linguistic:translation
"Fraternal Intervention"

On the night of 20–21 August 1968, military forces from several Warsaw Pact member states (Albania, Romania and East Germany did not participate) invaded Czechoslovakia. Soviet media cited a call for help from unnamed representatives as the cause of the "fraternal intervention", publishing an unidentified appeal as proof on 22 August 1968; However, as it became clear from the first day that virtually the entire responsible leadership of the Czechoslovakian government and communist parties, including Dubček, were being blamed as causes of the invasion, and even the Soviet-supported leadership fell into accusations against each other, most allied communist parties around the world rejected the Soviet pretext as a thin disguise for gross violation of national party autonomy. Even President Ludvík Svoboda had publicly issued a statement calling on occupying forces to withdraw and for reforms to continue, while Czechoslovakia's UN representatives were calling for international support against the invasion.

The Soviets were only partly responsible for their confusion. Closely following a long telephone conversation between Bil’ak and Brezhnev on 10 August, two of Bil’ak's most important allies met with the Soviet ambassador to Czechoslovakia on 14–15 August: Alois Indra, who along with Drahomir Kolder had previously been in direct contact with the Soviet Politburo, was accompanied by another KSC hard-liner, Oldřich Pavlovský, in their meeting with ambassador Stepan Chervonenko. They assured him that as soon as Soviet "troops move into action on the night of 20 August," the "healthy forces" in the KSC would carry out their "plan of action" to oust Dubček, setting up a "provisional revolutionary government of workers and peasants." Indra said he could "guarantee" that a majority of the KSC Presidium, the KSC Central Committee, the National Assembly, and the Czechoslovak government would join with the "healthy forces." He promised six of the eleven members of the KSC Presidium and 50 members of the KSC Central Committee as his supporters.

The Soviet Politburo received many such appeals for intervention, misleading them into confidence the viability of a hard-liner government in waiting. The KGB had also buried reports that the US and the Federal Republic of Germany were not behind the Prague Spring. KGB Station Chief in Washington DC, Oleg Kalugin, only discovered years later that the KGB leadership had ordered his reports destroyed and not shown to anyone after they received what Kalugin thought was a more balanced assessment. Meanwhile, KGB reports to the Soviet leadership went to lengths to support the official narrative and the claims of anti-reform hard-liners. They blamed everything negative that happened in Czechoslovakia on the Prague Spring, including in some cases traffic crashes, fires, and burglaries. The KGB even manufactured evidence, directing agents to plant cashes of American-made weapons near the German border in order to be discovered. They instructed agents to hang posters calling for the overthrow of communism. This was to prove a western-sponsored network was active in Dubček's reform movement as part of an imminent insurrection or coup. The KGB was only further enraged when the Czechoslovakian Interior Minister revealed it all to be a deliberate Soviet provocation.

The KGB had many reasons for their actions, but most important may have been its institutional bias. The Pillar Commission set up to investigate the show trials of the 1950s recommended the disbandment of the secret police, and Czechoslovakian security services had already ceased most cooperation with the KGB, having a major impact on the KGBs operational effectiveness and influence. The Czech security services had been vital to their effective operations. Some suggest further that they may have feared eventual reprisals against their most active and loyal agents within the StB and Interior Ministry. This motive is partly supported by the guarantees against reprisals against pro-Soviet Czechoslovakians in the Moscow Protocols. The KGB was also upset when Czechoslovak Interior Minister Josef Pavel revealed the existence of six KGB liaison agents within his office, implying that they would be removed. In an atmosphere of conformity cultivated by Brezhnev, only a few in the Kremlin voiced skepticism, such as Gennady Voronov, who asked, “Whom was it really so necessary for us to defend, and from whom?”

Bil’ak would join Indra in reassuring the Soviets, promising that Kolder would be ready to be voted the KSC First Secretary when Soviet troops arrived. When two of their promised allies on the Presidium, Jan Piller and František Barbírek, opposed the invasion and supported Dubček, Soviet plans had to be abandoned. This forced them to retain Dubček and his government until the following year, when Dubček's government could no longer contain growing pressure to advance reforms once again, coming both from within and without the party.

The day of the invasion, occupying armies quickly seized control of Prague and the Central Committee's building, taking Dubček and other reformers into Soviet custody. But, before they were arrested, Dubček urged the people not to resist militarily, on the grounds that "presenting a military defense would have meant exposing the Czech and Slovak peoples to a senseless bloodbath". Already the previous month, when officers under General Václav Prchlík, head of the KSC's military department, began preparing contingency plans for a Soviet/Warsaw Pact invasion, Dubček had immediately vetoed its implementation.

In the early hours of the attack, Czechoslovakian radio broadcast an appeal to citizens not to resist. The presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia asked, “all citizens of the Republic to keep the peace (and remain at their posts but) not resist the advancing armies, because the defense of our state borders is now impossible”. By making this official declaration before Soviet troops could preempt functioning of the official government, the Czechoslovakian leadership ensured that both the invasion and Soviet invitation would be seen as illegitimate but also established the political and strategic framework for the resistance as symbolic and moral, where their opponent would have less control.

Controversy at that time and since has arisen as to whether Dubček knew of the invasion and hid the fact for his own reasons, perhaps explaining some of the world's surprise. Some point to the telephone conversation between Brezhnev and Dubček on 13 August where Dubček is recorded to say, "If you on the Soviet Politburo believe we're deceiving you, you should take the measure you regard as appropriate." Brezhnev is recorded to respond, "Such measures would be easier for us to adopt if you and your comrades would more openly say that these are the measures you're expecting of us." Historians have never accepted Dubček's foreknowledge, and Dubček has always denied it, but Czech resistance was somewhat unconventional and much is shrouded in ambiguity that created an open question for some.

The non-violent resistance of the Czech and Slovak population, which helped delay pacification by Warsaw Pact forces for over eight months (in contrast to the Soviet military's estimate of four days), became an example of civilian-based defense. A latter-day The Good Soldier Švejk (referring to an early-20th-century Czech satirical novel) wrote of "the comradely pranks of changing street names and road signs, of pretending not to understand Russian, and of putting out a great variety of humorous welcoming posters". Meanwhile, for a short time government radio stations called for the invaders to return home: "Long live freedom, Svoboda, Dubček".

Dubček was arrested before dawn when 3 security officers, revolvers in hand and accompanied by several soldiers with machine guns bust into his office. One of them cut the telephone wires while another began to cuff him. When Dubček protested, he was beaten. His driver attempted to intervene and was immediately shot. Dubček was told, 'We will kill, if necessary, a million Czechs, threatened one of the officers, to put an end to your counter-revolution.'"

Later on the day of the invasion, Dubček, along with Premier Oldřich Černík, Jozef Smrkovsky and Frantisek Kriegel were taken to the Soviet Union. At first, Dubček was taken to a mountain cottage in the Ukraine; However, upon encountering massive popular resistance to their planned coup, and President Svoboda and other Czech representatives who were still in Prague refusing to accept any agreement made without approval of the official representatives of the party, the Soviets changed tactics and sent him to Moscow for negotiations.

On 24 August, Soviet representatives presented the Moscow Protocol. Rejecting a counter-proposal offered by Dubček's aides, they said it was non-negotiable. The only alternative was Soviet imposition of a military dictatorship now that their illusions of being welcomed as liberators proved false. Dubček and other detainees were repeatedly beaten during their detention, and Dubček reports he was drugged with sedatives to make him more compliant. Resisting nonetheless, Dubček's team gained minor but significant concessions, including refusing to accept Soviet justifications for the invasion or the right of the Soviet Union or any other country to decide their country's future, as well as not agreeing to the immediate reversal of all reforms. In the end, Dubček said they were forced to sign in order to avoid bloodshed in the room and back at home, with only František Kriegel refusing to sign. This ended the Prague Spring and set the stage for a Moscow-directed reversal of reforms that Dubček was compelled to sell and implement.

Dubček and most of the reformers were returned to Prague on 27 August. At the time, the Moscow Protocol was intended to be a secret document. It was revealed to party members the subsequent week and then leaked to the New York Times. Throughout the rest of the year, Dubček and other senior leaders were called back to Moscow repeatedly to receive new demands, which they returned home to deliver to their people. This led Dubček to consider quitting under extreme duress at times, but he always recovered. The Soviets made no attempt to hide their contempt. When Dubček protested that he had already met the terms of the Moscow Protocol, he is reported to have been told to 'shut up' by Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny. The Czechoslovakian team were told that the Soviets would continue to turn the screws harder, undeterred by the protests of other communist parties; They dismissed them saying, "For the next 30 or 40 years, socialism has no chance in the capitalist West." Gustav Husák reported they were treated as "scoundrels"

In January 1969, Dubček was hospitalized in Bratislava complaining of a cold and had to cancel a speech. Rumors sprang up that his illness was radiation sickness and that it was caused by radioactive strontium being placed in his soup during his stay in Moscow in an attempt to kill him. However, a U.S. intelligence report discounted this for lack of evidence. Also that month, following the self-immolation of Jan Palach, reformers renewed their offensive against conservative hardliners. Dubček pledged to hold the line against both reformers and neo-Stalinists, but opposition was moving outside the party for tactical reasons.

Dubček was forced to resign as First Secretary in April 1969, following the Czechoslovak Hockey Riots. The Soviets were not only alarmed by Dubček's failure to contain growing pressure to resume reforms but at their own failures to consolidate a neo-Stalinist regime under Indra or their other allies. Dubček was replaced by former reformer Gustav Husák, beginning a process of 'normalization' that would eventually purge two-thirds of the party and de-politicize the country. At the time, Leonid Brezhnev is supposed to have said: 'If we cannot find the puppets, then we will tie the strings to the leaders.'

Though no longer party leader, Dubček had been re-elected to the Federal Assembly (as the federal parliament was renamed in 1969); Dubček became chairman on April 28. Following the violent suppression of protests by new domestic Czech security forces, Dubček signed the 'baton law' into effect in August. Husák had sent this to the Federal Assembly to expand legal powers of suppression of dissent. Dubček would later call this the gravest mistake of his life. The baton law was widely seen as the end of hope for successful resistance. Despite his continued cooperation, Dubček was removed from parliamentary office on October 15 under Prime Minister Cernik's new government. Though Cernik tried to placate reformists, the new government's extreme anti-reformist faction, led by Deputy Party Chief Lubomír Štrougal, wanted to put Dubček on trial. Husák, who styled himself as a post-ideological 'realist', as well as Moscow, wanted to avoid a destabilizing return to Stalinism.

Instead, Dubček was sent into diplomatic exile to Turkey. From head of a nation of millions and leader of 1.6 million party members, he went to heading a 7-person staff; This left him conveniently out of the country while more aggressive purges began in earnest. Some suggested at the time it would be too dangerous to post him anywhere within the Soviet bloc, where he was widely regarded as a hero. Husák was also said to have feared that direct persecution of Dubček might stir more instability than it would promote. Some thought that Husák's reluctance to trials and executions was because of his own experiences as a prisoner, though he thought his own imprisonment was wrong, he had no problem with imprisoning state enemies on general principle or personal feeling. Others suggest that it was the hard-liners themselves who wanted Dubček out of the country to isolate him from the public and to prevent him becoming a martyr, as trials had never helped the communist regime either within the country or internationally. Alan Levy, a journalist who witnessed the Prague Spring, explained Husák's reluctance with a comparison. Hungary was able to relax its repressive grip within less than 5 years after the Soviet invasion, but Czechoslovakia and its former leaders remained in a state of limbo rather than hell that would eventually last for decades. This he explained as because unlike Hungary, Czechoslovakia had no real revolt to liquidate. Instead, he and the Soviets had to invent a counter-revolution, not prosecute it.

However, in June of that same year, Dubček was dismissed from his ambassadorial post and recalled from Turkey after being suspended from the party pending an investigation by hard-liners. This was read as a signal that Husák had lost a behind-the-scenes power struggle against the hard-line faction led by Štrougal, Indra, and Balik. They had taken control of the Presidium by a margin of 7 to 4, voting to prepare a series of trials against reformers on charges of espionage, sedition, and slander of the republic. At the time, some suggested that Dubček's and his reformer allies' fates may have been spared by the chance drunk-driving crash that saved Husák from removal himself. The resulting investigation uncovered a conspiracy by ultra-conservatives to remove Husák who were themselves removed. Others said that this threat was part of an attempt to force Dubček to defect to the west, using his wife and children as hostages in Ankara. The only debate within ruling circles was how best to isolate Dubček from the public by some form of character assassination. They wanted him reassigned to a position as a senior officer in the Pension Insurance Research Institute to entrap him in a scandal after having failed to pressure Dubček to leave under a cloud as a defector, which would discredit him as a loyal party member.

Dubček found himself a permanent free-range prisoner, along with many others purged from the party and blacklisted from work. The purge of the party resulted in a general decline in membership from 1.6 million at the time that Dubček rose to power to 880,000 by the end of 1970. More purges would follow as loyalists replaced the able careerists. Those who otherwise cooperated to advance their careers. Even among those who remained members by the end of 1970, many either refused their cards or had not paid their dues. The reduction in numbers was accompanied by a qualitative change in the party, where the party that Dubček headed as leader of the post-Stalinist generation of idealists was gone. The majority of members were over 60 years old, and ideology had virtually disappeared, even among conservatives. Dubček and his communist reformers had proven so popular that the only way to root them out of the political fabric of the nation was to eradicate communist ideology. To do so required to virtually remove an entire generation from the party. Even Czechoslovakian universities ceased to teach Marxism for lack of 'reliable' instructors. Any kind of political belief, in rapid succession, would be grounds for suspicion, leaving a disaffected population.

For Dubček and many others, this did not mean a return to private life but a different kind of political life, where in Dubček's case, his career in high politics would be deferred at home while he served as an inspirational symbol of Eurocommunist ideals abroad. Meanwhile, he struggled to personally survive repressions at home. Outwardly, he shifted to menial work that many educated reformers were forced to take. Turning down a post at a Slovak social security agency that could be used to implicate him in the misappropriation of funds, he instead requested to work as a forester. This was refused, but he was eventually given a clerical job with the state forestry agency in Bratislava. He was still investigated at work, but wrong-doing could never be found.