On August 20, 1968, tens of thousands of Soviet and East European ground
and air forces moved into Czechoslovakia and occupied the country in an
attempt to end the 'Prague Spring' reforms and restore an orthodox
Communist regime. The leader of the Soviet Communist Party, Leonid
Brezhnev, was initially reluctant to use military force and tried to
pressure his counterpart in Czechoslovakia, Alexander Dubcek, to crack
down. But during the summer of 1968, after several months of careful
deliberations, the Soviet Politburo finally decide that military force
was the only option left. A large invading force of Soviet, Polish,
Hungarian, and Bulgarian troops received final orders to move into
Czechoslovakia; within 24 hours they had established complete military
control of Czechoslovakia, bringing an end to hopes for 'socialism with
a human face.' Dubcek and most of the other Czechoslovak reformers were
temporarily restored to power, but their role from late August 1968
through April 1969 was to reverse many of the reforms that had been
adopted. In April 1969, Dubchek was forced to step down for good,
bringing a final end to the Prague Spring. Soviet leaders justified the
invasion of Czechoslovakia by claiming that 'the fate of any socialist
country is the common affair of all socialist countries' and that the
Soviet Union had both a 'right' and a 'sacred duty' to 'defend
socialism' in Czechoslovakia. The invasion caused some divisions within
the Communist world, but overall the use of large-scale force proved
remarkably successful in achieving Soviet goals. The United States and
its NATO allies protested but refrained from direct military action and
covert operations to counter the Soviet-led incursion into
Czechoslovakia. The essays of a dozen leading European and American Cold
War historians analyze this turning point in the Cold War in light of
new documentary evidence from the archives of two dozen countries and
explain what happened behind the scenes. They also reassess the weak
response of the United States and consider whether Washington might have
given a 'green light, ' if only inadvertently, to the Soviet Union prior
to the invasion.
