoslovak people in the fight against counter-revolution.
Of course, there was no sign of any counter-revolution in Czechoslovakia. The country fully supported the Communist Party, which began political and economic reforms in January 1968. In terms of the number of communists per 1000 people, Czechoslovakia ranked first in the world. With the beginning of the reforms, censorship was significantly weakened, free discussions took place everywhere, and the creation of a multi-party system began. A desire was stated to ensure complete freedom of speech, assembly and movement, to establish strict control over the activities of security agencies, to facilitate the organization of private enterprises and to reduce state control over production. In addition, it was planned to federalize the state and expand the powers of the authorities of the constituent entities of Czechoslovakia - the Czech Republic and Slovakia. All this, of course, worried the leadership of the USSR, which pursued a policy of limited sovereignty towards its vassals in Europe (the so-called “Brezhnev Doctrine”). They repeatedly tried to persuade Dubcek’s team to remain on a short leash with Moscow and not strive to build socialism according to Western standards. Persuasion did not help. In addition, Czechoslovakia remained a country where the USSR was never able to deploy either its military bases or tactical nuclear weapons. And this moment was, perhaps, the main reason for such a military operation disproportionate to the scale of the country - the Kremlin Politburo needed to force the Czechoslovaks to obey themselves at any cost. The leadership of Czechoslovakia, in order to avoid bloodshed and destruction of the country, withdrew the army to the barracks and gave the Soviet troops the opportunity to freely decide the fate of the Czechs and Slovaks. The only type of resistance that the occupiers encountered was civil protest. This was especially evident in Prague, where unarmed city residents staged a real obstruction to the invaders.
At three o'clock in the morning on August 21 (it was also a Wednesday), Prime Minister Chernik was arrested by Soviet soldiers. At 4:50 a column of tanks and armored personnel carriers headed towards the building of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, where a twenty-year-old resident of Prague was shot dead. In Dubcek's office, the Soviet military arrested him and seven members of the Central Committee. At seven in the morning the tanks headed to Vinogradskaya 12, where Radio Prague was located. Residents managed to build barricades there, tanks began to break through, and fire was opened on people. That morning, seventeen people died near the Radio building, another 52 were injured and taken to the hospital. After 14:00, the arrested leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was put on a plane and taken to Ukraine with the assistance of the country's president, Ludwig Svoboda, who fought as best he could against the puppet government of Biljak and Indra (thanks to Svoboda, Dubcek was saved and then transported to Moscow). A curfew was introduced in the city; in the dark, soldiers opened fire on any moving object.
01. In the evening, European time, the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting in New York, at which it adopted a resolution condemning the invasion. The USSR vetoed it.
02. Trucks with students holding national flags in their hands began driving around the city. All key objects of the city were taken under control by Soviet troops.
03. At the National Museum. Residents of the city immediately surrounded the military equipment and entered into conversations with the soldiers, often very sharp and tense. Shooting was heard in certain areas of the city, and the wounded were constantly being taken to hospitals.
06. In the morning, young people began to build barricades, attack tanks, threw stones and petrol bottles at them, and tried to set fire to military equipment.
08. Inscription on the bus: Soviet cultural center.
10. One of the wounded as a result of soldiers firing into the crowd.
11. Massive acts of sabotage began throughout Prague. To make it difficult for military personnel to navigate the city, Prague residents began to destroy street signs, knock down signs with street names and house numbers.
13. Soviet soldiers broke into the Church of St. Martin in Bratislava. First they shot at the windows and tower of the medieval church, then they broke the locks and got inside. The altar and donation box were opened, the organ and church supplies were broken, paintings were destroyed, benches and the pulpit were broken. The soldiers climbed into the crypts with burials and broke several gravestones there. This church was robbed throughout the day by different groups of military personnel.
14. Units of Soviet troops enter the city of Liberec
15. Dead and wounded after the military stormed Prague Radio.
16. Entry to unauthorized persons is strictly prohibited
19. The walls of houses, shop windows, and fences have become a platform for merciless criticism of the occupiers.
20. “Run home, Ivan, Natasha is waiting for you,” “Not a drop of water, not a loaf of bread for the occupiers,” “Bravo, guys! Hitler”, “USSR, go home”, “Twice occupied, twice taught”, “1945 - liberators, 1968 - occupiers”, “We were afraid of the West, we were attacked from the East”, “Not hands up, but heads up!” , “You have conquered space, but not us”, “An elephant can’t swallow a hedgehog”, “Don’t call it hatred, call it knowledge”, “Long live democracy. Without Moscow" - these are just a few examples of such wall-mounted propaganda.
21. “I had a little soldier, I loved him. I had a watch - the Red Army took it."
22. On Old Town Square.
25. I remember a contemporary interview with a Prague woman who, on the 21st, together with her friends from the university, went into the city to look at the Soviet military. “We thought there were some scary invaders there, but in fact, there were very young guys with peasant faces sitting on the armored personnel carriers, a little scared, constantly clutching their weapons, not understanding what they were doing here and why the crowd was reacting so aggressively to them. It was the commanders who told them that they had to go and save the Czech people from the counter-revolution.”
39. Homemade leaflet from those that they tried to distribute to Soviet soldiers.
40. Today, at the Prague Radio building, where people defending the radio station died on August 21, 1968, a memorial ceremony was held, wreaths were laid, and that morning broadcast from 1968, when the radio reported the attack on the country, was broadcast. The announcer reads the text, and in the background you can hear shooting on the street.
49. Candles are burning at the site of the National Museum, where a monument to student Jan Palach, who committed self-immolation, is erected.
51. At the beginning of Wenceslas Square there is an exhibition - a documentary film about the events of the “Prague Spring” and August 1968 is shown on a large screen, there is an infantry fighting vehicle with a characteristic white line, an ambulance of those years, there are stands with photographs and reproductions of Prague graffiti.
57. 1945: we kissed your fathers > 1968: you shed our blood and take away our freedom.
According to modern data, 108 Czechoslovak citizens were killed and more than 500 wounded during the invasion, the vast majority of them were civilians. On the first day of the invasion alone, 58 people were killed or mortally wounded, including seven women and an eight-year-old child.
The result of the operation to remove the leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the occupation of the country was the deployment of a Soviet military contingent in Czechoslovakia: five motorized rifle divisions, totaling up to 130 thousand people, 1,412 tanks, 2,563 armored personnel carriers and Temp-S operational-tactical missile systems with nuclear warheads. A leadership loyal to Moscow was brought to power, and the party was purged. The Prague Spring reforms were completed only after 1991.
Photos: Josef Koudelka, Libor Hajsky, CTK, Reuters, drugoi
The topic of a real assessment of the events in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 is very important. Why? Yes, because the losses of Soviet troops amounted to 720 people killed, 1540 wounded; 51 people are missing. . These were someone's sons, fathers, brothers. They lived on the next street, in your house. By calling a soldier who died in Hungary or Czechoslovakia an “occupier,” you insult not only his memory. You are insulting yourself...
They were never any occupiers. They were Russian soldiers. They defended its interests in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, so that there would be no war in the Caucasus and Ukraine.
Therefore, a correct understanding of the events of those years is very important. In the book, I examined in detail the reasons for the events in Hungary. There is a lot of information there about the Czechoslovak events of 1968.
I bring to your attention very detailed material on this second topic.
But before you read it, I’ll ask one question: what happened to Alexander Dubcek, who at the time of the entry of troops of the Warsaw Pact countries into the territory of Czechoslovakia was the first secretary of the Communist Party and the de facto leader of the country.
If you believe the stories about the occupation, then his “occupiers” should have repressed him. No one killed him, tried him, or arrested him.
“He retained his post for some time, but in April 1969 he was not re-elected to the post of First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. In 1969-1970 he worked as the Czechoslovakia's ambassador to Turkey. In July 1970, the plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia expelled Dubcek from the party, he was also deprived of his status as a deputy of the Federal Assembly and relieved of his duties as ambassador to Turkey.
That is, after an attempt to break Czechoslovakia away from the Warsaw Pact, the initiator of these actions was simply transferred... to another job. This is the occupation, this is the “repression”.
And then freedom came. The USSR disappeared, and Dubcek again took up politics. In December 1989, he was elected chairman of the Federal Assembly of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and led its work until June 1992. Then he resigned. The fact is that the “division” of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia began. Dubcek, a Slovak by nationality, wanted to become president of Slovakia.
And he died very quickly in a very strange car accident in the fall of 1992.
This is what “democracy” is like...
“Socialism with a human face” in Czechoslovakia cost the lives of 96 of our soldiers.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the bloody events in Czechoslovakia. Then, within one year, the people of this country, under the leadership of the Communist Party, first built communism, then “socialism with a human face,” and then communism again.
And all this time the same person was at the head of the party - Alexander Dubcek. First in the West, and now here, a stereotype has developed regarding the events in Czechoslovakia in 1968: they wanted to improve socialism in this country, but the USSR and its allies sent in troops and suppressed this process by force. However, the facts indicate something completely different. However, throughout modern history, not only a human face, but even a human attitude from this country has not been seen by any of its neighbors.
As you know, Czechs and Slovaks received their state in modern Europe after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Unlike the Hungarians, they did not fight for it. Carrying out the will of England, France and the USA, the new state participated in the destruction of the Slovak and Hungarian Soviet republics.
It also always supported the Czechoslovak corps, which actively participated in the Russian Civil War on the side of the Whites. When the Red Army began to crush the Whites, the legionnaires abandoned the front and rushed to Vladivostok to sail home from there, seizing trains and throwing Russian women, children and the wounded out into the cold.
In exchange for unhindered passage, they handed over Admiral Kolchak to the Reds. They say that when they parted, he told them: “Thank you, Czech dogs!”
But the legionnaires of the Czechoslovak Corps took with them to their homeland more than 2000 bars from the gold reserves of our country.
The question of compensation for this Czechoslovak robbery has not even been raised for 100 years. But now the program of the current Czech Ministry of Defense to install 58 monuments to the White Czechs in Russia is being successfully implemented, but at the same time they have already been installed in 22 Russian cities!
And this despite the fact that in the Czech Republic desecration of monuments to soldiers of the Soviet army occurs almost every month. The last case of desecration of the monument to Marshal Konev in Prague occurred on May 8, 2018. The Soviet tank, the first to burst into Prague in May 1945, has been removed from its pedestal. Before this, it was regularly painted pink. In Slovakia, the monument to the Soviet army on Mount Slavin is maintained in perfect condition.
The Czech Republic became part of the Third Reich peacefully even before the Second World War - in March 1939. Slovakia became a formally independent state and even sent its troops to the USSR on the eastern front. However, they were of little use to Hitler, since the Slovaks constantly switched en masse to the side of the Soviet army and partisans.
So on May 15, 1943, the chief of staff of the 101st Infantry Regiment, Jan Nalepka, went over to the partisans of Belarus with a large group of officers and soldiers, and a partisan detachment was formed from them. On June 8, 1943, they were joined by soldier Martin Korbelya, who stole a tank with ammunition. On October 29, 1943, in the Melitopol area, 2,600 Slovaks immediately went over to our side. In December 1943, another 1,250 Slovak soldiers went to the Belarusian partisans. 27 Slovak pilots flew to Soviet airfields. On August 27, 1944, the Slovak uprising began with the murder of 22 German officers, in which 60 thousand Slovaks took part and which lasted two months.
The Slovaks, who went over to the side of the Soviet troops, formed the basis of the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps, which fought on the Soviet-German front and took part in the liberation of Slovakia.
After joining the Third Reich, the Czech Republic received the name “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.” In the German version of the name, the Czech Republic was called Bohemia. The President of Czechoslovakia, Emil Haha, remained its president, although the real power was with the Reich Protectors, who were appointed in Berlin. Executive power was in the hands of Czech ministers, and the government was headed by the Czech Jaroslav Krejci.
The monetary unit was not the Reichsmark, but the krone with inscriptions in two languages. Back in peaceful 1937, Czechoslovakia produced 200 guns, 4,500 machine guns, 18,000 rifles, millions of ammunition, trucks, tanks and airplanes every month. After the outbreak of war and the mobilization of the war industry, these numbers increased. There is no point in writing who this weapon shot at before 1945.
In theory, there was a resistance movement in the protectorate, but for some reason the activities of both pro-Soviet and pro-Western underground organizations were reduced almost exclusively to leaflets and strikes (demanding increased wages). True, on May 27, 1942, an attempt was made on the life of SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich in Prague, but it was carried out not by local Czechs, but by officers sent from London by the British Special Operations Directorate.
And the fact that at the time of the assassination Heydrich was going to work, accompanied only by a driver, suggests that the Germans felt at home in the protectorate. It is interesting that immediately after the assassination attempt, Heydrich was taken to the hospital by stopping a truck by a Czech policeman, although he could have shot him with impunity - the driver of the SS general ran away to pursue the assassins.
In London, sending a sabotage group to Prague, they hoped that after Heydrich’s death the Nazis would carry out mass executions, and the Czechs, outraged by this, would begin an “underground” fight against the Nazis. The calculations were 50% correct. The Germans shot 172 men out of 465 inhabitants in the village of Lidice, and a total of 1,331 people in the Czech Republic, but the partisan movement never appeared in the protectorate.
The Czechs themselves have an anecdote about their resistance movement, which tells about the meeting of Slovak and Czech partisans after the war.
The Czech, after listening to the Slovak’s story about how they derailed trains, exclaims: “Cool! But in our protectorate this was strictly prohibited.”
True, it cannot be said that the Czechs waited for liberation until the very end of the war. No, on May 5, 1945, when the Third Reich actually no longer existed, and only a few hours remained before the legal formalization of its liquidation, the Prague Uprising occurred. No one prepared or planned it. The German city authorities simply allowed the Czechs to display their national flags. Hanging out their flags, the residents of Prague began to tear down German ones, then knock down signs in German on stores, then rob the stores themselves, and in the end they simply rob and kill the German population. It was an ordinary German pogrom that became the beginning of the Prague Uprising.
Czech police took a particularly active part in it. They urgently needed to become anti-fascists, otherwise they might be remembered for their assistance to the Nazis in sending local Jews to concentration camps. However, German troops came to the aid of their civilian population, and calls for help to our army and to the armies of the Allies were heard on the radio.
The allies were of little interest in the fate of the Czechs, but our troops came to the rescue and carried out the Prague operation, which cost the lives of almost 12 thousand Soviet soldiers.
With the end of World War II, the misfortunes of the Germans living in Czechoslovakia did not end. No sooner had the ink dried on the act of surrender of Nazi Germany than the German and Hungarian minorities were required to wear white armbands with the letters N and M respectively. Their cars, motorcycles, bicycles, radios and telephones were confiscated. They were prohibited from speaking their native languages on the streets, from using public transport, and they could even visit shops only at certain hours. They did not have the right to change their place of residence and were required to register with the police.
And all this applied to those who had not committed any crimes against the Czechs in the protectorate. Those who committed or were members of the Nazi Party were punished both with and without a court verdict, most often by execution.
During the German occupation, nothing of the kind was used against the Czechs. They were only forbidden to listen to Soviet and Western radio stations under threat of execution. 350 thousand Czechs were taken to work in Germany, but some of them did it voluntarily. Thus, the position of the Germans and Hungarians in liberated Czechoslovakia was significantly worse than that of the Czechs in the protectorate.
However, the bullying of the Germans did not last long, as their deportation to Austria and Germany soon began. Three million Germans, whose ancestors had lived in the Czech Republic and Slovakia for centuries, were forced to leave the country in just a few months. As a farewell, the Germans had swastikas painted on their backs, robbed, raped, beaten, and often simply killed. According to official data, 18,816 Germans died.
The “Death March from Brno” entered world history, where 5,200 died during the deportation of 27 thousand Germans. Near the Czech city of Prerau (now Přerov), Czechoslovak soldiers stopped the train, took German settlers out of it and shot 265 people, including 74 children, the youngest of whom was 8 months old. True, this crime was recorded by the Soviet military commandant F. Popov, and the commander of the execution, Lieutenant Karol Pazur, was convicted and spent about ten years in prison. In Postelberg (today Postoloprty) 763 Germans were killed in five days, in Landskron (today Lanschkroun) 121 were killed in three days.
This is what the USSR NKVD commissioner for the group of Soviet occupation forces in Germany, General Ivan Serov, wrote to his People’s Commissar Marshal Lavrentiy Beria: “The Czechoslovak government issued a decree according to which all Germans living in Czechoslovakia are obliged to immediately leave for Germany. Local authorities, in connection with the decree, announce to the Germans that they must pack up and leave for Germany within 15 minutes. You are allowed to take 5 stamps with you on the trip.
You are not allowed to take any personal belongings or food. Every day up to 5,000 Germans arrive in Germany from Czechoslovakia, most of whom are women, old people and children. Being ruined and having no prospects for life, some of them commit suicide. For example, on June 8, the district commandant recorded 71 corpses.
In addition, in a number of cases, Czechoslovak officers and soldiers in populated areas where Germans live set up reinforced patrols in full combat readiness in the evening and open fire on the city at night. The German population, frightened, runs out of their houses, abandoning their property, and scatters. After this, the soldiers enter the houses, take away valuables and return to their units.”
For comparison, the deportation of about 150 thousand Germans from the Kaliningrad region and the Lithuanian SSR lasted six years - until 1951 and during it 48 people died, all as a result of disease.
People in today’s Czech Republic don’t like to remember all these historical events. But every year on August 21, senior government officials bring wreaths to the building of the Czech radio, recalling the so-called Prague Spring of 1968. This “spring” began in January and ended in August 1968.
It began with the election of Alexander Dubcek as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. He, as they said then, had an excellent profile. He was a member of the party since 1939, took part in the Slovak Uprising of 1944, was wounded twice, and his brother was killed by the Nazis. At the time of his election, he was 46 years old, of which 16 he lived in the USSR.
At first, he placed people personally loyal to him in key positions in the country, and then he declared that his main goal was “building socialism with a human face.” It turned out that in all other socialist countries he had an anti-human face. It was announced that changes would take place in the production sector, and the planned economy would be replaced by workers' self-government and self-financing.
In fact, during the eight months that the reforms were carried out, the only real result was the appearance of private taxis, and even then only in Prague.
The main ideologist of market socialism was Deputy Prime Minister Ota Shik. When he emigrated to Switzerland, journalists there directly asked him: how does your “socialism with a human face” differ from capitalism? The answer was: the absence of private property in large-scale industry. However, Schick immediately added that it would not remain state-owned, but would belong to shareholders.
Then he was told that joint-stock ownership is simply collective private property, and Schick could not object to this. However, all this demagoguery was used again 20 years later by the leader of another Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev, with much more serious consequences for the economy of our country.
In reality, Dubcek and his team carried out two major transformations: free travel abroad and what we called “glasnost” during the years of perestroika. Freedom of movement around the world actually did not matter much, since in those years the Czechoslovak koruna was not accepted for exchange for other currencies anywhere in the world.
But the opportunity to speak and write anything was used to the fullest. At first they criticized individual communist leaders, later they criticized the shortcomings of socialism, and then they demanded its abandonment.
Here is what the magazine “Mlada Fronta”, by the way, the organ of the Czechoslovak Youth Union - Komsomol, wrote on June 14: “The law that we will adopt must ban all communist activities in Czechoslovakia. We will ban the activities of the HRC and dissolve it. We will burn the books of communist ideologists - Marx, Engels, Lenin."
The same thing was written in Nazi Czech newspapers during the protectorate in 1939-1945, but this did not stop Czech youth two months later from calling Soviet soldiers fascists and drawing swastikas on their tanks and armored personnel carriers.
The magazine Literarni Listy supported the Komsomol press: “The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia must be considered the criminal organization that it has always been, and thrown out of public life.”
Party workers did not lag behind the Komsomol members. On May 6, the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Chestmir Cisarzh, at a meeting in honor of the 150th anniversary of Karl Marx, stated: “Socialism did not fully justify the hopes of the peoples and workers and made them feel the full weight of the revolutionary transition, all the physical and mental stress associated with the restructuring of the social structure, as well as a burden of delusions, mistakes and betrayal.”
Truly, with such communists there is no need for anti-communists. Regarding foreign affairs, the Czech media first demanded an independent foreign policy, then withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, then orientation toward the United States and Western European countries, and finally, the transfer of Transcarpathia to Czechoslovakia.
They demanded a reorientation of foreign trade from the USSR to Western countries, since “as a result of Soviet economic robbery, the standard of living is falling.” This was a lie: the standard of living was growing, Czechoslovakia received raw materials from the Soviet Union at prices significantly lower than market prices, and sold finished products: trams, clothes, shoes.
As a result of the “robbery,” the USSR’s debt to this country by 1991 amounted to $5.4 billion. For comparison, now that the reformers' dream of reorientation has come true, according to Czech radio on September 22, 2017, the Czech Republic's debt is 173 billion euros.
However, freedom of speech was also relative. For example, even the most anti-communist publications did not write a word about the privileges of party workers, which is how glasnost began in the USSR under Gorbachev. Dubcek’s team monitored this, and at the slightest attempt, they left the publications without paper and access to a printing house. And the local party officials had more privileges (comfortable housing and dachas, special supplies and medical care) than the Soviet ones.
Officially in the USSR, the minimum salary was 70 rubles, and the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee received 600 rubles. In Czechoslovakia, the head of the Communist Party received 25 thousand crowns, and even the average salary was 1,400 crowns.
Formally, no new parties were registered in Czechoslovakia, but their role was successfully played by anti-Soviet political clubs that appeared like mushrooms after the rain. The most famous was “Club 231,” named after the article providing for criminal liability for anti-state and anti-constitutional activities.
Initially, it united people previously convicted under this article, that is, former SS men, Nazi collaborators, spies, nationalists who were released thanks to the declared amnesty.
Its leader, Yaroslav Brodsky, said: “The best communist is a dead communist, and if he is still alive, then his legs should be pulled out.”
Another major political club was KAN - a club of engaged non-partisans. In total, about 70 clubs appeared, and they consisted of about 40 thousand people. Interestingly, approximately the same number of people later protested against the introduction of Warsaw Pact troops throughout Czechoslovakia. Not that much for a population of 14 million. On May 1, club members demonstrated in Prague with anti-communist and anti-Soviet slogans, but this did not stop Alexander Dubcek from greeting them from the podium.
Dubcek and the party leaders who supported him ruthlessly expelled those leaders who did not agree with the severance of relations with the USSR. For example, Deputy Minister of Culture Bohuslav Hneupek was fired.
He himself talks about it this way: “At a meeting in the Central Committee, I said: “Everyone who violates international treaties is punished. Did things get better in Argentina and Panama after American troops entered them?”
The next day I was fired. The walls of my house were covered with writing: “The traitor Khneupek lives here,” there were threatening phone calls, people approached my daughters at school and hinted that reprisals awaited them - it was real terror.”
Among those dismissed, 40 people committed suicide, among them General Janku, who fought the Nazis in the ranks of the Czechoslovak corps. Those who sing about the Prague Spring never remember these victims.
Josef Pavel was appointed Minister of the Interior, to whom state security was also subordinate. He broke off all contacts with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the KGB of the USSR. Detained foreign spies were not brought to justice, but were only expelled from the country.
All fortifications and equipment on the border with West Germany were dismantled. A secret headquarters for managing the country in case of an emergency and a camp for holding preventively arrested persons began to be created.
This is so “democratic”: whoever doesn’t like power “with a human face” should go to a concentration camp. In January 1969, a camp was discovered in the Tatra Mountains. The minister also carried out a purge among state security employees, dismissing those who were clearly pro-Soviet.
The further development of events was easy to predict: the removal of the Communist Party from power, withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, the removal of the word “socialist” from the name of the country, the entry of NATO and the deployment of alliance troops.
Even the largest French newspaper Le Figaro recognized this at the time: “The geographical position of Czechoslovakia can turn it both into a bolt of the Warsaw Pact and into a gap that opens up the entire military system of the Eastern bloc.”
And here is what the English writer Stephen Stewart writes in his book “Operation Split”: “In each of these cases (the entry of troops into Hungary in 1956 and into Czechoslovakia in 1968), Russia faced not only the loss of an empire, which would have been enough serious significance, but also in the face of a complete undermining of its strategic positions on the military and geopolitical map of Europe.
And this, more than the fact of the invasion, was the real tragedy. It was precisely for military rather than for political reasons that the counter-revolution in these two countries was doomed to suppression: because when uprisings arose in them, they ceased to be states, and instead turned into mere military flanks.
The leaders of the USSR and other socialist countries already in March began calling on Alexander Dubcek to come to his senses. Many meetings took place at the highest level. After the Czechoslovakian delegation did not come to the meeting of the leaders of the socialist countries in Warsaw, the head of the CPSU Leonid Brezhnev took an unheard of step, and for the first and last time in the history of the USSR, the entire Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee left the country to spend 4 days in a border Czechoslovak town Čierne nad Tisou negotiate with their colleagues from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.
Alexander Dubcek and his comrades traditionally swore allegiance to the ideals of communism at such meetings, but inside the country they said diametrically opposed things. So now, they promised that Joseph Pavel would not head the Ministry of Internal Affairs and anti-Soviet propaganda would be stopped.
Two weeks have passed, but absolutely nothing has changed. Moreover, the so-called expansion of democracy continued. Then Leonid Brezhnev wrote a letter to Alexander Dubchek on August 17, but he did not even respond to him. It became clear that the problem could not be resolved through negotiations. On the night of August 21, troops from the USSR, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria entered Czechoslovakia, and Operation Danube began.
That night, a Soviet passenger plane requested an emergency landing at Prague's Ruzyne Airport. Paratroopers of the 7th Airborne Division got out of the plane and established control over the airport, after which planes with paratroopers began to land on it. At the same time, columns of troops began to move out from four countries.
Alexander Dubcek and his comrades, who decided to become masters, were confident that they were under the protection of the 200,000-strong Czechoslovak army, and the USSR would not dare to start a gigantic bloodshed in the center of Europe. However, on March 30, General Ludvik Svoboda, the former commander of the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps, was elected president of Czechoslovakia, and accordingly the supreme commander.
He was an ally of the Soviet army during the war, and remained so in 1968. The Minister of Defense of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was General Martin Dzur, who back in January 1943 defected from the troops of fascist Slovakia to our side and now did not want to again defend those who were called “neo-fascists with party cards.” Thanks to the orders of these two generals, the Czechoslovak army remained in its barracks. NATO armies did not intervene either.
In just a few hours, Soviet paratroopers took control of all key objects in Prague; Alexander Dubcek was detained in the Central Committee building and sent to the USSR along with other leading reformers. The Ministry of Internal Affairs was also taken, Minister Josef Pavel fled. Within 36 hours, all the country's facilities identified according to the Operation Danube plan were taken under control.
The commander of the 7th Airborne Division, Lev Gorelov, explained such instant success as follows: “What saved us from bloodshed? Why did we lose 15 thousand of our young guys in Grozny, but not in Prague? Here's why: there were detachments ready there, ready in advance, Smrkovsky was in charge, an ideologist. They formed detachments, but they did not issue weapons, weapons on alert - come, take the weapon. So we knew, our intelligence knew where these warehouses were.
We captured the warehouses first, and then we took the Central Committee, the General Staff, and then the government. We devoted the first part of our efforts to warehouses, then everything else. In short, at 2 hours 15 minutes I landed, and at 6 hours Prague was in the hands of the paratroopers. The Czechs woke up in the morning - to arms, and our guards were standing there. All".
Indeed, weapons were found even in such places in Prague as the House of Journalists, the Ministry of Agriculture, and in branches of political clubs throughout the country. Now the Czech media claim that the fighters for “socialism with a human face” were peaceful people, and the weapons belonged to the workers’ militia. However, documents show that the caches contained mines and explosives, which were never used by communist units. And the firearms were often Western-made.
The bloodiest events unfolded in Prague near the building of the Czech radio, from where calls were heard throughout the country to resist the Warsaw Pact troops. On August 21, a crowd of 7 thousand people gathered near the building, they built barricades on all sides. The fact that these were far from peaceful people is evidenced by the fact that Soviet tanks and vehicles were burned, and senior sergeant Evgeniy Krasiy died as a result of a gunshot wound. However, our troops established control over the building. Czechoslovakian state security officer Furmanek helped them with this by opening the door from the inside.
Among the defenders, the losses, including those who later died from wounds, amounted to 15 people. However, this was the biggest tragedy after the entry of troops.
State radio stopped calling for disobedience, but many underground radio stations immediately appeared. Their number reached 35.
This is further evidence that the organizers of the riots were associated with the West. Underground radio transmitters were combined into a system that determined the time and duration of operation. Capture teams discovered working radio stations deployed in apartments, hidden in the safes of leaders of various organizations.
There were also radio stations in special suitcases along with tables of wave transmission at different times of the day. Leaflets and underground newspapers began to appear en masse - paper and printing equipment for them had been prepared in advance.
They called for the physical destruction of Soviet army personnel, informing them that they were forbidden to shoot, explained that they needed to make barricades, destroy road signs, street names, and house numbers. Fictions were reported about many women and children being killed.
For example, it was reported that Soviet soldiers killed a small child right on Wenceslas Square in Prague. A photo was even published with wreaths at the scene of death, but here the falsifiers made a mistake: there was no blood in the photo.
Then they accused our soldiers of firing tanks at the children's hospital on Charles Square in the capital, and not even a single glass was broken there. The most fantastic inventions were used that the Chinese stew that Soviet soldiers fed on was made from earthworms, that they were constantly hungry and that dogs and cats had to be hidden so that they would not eat them.
Well, the main theme of the underground media was exactly borrowed from Ostap Bender: the West will help us. There was as much reliability in it as in the words of the great schemer. The West did not help the Czechs either in 1938, or in 1939, or in 1945. They did not receive help this time either.
Besides weapons and radio stations, the only help was the work of radio stations in Czech and Russian languages of the 701st Psychological Warfare Battalion of the German Army. In modern terms, what was happening in Czechoslovakia then could be called a hybrid war after the failure of the color revolution attempt.
And as you know, there is no war without casualties. Yes, some of our soldiers died in various road accidents, but very often they were provoked by supporters of Alexander Dubcek and Western democracy. In the first days, in many cities there were attempts to block the advance of our troops. To do this, the militants used human shields of women and children.
On August 21, they were deployed between the cities of Presov and Poprad after a turn. The lead vehicle of the Soviet tank column did not have time to stop and, to prevent it from running over women and children, which is what the extremists were counting on, the crew threw the tank into a ditch. Sergeant Major Yuri Andreev, Junior Sergeant Evgeniy Makhotin and Private Pyotr Kazaryk were burned alive.
When sending troops, two tactical mistakes were made. Soviet soldiers were allowed to open fire only in response to enemy fire, and only if it was not coming from the crowd. In addition, two barrels of fuel were stacked for each tank. Fighters for democracy pierced the barrel, set fire to the fuel flowing from it, the tank caught fire, the ammunition inside exploded and the crew died.
Here is what Vyacheslav Podoprigora, a former foreman of the 1st radio relay company of the 3rd separate communications brigade, says: “When a column of our tanks passed, someone from the crowd set fire to a barrel of fuel on one of the tanks, and the engine caught fire from the barrel. The fire was about to cause the ammunition to explode. And this means the death of many civilians standing on the side of the road.
Anticipating this, the tank commander, senior sergeant, rushed into the crowd, asking people to quickly move away from the vehicle. A few minutes later there was a huge explosion. The tank commander and the rest of the crew died. Several local residents died. Many residents were injured."
I have no doubt that these dead residents of the modern Czech Republic are included in the list of victims of Soviet aggression. Although, perhaps one of them set the tank on fire. There are 108 people on the list.
There are memories of the situation in this country from a man who cannot be suspected of loving Russia. This is a deputy of the Lviv regional council and editor-in-chief of the local newspaper “Our Batkivshchyna” Vasily Semyon, who is proud that his two uncles fought in the UPA¹. In 1968, he was a conscript sergeant and this is what he remembers about the mission in Czechoslovakia.
“Most of my platoon died - the ZIL in which they were transported fell off a cliff. They said that they were “cut off” by a Czech car. The guys from Lugansk died. There was a shot from our side. A taxi driver wanted to run over one guy, an Ossetian. He jumped back and fired. But he didn’t hit the taxi driver, but the passenger, who turned out to be the daughter of a party functionary. He wounded her and spent six months under investigation. True, then they finally released him.”
His words are confirmed by senior sergeant Nikolai Meshkov: “An incident remains in my memory: Czechs who spoke Russian well came out of the crowd and suggested that we get out of their land in an amicable way. A crowd of 500-600 people became a wall, as if on command, we were separated by 20 meters. From the back rows, they lifted four people in their arms, who looked around.
The crowd fell silent. They showed something to each other with their hands, and then instantly pulled out short-barreled machine guns, and 4 long bursts thundered. We did not expect such a trick. 9 people fell dead. Six were wounded, the shooting Czechs instantly disappeared, the crowd was dumbfounded.
Later we became smarter, we rounded up all the strikers and checked everyone for weapons. There was not a single case where we did not confiscate it, 6-10 units each time. We transferred people with weapons to headquarters, where they were dealt with. Weapons were also found on women; they skillfully hid them, not only pistols, but also grenades.”
There was no such provocation that would not have been used against our soldiers. Dozens of them recall having their way blocked with baby strollers and having to risk their lives to make sure they were empty. There was an ambulance driving around Prague, which turned around, opened the back door, fired a burst from a machine gun, and quickly drove away. Surely there was a video cameraman hidden nearby, and if the shelling had been answered with fire, then all Western media would have shown how Soviet troops were shooting at a car with a red cross.
But Vladimir Shalukhin from the 119th Guards Parachute Regiment remembers this incident: “Often young people, provocateurs, faked a wound to the head or leg. They came up to us and shouted why we were shooting at peaceful unarmed protesters. Our guys caught one long-haired “wounded man” and removed the bandages. It turned out that there was no wound, the bandages were covered with red paint. They shaved his head and released him.”
Those who a few days ago advocated for the expansion of democracy were now instilling open Russophobia. Inscriptions about Russian pigs and calls to kill them appeared everywhere.
State Duma deputy, and in 1968, sergeant of the 35th motorized rifle division, Yuri Sinelshchikov recalls: “On the morning of August 22, we did not recognize the city. Prague was literally covered with leaflets, posters, and anti-Soviet slogans in Czech and Russian: “Democracy without the USSR and communists,” “Occupiers, go home,” “Invaders, get out of Prague,” “Death to the occupiers.”
Among them there were many clearly offensive ones: “Soviet soldiers, vodka in Moscow - go there”, “Russian drunkards, go to Siberia to your bears.”
There were also many anti-communist slogans: “A good communist is a dead communist,” “Beat the communists,” and others. On the wall of one of the houses in the center of Prague, we saw a drawing, occupying several floors, which depicted a bear (with the inscription “USSR” on it) and a hedgehog (with the inscription “Czechoslovakia”), and on top of all this the word: “The bear will never be able to eat the hedgehog." Already on the second day, this composition was supplemented by the inscription (probably made by Soviet soldiers): “What if you shave him?”
Every time the Czechs called us “occupiers,” I gave them an irresistible counterargument - an example from Soviet “occupation practice.” Our troops in Prague occupied only one building for their needs - this building on Revolution Avenue, which housed the central military commandant's office of the Soviet troops in Prague.
And even then, three days after we entered Prague, this commandant’s office was relocated to the secondary school building at the Soviet Embassy. All other units of the Soviet army were in tents or staff vehicles.”
Nikolai Kodintsev, then a corporal of the 237th separate medical battalion, remembered the meeting: “Not far from our temporary location there was a settlement where there were several water pumps and a water tower, which we had to guard, and so did I. One day a woman came up to us and said that she was Russian, originally from Voronezh, and had once married a Czech.
Crying, she said that at night some people came to their house several times, looking for her in order to carry out reprisals. We sent her to the commandant’s office.”
Water sources had to be protected, as extremists poisoned them, filled them up and blocked them. These were the conditions in which our soldiers had to serve.
True, they had allies. In those days, it became clear that the military brotherhood of the armies of the Warsaw Pact was not an empty phrase. Not only were there no conflicts between their military personnel, but there was not even a case where they did not come to the aid of each other. True, it was easier for the allies. If a Soviet soldier had to account for every cartridge, then they had no problems with this, and they had the right to shoot in case of any threat to their life and health.
The group of Soviet troops numbered 170 thousand people, and the next largest was the 2nd Army of the Polish Army - 40 thousand soldiers. On August 21, in the Czech city of Liberec, a building was being repaired on the central square, and when tanks appeared on it, building blocks, bricks, and boards fell on top of them from the scaffolding.
The attacking Czechs were unlucky: the tanks were Soviet-made, but belonged to the Polish army. As a result, 9 of them went to heaven, and 42 to the hospital. Later, on September 7, Polish soldier Stefan Dorna shot two Czechs in the town of Jicin. Since he robbed them at the same time, he was sentenced to prison in his own country. What is important: this is the only crime against citizens of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic for the entire almost 230,000-strong Warsaw Pact group.
Monuments have now been erected at the site of both incidents. They are now installed wherever at least one Czech has died, even if he was the first to open fire. Moreover, if the death occurred as a result of a collision with Soviet troops, then this is indicated, but if the cause of death was our allies, it is not. This is understandable: the Czech Republic cannot offend its current NATO allies.
The Poles suffered their only combat loss - Tadeusz Bodnaruk was killed at the post on October 1. Another 5 people died as a result of accidents and suicide.
In the same way, the Bulgarians suffered only one combat loss, also at the post, but they had no other losses at all. Bulgaria sent the 12th and 22nd motorized rifle regiments to Czechoslovakia, whose strength at different times ranged from 2164 to 2177 soldiers. The 12th Regiment made a forced march from the Soviet border to the city of Banska Bystrica.
During the forced march, due to attempts at blockade and shelling, 7 militants were killed in the city of Kosice and one in the city of Roznava, where the Bulgarians stood at the head of a column of Soviet troops, which was fired upon with firearms. 29 Bulgarians were injured. The Bulgarian regiment under the command of Colonel Alexander Genchev took control of the barracks, police buildings, printing houses and radio in the city. The Bulgarians also captured the airfield in Zvolen and the military unit in Brezno.
The 12th Regiment of the Bulgarian People's Army not only guarded the objects indicated to it by the Soviet command, but also actively participated in improving the situation. On September 11, the newspaper Smer, which is the organ of the local regional committee of the Communist Party, published an article “Defeated, but not conquered,” in which it called for an armed struggle.
On the same day, Bulgarian soldiers closed the newspaper, and its editor-in-chief Kuchera and his deputy Khagara were escorted to the headquarters of the Soviet 38th Army. On September 17, the newspaper “Forward” in Zvolen was closed for such a violation, and local party authorities were demanded to “immediately identify all enemy elements in the editorial office.”
The 22nd Bulgarian regiment under the command of Colonel Ivan Chavdarov was transferred from the USSR by aircraft of the 7th Airborne Division to the Prague Ruzine airport and began to guard it. On the very first day, the Bulgarians riddled a Czech fire truck with bullets, which did not stop at their request. The Czechs miraculously survived and the Bulgarians had no more problems when checking vehicles.
Former sergeant major of the 8th motorized rifle company Ivan Chakalov recalls his service there: “Once we went to the nearest village to do some shopping. We were given 150 crowns. And the store owner refused to sell us anything. Then junior sergeant Ivan Georgiev from Teteven fired a burst of machine gun fire into the ceiling. The plaster fell, the owner ran away in horror. We took everything we needed and left the money.
Another time we came to the bar, drank beer, treated the Czechs to our cigarettes, but didn’t take all of them. We left the bar and heard and saw through the window how the Czechs were arguing: whether smoking Bulgarian cigarettes was collaboration with the occupiers. They got so excited that they got into a big fight.”
The driver of the armored personnel carrier, Georgy Nikolov, still admires the Soviet soldiers: “Near us there was a special forces unit with soldiers in red berets. We and they hunted hares, of which there were many in the surrounding fields. But we killed them with bursts from machine guns, and they killed them with knives!
We began to give them cartridges, but they did not waste them on rabbits, but fired over the heads of the Czechs in the event of hostile actions. Soon the Soviet command noticed that the Czechs did not undertake any provocations against soldiers in red berets and dressed all their soldiers at the airfield in such berets.”
On September 9, with the help of two girls, junior sergeant Nikolai Nikolov was lured to a car, where they stunned him with a blow to the head and took him to the forest near the village of Novi Dum, 37 km from the airport. There he was killed with a Western-made pistol and his Kalashnikov assault rifle, 120 rounds of ammunition and all his documents were stolen.
Soon, Soviet counterintelligence officers established that the killers were Milislav Frolik, Rudolf Stransky and Jiri Balousek. After the arrest, they stated that the murder occurred as a result of a domestic quarrel and had nothing to do with politics. For this they received from 4 to 10 years in prison. Now in the Czech Republic they are highly respected and regularly tell the media how they “prepared and carried out the destruction of the Bulgarian occupier.”
In this regard, voices are heard in Bulgaria demanding that the local prosecutor's office open a criminal case for the murder of a Bulgarian citizen based on newly discovered circumstances and demand that the Czech Republic extradite Milislav Frolik and Rudolf Stranski, since their third accomplice has already died.
At the site of the death of Nikolai Nikolov, a monument was erected, which is now destroyed and desecrated. However, he is remembered and revered in his homeland. A bronze monument was erected to him in his home village of Byrkachevo. It was recently stolen and a new white stone monument was unveiled in November 2017. At the same time, director Stefan Komandarev made a documentary about him. The memory of Nikolai Nikolov is traditionally revered at a hunting festival in Mezdra; there is a memorial plaque at the school in this city where he studied. I wonder if we have at least one monument to those killed in Czechoslovakia in 1968?
Bulgaria also took care of its living soldiers. After returning in October 1968, all of them were immediately demobilized and accepted into universities without exams.
In 2008, a banquet was held in honor of the 40th anniversary of the entry of troops, and the Chief of the General Staff of the Bulgarian Army in 1993-1997, General Tsvetan Totomirov, compared the army’s actions in Czechoslovakia with NATO missions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“In 1968, we participated with conscripts who did not receive any salary, but now the main financial incentive is.”
The Hungarian soldiers, who were represented by the 8th Motorized Rifle Division with reinforcement units totaling 12.5 thousand people, achieved the best results in their area of responsibility. They controlled the city of Levice and the surrounding area.
This city was part of Hungary in 1938-1945, and the local population rightly feared that they might receive retribution for what happened to the Hungarians in 1945. Already at 3 a.m. on August 21, Hungarian tanks entered the city. There was just an emergency meeting of the city council. A Hungarian officer with 8 machine gunners came to him and announced that from now on the sale of alcohol was completely prohibited, and the population must hand over all hunting rifles by August 23.
Then the state security, police and workers' militia were disarmed. At the same time, the division command demanded that each Hungarian military patrol have one representative of the police and workers' militia. Obviously as a kind of “human shield”.
Telephones were also turned off, and all decisions of government bodies had to be coordinated. If Soviet and Bulgarian soldiers and officers lived in tents and staff vehicles, then the Hungarian military personnel were located in party and public buildings in the very center of the city, and tanks stood near the barracks of the Czechoslovak army.
Despite such harsh measures, no one shot or even threw anything at the Hungarian soldiers. Resistance was limited to writing offensive graffiti on the walls. Initially, drivers, passing by Hungarian soldiers, pressed their horns in protest, but after several machine-gun bursts on the tires, this stopped. The Hungarian army is the only one of the Warsaw Pact countries that had no combat losses in Czechoslovakia, and the losses from illness, accidents and suicide amounted to 4 people.
There are many memoirs on the Internet about the behavior of German troops in Czechoslovakia. This is surprising, since at the last moment the deployment of two divisions of the National People's Army of the GDR was canceled, and they remained in reserve on their territory.
To coordinate and prepare for the entry of GDR troops (which never took place), 20 German officers arrived in Czechoslovakia. One of them was in the Soviet military commandant's office in the city of Jihlava.
There was no way they could force the local authorities to erase offensive anti-Soviet and anti-Russian inscriptions from the walls of houses. They referred to the fact that there were no buckets or cleaning products. Then the German officer asked for a car with a driver and a loudspeaker and drove around the whole city. Over the loudspeaker, he announced in German, without translation into Czech, the need to urgently wash off the inscriptions. Imagine the surprise of the Soviet officers when they saw that the population of the city poured into the streets and began to remove the inscriptions!
Now many media outlets are strenuously suggesting that the entire people of the country actively protested against the introduction of troops. In fact, as I wrote above, there were relatively few protesters, and they were mostly young people. Most Czechs who survived the German occupation supported the measures taken. Dozens of our soldiers recall how the Czechs secretly gave them cigarettes and food and thanked them. An indefinite general strike, called for not only by protesters, but also by underground and Western radio stations and newspapers, also broke down.
The situation in Czechoslovakia was very tense for the first five days. Those who protested and opposed the Allied armies put forward two demands: the withdrawal of troops and the release of the head of the Communist Party, Alexander Dubcek, and other party leaders, but this did not stop them from writing anti-Communist slogans on the walls of houses.
Everything changed dramatically on August 26: Alexander Dubcek and his comrades returned to Prague and announced that he had signed an agreement with the USSR on the deployment of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia. This came as a shock to the fighters for “socialism with a human face”: one of their demands has been fulfilled - Dubcek is free, and Soviet troops are now in Czechoslovakia with the consent of the country’s leadership. They had a question: what were they fighting for? The number of protesters has dropped sharply. In addition, by that time most of the underground radio stations and printing houses had been identified and stopped operating.
The leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia strongly condemned the “bourgeois deviations and attacks of the counter-revolution” and returned to building communism. However, on January 16, 1969, student Jan Palach committed self-immolation on Wenceslas Square in Prague, and on February 25, Jan Zajic. On March 28, celebrating the victory of the Czechoslovakian national team over Soviet hockey players, crowds of Prague residents destroyed the representative offices of Aeroflot and Intourist, as well as the Soviet Book store.
All these events showed that Alexander Dubcek did not control the situation in the country, and on April 17 he ceased to be the head of the Czechoslovak communists. He worked as ambassador to Turkey for a year, and then he was expelled from the party and sent to manage forestry departments in Slovakia.
In 1989, he changed his position again, began to criticize communist ideology and claim that he had always been a staunch democrat. As a reward for this, he headed the parliament of Czechoslovakia until June 1992. In September of the same year, he was involved in a car accident and died on November 7. Less than two months later, on January 1, 1993, Czechoslovakia also disintegrated.
Dubcek's successor as head of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was Gustav Husak. He was one of the organizers of the Slovak Uprising and in 1944 advocated the entry of Slovakia without the Czech Republic into the USSR.
The further period of the country’s history until 1989 was called “normalization.” During this process, 3,078 Prague Spring activists were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment until 1974. Mainly those who fought not in word, but in deed, and for specific crimes, including political murders. A party purge was carried out, and after they found out what the communists were doing at the end of August 1968, 22% of the Communist Party members were left without party cards. Three quarters of its members were expelled from the Writers' Union, and half from the Journalists' Union.
When describing the events in Czechoslovakia, one cannot fail to mention the role of the United States in them. As soon as Dubcek's reforms began, the number of radio stations broadcasting in Czechoslovakia, financed with American money, immediately increased. They called for expanding democracy, admired what had already been done and hinted that if necessary, the United States would come to the rescue.
However, when two days before the deployment of troops, Leonid Brezhnev called US President Lyndon Johnson and asked whether his country would continue to implement the Yalta agreements, the American president answered in the affirmative and said that he recognized that Czechoslovakia and Romania were in the sphere of influence of the USSR.
Indeed, the United States had no time for Czechoslovakia at that time. They fought the war in Vietnam. On March 16, 1968, they killed 504 civilians in the village of My My. And in total, during the war, even according to American estimates, 2 million civilians died. But the Western media did not focus the attention of their audience on this. But the atrocities of Soviet soldiers in Czechoslovakia were the main topic for several months, although 108 citizens of Czechoslovakia died there, many of them with weapons in their hands.
Now the USA is the best friend of the democratic Czech Republic. But there are moments in relations between the two countries that their leaders prefer not to remember.
For example, the Americans have not yet fully returned the gold reserves of Czechoslovakia. Many interesting stories happened to him. When the Sudetenland was taken away from this country in 1938, its leaders began to suspect that it would soon all disappear from the political map of Europe, and sent half of its gold reserves to the Bank of England.
It really ceased to exist in March 1939. Great Britain did not recognize the Czech Republic's accession to the Third Reich, but the Bank of England, for unclear but clearly corrupt reasons, transferred Czechoslovak gold to the Nazis.
Just a few months before the outbreak of World War II, it was sold there, and the proceeds were transferred to the Swiss accounts of the Reichsbank and spent the entire war on the purchase of weapons and raw materials in third countries for the needs of the Wehrmacht.
The Nazis captured the remaining 45.5 tons of gold in Prague. They were taken out and in 1945 went to the American army in the Frankfurt am Main area. Since then, negotiations have been going on for his return. In 1982, the Americans returned 18.46 tons of gold to Czechoslovakia, and in 2000, already independent Slovakia was able to receive 4.5 tons.
The remaining more than 20 tons of gold continue to strengthen the US financial system. For comparison: according to the Czech National Bank as of September 30, 2016, the Czech gold reserves are 9,642 tons. The Americans explain the refusal to return it by the problem of identifying part of the gold reserve.
On bars from the gold reserves of all countries there is a coat of arms of the country, and on some Czechoslovak ones - the coat of arms of the Russian Empire. That is, this is actually our gold, stolen by Czechoslovak legionnaires in 1920. In general, the United States, which declares the right of private property sacred, likes to keep other people's property. For example, the Hungarians had to wait 33 years for the return of their main shrine, the crown of King Stephen, also captured by the American army in 1945.
Another unpleasant incident for Americanophiles occurred on February 14, 1945, when the American Air Force bombed Prague, and as a result, not a single German soldier was injured, but 701 Prague residents were killed and 1,184 were wounded. The current leaders do not remember them, but they annually lay wreaths at the Prague building of the Czech Radio, where 15 Prague residents died on August 21, 1968. The main thing is that their deaths can be blamed on Soviet soldiers for decades, and not on those who invented the myth with the beautiful name “socialism with a human face.”
¹ The organization is prohibited on the territory of the Russian Federation.
On August 20, 1968, the military operation Danube began. International (mostly Soviet) troops “took” Prague in record time, capturing all strategically important objects.
Brezhnev Doctrine
At the end of the 60s, the “world system of socialism” tested its strength. Relations with fraternal peoples were difficult, but in relations with the West there was a stalemate “détente”. You could breathe easy and turn your attention to Eastern Europe. The battle for the “correct” understanding of the Union of Allied Countries on the sidelines of NATO was called the “Brezhnev Doctrine.” The doctrine became the right to invade the guilty Czechoslovakia. Who else will defend socialism, distorted by independence, and dispel the spring dissent in Prague?
Dubcek and reforms
In December 1967, Alexander Dubcek took over the leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. He came, entered into the fight against the “canned” neo-Stalinists, and tried to paint a new socialism “with a human face.” “Socialism with a human face” is freedom of the press, speech and the repressed - echoes of the social democracy of the West. Ironically, one of those released, Gustav Husak, would later replace the innovator Dubcek as first secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia under the patronage of Moscow. But that’s later, but for now Dubcek, together with the President of Czechoslovakia, proposed the country a “Program of Action” - reforms. The innovations were unanimously supported by the people and the intelligentsia (the signature of 70 people under the article “Two Thousand Words”). The USSR, remembering Yugoslavia, did not support such innovations. Dubcek was sent a collective letter from the Warsaw Pact countries calling on him to stop his creative activities, but the first secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia did not want to give in.
Warning conference
On July 29, 1968, in the city of Cienra nad Tisou, Brezhnev and Dubcek finally reached an agreement. The USSR pledged to withdraw allied troops from the territory of Czechoslovakia (there were some - they were introduced for training and joint maneuvers) and to stop attacks in the press. In turn, Dubcek promised not to flirt with the “human face” - to pursue domestic policy, not forgetting the USSR.
Warsaw Pact on the offensive
“The Soviet Union and other socialist countries, faithful to their international duty and the Warsaw Pact, must send their troops to assist the Czechoslovak People's Army in defending the Motherland from the danger looming over it.” This directive was received by the commander of the airborne troops, General Margelov. And this happened back in April 1968, in other words, before the conclusion of the Bratislava Agreement on July 29, 1968. And on August 18, 1968, at a joint conference of the USSR, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Bulgaria, they read a letter from the “true socialists” of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia asking for military assistance. The military operation "Danube" became not an idea, but a reality.
"Danube"
The specificity of the USSR military campaign against Czechoslovakia was the choice of striking force. The main role was assigned to the airborne troops of the Soviet army. The air defense forces, navy and strategic missile forces were put on heightened combat readiness. The actions of the international army were carried out on three fronts - the Carpathian, Central and Southern fronts were created. Given the role assigned to the air forces, the participation of air armies was provided for on each of the fronts. At 23:00 on August 20, the combat alarm sounded and one of the five sealed packages with the operation plan was opened. Here was the plan for Operation Danube.
On the night of August 20-21
A passenger plane approaching the Czech Ruzina airport requested an emergency landing and received it. From that moment on, from two o'clock in the morning, the airport was captured by the 7th Airborne Division. While in the Central Committee building, Dubcek addressed the people on the radio with an appeal to prevent bloodshed. Less than two hours later, Dubcek and the Presidium of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, eleven people assembled by him, were arrested. Capturing the airport and the opposition was the main objective of Operation Danube, but Dubcek's reforms were contagious. At 5 a.m. on August 21, a reconnaissance company of the 350th Guards Parachute Regiment and a reconnaissance company of the 103rd Airborne Division landed on the territory of Czechoslovakia. Within ten minutes, a continuous stream of soldiers disembarking from planes managed to capture two airports. Troops with equipment marked with white stripes moved inland. Four hours later, Prague was occupied - the Allied troops captured the telegraph, military headquarters, and train stations. All ideologically important objects - the buildings of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the government, the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff - were captured. At 10 a.m., KGB officers escorted Alexander Dubchek and others like him out of the Central Committee building.
Results
Two days after the actual end of the campaign, negotiations between the interested parties took place in Moscow. Dubcek and his comrades signed the Moscow Protocol, which as a result allowed the USSR not to withdraw its troops. The protectorate of the USSR extended for an indefinite period, until the normal situation in Czechoslovakia was resolved. This position was supported by the new First Secretary Husak and the President of Czechoslovakia L. Svoboda. Theoretically, the withdrawal of troops from the territory of Czechoslovakia was completed in mid-November 1968; in practice, the presence of military forces of the Soviet army lasted until 1991. Operation Danube shook up the public, dividing the socialist camp into those who agreed and disagreed. Marches of dissatisfied people took place in Moscow and Finland, but in general, Operation Danube showed the strength and seriousness of the USSR and, importantly, the full combat readiness of our army.