No. I.
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Petr Mareš
Waiting for Godot:
American Policy and the Czechoslovak Elections, May 1946
Leonid Gibiansky
Moscow and Eastern Europe: Aspects of the Creation of the Soviet Bloc
Michal Reiman
Stalin after the War, 1945-48
Vojtěch Mastný
Missed Opportunities after Stalin’s Death?
Material
Bohuslav Litera
The Allies at the Onset of the Cold War:
Stalin and the ‘Long Telegrams’
Horizon
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
The Origins of the Cold War
Piotr Madajczyk
The Poles and Their Attitude to the Germans, 1945-48, as Seen in Polish Historiography
Reviews
Milan Hauner
The Soviets and the Defence of Czechoslovakia
František Šmahel
A Promising Sign:
A New Yearbook of Czechoslovak, Czech and Slovak History
Jitka Vondrová
The Prague Spring:
New Views, New Information
Václav Kural
A Little Book Worth Reading
Miroslav Tejchman
A Key Work on Austro-Yugoslav Relations
Documents
Jindřich Pecka
A Discussion between Josef Smrkovský and General N. V. Ogarkov, 30 August 1968
Bibliography
Articles from foreign journals and collections of essays, 1991-96 Summaries
American Policy and the Czechoslovak Elections, May 1946
Petr Mareš
The author traces the development of official US opinion on Czechoslovakia’s orientation to democracy in the period just after World War II till the general elections in Czechoslovakia in May 1946. Drawing largely on American sources in the National Archives, the Library of Congress and the Truman Library, he follows the dispatches of US Ambassador to Czechoslovakia, Laurence Steinhardt, and the opposing views which the ambassador occasionally met with in the State Department. The author sees the main obstacle to the ambassador’s ability to assess developments in Czechoslovakia as residing in his belief in free elections as a cure-all for Czechoslovakia’s ills in this period. Steinhardt’s optimism, as is clear from the archival records, did not wane even after the elections in which the Communists had made substantial gains.
The author discusses how the Americans successfully managed to get the Soviets to withdraw their troops from Czechoslovakia (achieved largely because of the presence of American troops in the country). Here, Steinhardt convinced the State Department to accept his view that American troops should remain as long as Soviet troops were present, to demonstrate to the Czechoslovaks (who would soon being going to the polls) that the Americans had not abandoned them. Truman requested of Stalin that both the Soviets and the Americans withdraw their troops – an unprecedented step in Czechoslovak-American relations. And within several weeks Stalin complied.
The primary problem in American-Czechoslovak relations in 1946 was the nationalization and confiscation of property in Czechoslovakia belonging to American citizens. Steinhardt tried, mostly without success, to prevent its nationalization or confiscation, or, failing that, to obtain compensation. Related to this was the question of American lend-lease for Czechoslovakia. On each question, Steinhardt saw the coming elections as the watershed for American policy. In the case of lend-lease, the ambassador faced the dilemma that if lend-lease were granted to the Czechoslovaks before the elections, the existing government, consisting of many Communists, would take the credit for having achieved it, and if it were denied, it could create the impression that the Americans were leaving Czechoslovakia at the mercy of the Soviets. Steinhardt’s solution was a compromise in the form of a first loan, for the purchase of American cotton, with the possibility of other loans later. Steinhardt, however, was not alone in his optimism about Czechoslovakia not taking a Communist course: the Export-Import Bank of Washington and US Department of Defense also commented favourably on developments in Czechoslovakia.
For an entire year after the end of WW II, therefore, American foreign policy makers were waiting for the Czechoslovak general elections as the moment of salvation which would return Czechoslovakia where, in the American government’s view, it belonged and was orientated, that is, to democratic pluralism and Western-style political culture. They were waiting for a clear demonstration of the Czechs and Slovaks’ desire to share in shaping the post-war world in the image of the great American projects of post-war international cooperation. The information they were getting from Prague (mostly from Ambassador Steinhardt) and what they saw in the democratic elections in Hungary and Austria in 1945, increased American foreign policy maker’s confidence in the correctness of their expectations.
The author concludes that with the election results of May 1946 they were confronted with harsh reality. The elections demonstrated that Czechoslovak politics formed within the country were more along the lines of Teheran and Yalta than of Bretton Woods and San Francisco. This confrontation did not, however, come as a shock to US foreign policy makers. After all, the Teheran-Yalta conception had always to a certain extent been present in the thinking of American diplomats, and the wait for the victory of democrats in the Czechoslovak elections was only a wait for evidence that the impact of the Teheran-Yalta conception would not be as fateful as many had feared. Electoral expectations were not met, and American policy began, with a year’s delay, to clarify the possibilities and prospects of its relations with a Czechoslovak government in which Communists had the main say, but which also, at least partially, preserved the attributes of a democratic government. With the coming of the Truman Doctrine American foreign policy would no longer be satisfied with passively waiting for change in the political situation, where elections, like a deus ex machina, would solve all of Central Europe’s problems.
Moscow and Eastern Europe:
Some Aspects of the Creation of the Soviet Bloc
Leonid Gibiansky
The author investigates the process of the creation of the Soviet bloc, which began in 1944-45 with the gradual establishment of the ‘people’s democracies’ in Eastern Europe, and came to a peak with the establishment of Communist régimes in each country of the region. The Communist leaders in the ‘people’s democracies’ saw in the Soviet Union and in membership in the bloc assistance and support in firming up their own régimes and in the struggle against ‘world imperialism’. For the Soviet leadership, the bloc was ultimately formed with the expansion of the ‘socialist system’ beyond the frontiers of the USSR and also with the expansion of the USSR’s spheres of influence and control.
Gibiansky focuses on the role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and of Soviet institutions in the formation of the bloc’s basic structure. He analyzes the ways and means of running foreign Communist parties which had from the beginning been in the governments and gradually gained a monopoly of power in the countries of the region. For the creation of the Soviet bloc, two factors were decisive. The first was the unity of aims of the Soviet régime and the Communist parties in Eastern Europe (‘the building of socialism’, expansion of the spheres of ‘socialism’ throughout the world, the fight against ‘imperialism’) and shared basic ideas about how to achieve these ends. The second comprised the organizational link between the Communist parties and the USSR as the international Communist centre which emerged even while the Comintern was still in existence, and in the concluding phases of the war it became the basis of the newly formed post-Comintern structure of direction, control and manipulation, entirely in Moscow’s hands.
The basis for the formation of the Soviet bloc was, therefore, the hierarchy in which Soviet institutions stood above the Communist parties of Eastern Europe. At first, up until the autumn of 1945, the Communist parties of Eastern Europe were run by the re-organized mechanism of the older Comintern, the international information department of the Central Committee of the CPSU. The department, an integral part of the CPSU apparat, was led by Georgi Dimitrov till he left for Bulgaria in November 1945. After the war Moscow was in covert communication with the leaders of all the Communist parties in the region. Another form of controlling and directing them were the talks between East European Communist leaders, which were held in Moscow.
With the end of the war, an extensive system of Soviet offices and institutions was linked into the system of direction and control, and developed its activity in the region. These included Soviet diplomats, military personnel, intelligence and economic organs, as well as other Soviet organizations (particularly, the Pan-Slavic Committee in Moscow). The apparat of the CPSU Central Committee, with re-organization and the creation of a CPSU foreign policy department after Dimitrov’s departure, lost its monopolistic position as the only manipulator of the East European countries and their Communist parties in the course of 1946, but maintained its clandestine telegraphic links with them and also sent its workers to the region on inspection visits.
Soviet direction and control at this time had three main targets. The first was the internal policy of the Communist parties of the nascent bloc, which was oriented according to the Kremlin’s momentary intentions. The Soviet side continued to try to influence the foreign policy of each ‘people’s democracy’ according to its owns plans and intentions; it also regulated the mutual relations between the countries of the region and, according to its needs, applied Soviet arbitration.
The basis for the forming of the bloc’s structure and of the system of its internal relations and of the axis of its construction consisted in the bilateral links between each ‘people’s democracy’ (which the author describes as a ‘radial’ structure). Neither the founding of the Cominform in the autumn of 1947 nor the establishment of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) in January 1949, however, led to the creation of a multi-lateral structure in the Soviet bloc. The Cominform was an additional Soviet instrument for the control of the East European régimes and was the organizer of operations against the Yugoslav Communist régime. In COMECON, as well, despite its organizational structure and negotiating procedure, the Soviets determined the basic direction of activity and took all the important decisions. By 1949 the Soviet bloc was a monolith, entirely subservient to Moscow.
Michal Reiman
At the end of World War II Stalin was pushing for the territorial expansion of the Soviet Union and the building up of a buffer zone of satellite states. He was, however, interested in maintaining cooperation with the powers of the anti-Hitler coalition. The post-war states system and the conditions of the postwar reconstruction of the Soviet Union (including the fate of Germany, the Far East, reparations) depended on this cooperation. Stalin wanted to support the left-wing trend in European politics and was counting on continued good relations with Great Britain and France. His ability for reaching compromises was, however, diminished by his rigid socio-political conception and by the weak indigenous base of Soviet and other Communist influence in central and south-eastern Europe (with the exception of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria), which contributed to the brutality of Soviet methods. Also at work, though, was the radicalism of the Communist parties, particularly in the Balkans. In 1946, therefore, Stalin promoted the preservation of certain forms of economic and political pluralism as ‘particular roads to socialism’. He thereby wanted to facilitate the consolidation of Soviet influence in Poland, Czechoslovakia and other countries, and to strengthen contacts with socialist parties in the West. He underestimated, however, American ability and resolve to consolidate the situation in Western Europe, particularly in West Germany. Stalin’s policies were influenced by the difficulties the Soviet Union was facing at home after the war. His poor health hampered his control over political events. Top-ranking Soviets were, moreover, not of one mind; some were clearly inclined to a radicalization of both internal and foreign policies.
The dénouement came with the Paris conference on the Marshall Plan, in the summer of 1947, preceded by the departure of the Communists from the French and Italian governments. Stalin feared a weakening of Soviet influence in the ‘people’s democracies’ and was made uneasy by the diverse approaches of the Communist parties, which were not in accord with the Soviets on all matters. He reacted by founding the Informburo, which proclaimed the division of the world into two camps, and hamstrung the independence of non-Soviet Communists. In his criticism of non-Soviet Communists, Stalin was, until the split with Yugoslavia in the spring of 1948 (or till the autumn of 1948), unquestionably more cautious than a number of other Soviet politicians (particularly Zhdanov and Suslov). The worsening of relations between the USSR and the West meant the failure of Stalin’s postwar political conception. This failure heightened internal political disputes (for example, the removal of Zhdanov and Molotov, the ‘Leningrad case’, the fight against ‘cosmopolitanism’) and led to an intensification of the ‘anti-bourgeois’ course of Stalin’s policies in the ‘people’s democracies’, and to the struggle against ‘nationalism’, ‘Titoism’ and ‘Zionism’.
Missed Opportunities after Stalin’s Death?
Vojtěch Mastný
The Cold War dragged on for more than forty years. But as early as 1953, after Stalin’s death when power was transferred into the hands of a collective leadership (particularly Malenkov, Molotov, Beria and Khrushchev), and the United States came under a new administration whose self-declared aim was to reverse its predecessors’ ineffectual management of the Cold War, there seem to have existed opportunities for rapprochement. To ask whether or not these were missed, says the author, yields only inconclusive answers. It is, however, still important, he maintains, to ask why rapprochement did not occur. Did the objectives set by the Soviet and American governments and the methods employed to attain them preclude this possibility? Were other policies proposed but ignored? If so, why?
Since the motives and results of Western decision-making in foreign policy are reasonably clear from the archival evidence, the author has turned his attention to the new collective Soviet leadership, considering alternative policies advocated by different individuals or groups. In ending the war in Korea, establishing relations with Yugoslavia similar to those with other bourgeois states linked with NATO, renouncing territorial claims against Turkey, restoring diplomatic relations with Greece and with Israel, Stalin’s successors sought to rectify some of his most egregious mistakes for which the USSR had been paying a price. And it sought to form a provisional unified government in Germany, and to conclude a peace treaty with her which would make German membership in either NATO or EDC impossible.
The author discusses Beria’s role in foreign affairs during the less than four months of his ascendency after Stalin’s death. But, he maintains, the scattered pieces of evidence make it difficult to determine exactly what Beria thought and did. The bulk of the evidence, moreover, originates with Beria’s enemies at the time of his arrest, and is mostly concerned with demonstrating his actual or intended abuses of power at home. Beria showed a particular interest in the German question, but was clumsy in his foreign-policy efforts and found himself completely isolated. He soon withdrew his proposal that the USSR abandon East Germany, and submitted to the majority. Beria, says the author, had no concept, much less a policy of reform or détente.
The revolt in East Germany at first paralysed the Communist régime, conveying the very weakness the new Kremlin leadership had been endeavouring to hide. But the course of events in Germany caught the West unprepared as well; America’s proclaimed readiness to challenge Soviet power by exploiting its vulnerabilities was tested by the East Berlin uprising and turned out to be limited. Britain and France, the other two Western powers in Germany, even showed sympathy for Moscow’s predicament by conceding it the right to restore order in its own occupation zone. Swift Soviet action and Western inaction allowed Stalin’s heirs to ride out their most severe crisis since his death. After Beria’s expulsion on 26 June, the policies of the collective Soviet leadership remained largely as they had been before, which is an indication that they had been the policies of the whole leadership rather than being substantially influenced by Beria against their will. The consolidation of their power made the Soviet leaders less rather than more accommodating towards a clearly strained Western alliance. If Stalin’s successors had previously not been sufficiently secure to dare to negotiate with the West, they were now not sufficiently insecure to feel compelled to negotiate.
The year 1953 passed without a serious attempt at a détente, because neither the Soviets nor the West had come to the conclusion that this would be in their best interest. The Soviets mastered the post-Stalin succession crisis, and believed that the ‘correlation of forces’ was improving in their favour. They had no need to make concessions to the West or relinquish any of their demands. Molotov, therefore, brought no attractive new proposals to the Berlin conference. The West chose not to test the Soviet Union at its most vulnerable, preoccupied as it was with the cohesion of NATO and the uncertain future of EDC. It thus brought no attractive proposals to Berlin. Only after the Paris agreements later that year, which initiated NATO’s ascendency, and after flexible Khrushchev replaced adamant Molotov as the main influence on Soviet foreign policy were the conditions created for the onset of the first détente.
The Allies at the Onset of the Cold War:
Stalin and the ‘Long Telegrams’
Bohuslav Litera
On the basis of larger-scale historical events after World War II, this study provides a basic comparative analysis of the so-called ‘long telegrams’ sent from Moscow in February and March 1946 by the American diplomat George Kennan and the British diplomat Frank Roberts. Both telegrams were reactions to speeches by Soviet politicians, particularly to Stalin’s speculation about a third world war. In the telegrams the two diplomats provide an analysis of Soviet policy. This study points both to common features of both documents and to the different recommendations for future US and British policy towards the USSR, which the two men addressed to their superiors in Washington and London. Outlined here are also the reasons why the governments of both countries unconditionally accepted only Kennan’s conception and conclusions. The article is appended with an excerpt from Kennan’s memoirs where he discusses his formulating the telegram.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr
This is a reprint of an article published in Foreign Affairs in October 1967. The Editors of Soudobé dějiny decided to have the article translated and published mainly because it aptly and instructively summarizes the key questions of the debate led in Western historiography in the 1960s on the nature of the Cold War; and in many cases it even precedes arguments which appeared in the debate in the 1970s and 1980s. For the Czech reader Schlesinger’s article may be of interest, even though thirty years old, particularly because the majority of the literature discussed here was not then and is still not now available in this country.
The Poles and Their Attitude to the Germans, 1945-48, as Seen in Polish Historiography
Piotr Madajczyk
The author analyzes Polish public opinion concerning Polish-German relations. He approaches the problem on three levels. First, the relations of both nations are examined from the point of view of Polish experience with Nazism and the Second World War. Then internal affairs within the ‘Polish lands’ re-acquired after the war are observed, as are the related question of migration from the East to the West and the transfer of the Germans. Lastly, the author considers the problem of the ‘repolonization’ of part of the indigenous population of western Poland, whose national awareness was often unclear or undefined.
Could Stalin Have Saved Beneš in 1938?
Milan Hauner
This is a review of two monographs: Igor Lukes, Czechoslovakia between Stalin and Hitler: The Diplomacy of Edvard Beneš in the 1930s (New York and Oxford, 1996) and Ivan Pfaff, Die Sowjetunion und die Verteidigung der Tschechoslowakei 1934–1938: Versuch der Revision einer Legende (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 1996). Was the Soviet Union ready to assist Czechoslovakia in her dire moment in late September 1938 after she had been cynically abandoned by her French ally and encircled by a Germany poised to attack? This is the central question posed by the two authors (both of Czech origin). Each answers with a resounding ‘No!’.
The dubious ‘to assist the Czechoslovaks’ requires rephrasing. Though bound by the Treaty of Assistance, the Soviet Union, if preceded by the French and/or by an appeal from the League of Nations, was obliged to intervene militarily. Since, however, neither of the two precedents occurred, Moscow, from the formally legal point of view, behaved correctly by not intervening. A much more important factor, though, as emphatically demonstrated by Pfaff and Lukes, was the ideological dimension of the crisis in which the Red Army, ‘assisting’ another Slav nation, was employed as the vanguard of a Communist-inspired revolution and of the class war (a sort of East European version of the Spanish Civil War) which was to follow the German blitzkrieg against Czechoslovakia. This was precisely the message disseminated at a clandestine meeting of Czechoslovak Communist Party secretaries convened in Prague in late August 1938 by Andrei Zhdanov, a Politburo member and confident of Stalin. His secret visit to Prague during the Sudeten Crisis is one of the hitherto unknown stories of the Munich tragedy, which Pfaff and Lukes unearthed in the Czechoslovak Communist Party archives after 1990. More could certainly be found in the Russian archives were they accessible.
Both authors have profited from the declassification of Czechoslovak documents after 1990, especially those from the Communist Party and the so-called ‘Beneš Archives’ (the latter are administered by the Thomas G. Masaryk Institute, Prague). Both historians have compensated for inadequate access to Soviet sources (even in the more relaxed atmosphere of perestroika) by intensive exploitation of published sources and Czechoslovak archives. Though the title of Lukes’s book is somewhat misleading (it contains much about Stalin but little about Hitler), the text is more concise (half the length of his colleague’s), more balanced and less emotional. Pfaff’s (the elder of the two authors) frequently reminds his reader of the glorious days of the anti-Communist crusade. His main thesis, that the export of revolution on the bayonets of the Red Army must be viewed as a permanent feature of Soviet expansionism, is unconvincing, especially when he eschews explanation in cases where Soviet foreign policy behaved otherwise (for whatever reasons).
Pfaff and Lukes both reject the standard thesis of Communist historiography which maintains that the Soviet Union was ready to intervene for the sake of the little bourgeois republic but Beneš’s capitulation preempted this. Both authors discuss the blurry Tukhachevsky affair; both develop unusual theories with practically no new archival evidence – except the despatches of Soviet envoy to Prague, Sergei Alexandrovsky, published recently by the Soviets. Pfaff’s additional evidence on the close collaboration between the Czechoslovak police and the Gestapo in the matter of the controversial ‘Beneš Dossier’, has already been challenged by a number of historians. Pfaff claims that it existed and that it made its way to Moscow from Berlin passing through President Beneš’s hands with the direct assistance of Reinhard Heydrich’s office and agents. Lukes, on the other hand, says that Beneš never sent the dossier to Moscow and that his future references to that questionable act must be regarded as political window-dressing. If the ‘Dossier’ was smuggled to Stalin via Prague through Beneš’s good offices, this meant being involved to an extraordinary degree; apart from posthumously earning the Czechoslovak president a disrespectful epitaph (Walter Laqueur called it an act ‘of monumental stupidity which contributed to the extinction of the Czech republic two years later’, Soviet Realities [1990], p.102), it is a deed which must still baffle many historians.
In an attempt to provide an alternative hypothesis, Lukes has not waited for conclusive evidence, and suggests that the information from Germany must have reached Beneš through other channels. He mentions improbable private communications between two financiers: Fritz Thyssen and Jaroslav Preiss. Lukes’s supreme piece of evidence that Beneš did not pass the information to Stalin is the detailed report from Alexandrovsky, based on a conversation between him and Beneš on 3 July 1937. Beneš admitted that he feared a ‘new Rapallo’ and that Marshal Tukhachevsky, representing, in his eyes, the pro-German party in the Kremlin could overthrow Stalin in a coup and cause a ‘renversement des alliances’ with dire consequences for Czechoslovak security. Beneš, therefore, reiterated to the surprised Alexandrovsky his passionate plea for friendship with Stalin’s Russia, in spite of the political purges, which he must have found repulsive. He did not mind, therefore, ‘how many heads would be rolling in Russia’, as long as the Soviet Union remained committed to an anti-German foreign policy and allied with Czechoslovakia through the Pact of Mutual Military Assistance of May 1935. The unresolved question of the transit of Soviet ground troops through the Roumanian corridor to eastern Slovakia in the last days of the September 1938 crisis (discussed by Pfaff, but avoided by Lukes), will have to wait for additional evidence from both Russian and Roumanian archives.
As to Lukes’s principal claim that the Soviets deliberately ignored Beneš’s appeal for ‘immediate air support’ between 28 and 30 September 1938 (that is, even after the formal acceptance of the Munich diktat) – whether because Alexandrovsky did not want to pass it on to Moscow or whether it was simply ignored in Moscow because of Beneš’s credibility – will remain a matter of conjecture. Military interventions, whether by air or by land, are not produced merely by telephone calls, but require some degree of logistical and operational planning. The record of Beneš’s last message to Moscow reveals a tentative question, as if Beneš were seeking advice rather than effective military aid.
Lukes’s final verdict on Beneš may, on the other hand, be accepted as a balanced and humane judgement of the president’s agonizing decision: ‘Although he continued to be haunted by his acceptance of the Munich diktat until the end of his life, Beneš thought that he had made the right decision’ (p. 262).
A Promising Sign:
A New Yearbook of Czechoslovak, Czech and Slovak History
František Šmahel
The author reviews the first volume of a new yearbook, Česko-slovenská historická ročenka 96, published by the University of Brno and the Czecho-Slovak Committee of Historians. He welcomes it as promising step forward in collaborative efforts between Czech and Slovak historians, which has been intensive in the field of Czechoslovak history.
More on the Prague Spring
Jitka Vondrová
This is a review of two monographs on the Prague Spring: J. Pauer, Prag 1968: Der Einmarsch des Warschauer Paktes. Hintergründe – Planung – Durchführung (Bremen, 1995) and Die SED und der ‘Prager Frühling’ 1968: Politik gegen einen ‘Sozialismus mit menschlichem Anlitz’ (Berlin, 1996). The reviewer sees these two publications as a contribution to our understanding of the international context of the Czechoslovak attempt to reform Communism. The reflections on the politics of the Czechoslovak reform leaders, the quantity of new information and connections implied are, says the reviewer, particularly stimulating.
Václav Kural
In this review of Miloš Pick’s Přes Acherón zpátky to šlo hůř (Litomyšl, 1997), the reviewer describes this little book of memoirs as a sober and chaste testimony on everyday life in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and on the tragic fate of Czechoslovak Jews in Theresienstadt/Terezín and Auschwitz. He welcomes it as a unique and personal contribution to our understanding of one of the essential causes of the Germans’ expulsion from the Bohemian lands after World War II.
A Key Work on Austro-Yugoslav Relations
Miroslav Tejchman
The reviewer looks at Arnold Suppan’s Jugoslawien und Österreich 1918–1938. Bilaterale Aussenpolitik im europäischen Umfeld (Vienna and Munich 1996). This substantial book of 1300 pages comprises eight chapters on the bilateral relations between Austria and Jugoslavia and the parallel histories of the two countries. Suppan terms his work an attempt at describing the relations between the two neighbouring countries against the background of European politics, based on an analysis of national, religious, social, economic, political and ideological factors. He stresses the border conflict of 1918-20, reciprocity in minority questions, the formation of the image of the neighbour in historiography and in public opinion, cooperation in the arts and culture, trade and commerce, and the questions of restoration and Anschluss. The author then formulates the key areas of his interest by an analysis of, among other things, the contrary foreign-policy conceptions of both states and of their different historical traditions.
The reviewer maintains that Suppan’s work is in the best tradition of German positivist historiography and that it is a ‘tale’ of two unequal neighbours, their relations and thinking. He believes it will for years to come remain a fundamental source of information on Austro-Yugoslav relations from 1918 to 1938, and a fundamental German-language source on the history of Austria and Yugoslavia in this period.
A Discussion between Josef Smrkovský and General N. V. Ogarkov, 30 August 1968
Jindřich Pecka
Among the papers of Josef Smrkovský, Chairman of the Czechoslovak National Assembly in 1968, there is an original type-written record of his conversation with Soviet General N. V. Ogarkov. It concerns a possible Soviet withdrawal of troops from Prague and other towns to military areas. The conversation was held at Prague Castle on the afternoon of 30 August 1968, shortly after Smrkovský’s return from Soviet internment and after the Moscow diktat of 26 August. The meeting between the two men was held at the initiative of the Soviets but was mediated by Czechoslovak Minister of Defence Martin Dzúr. It took place in an official atmosphere without informal comments or courtesies. The language spoken was Russian.
Smrkovský was seeking a Soviet withdrawal from Bohemian towns and a renewal of the operation of central organs and institutions. His approach, which might be called purposefully sober, was directed to this end. Ogarkov suppressed the arrogance which he had previously shown, for example, to the representative of the Czechoslovak armed forces. Otherwise he comported himself according to the logic of the occupying power which had just inflicted a severe trauma on Czechoslovakia, while Soviet emissaries were pretending that they had come to solve its problems. In their view, the solution resided only in absolute subordination to the Kremlin. One of Ogarkov’s conditions for a possible withdrawal was the removal of anti-occupation slogans and signs from public areas; others were that the word ‘occupation’ not be used and that the mass media be subordinated to the censor and that they work in the spirit of the Moscow agreements. Smrkovský’s demand that Czechoslovak citizens be released from internment was ignored.
This document, part of the Smrkovský Papers in the State Central Archive, Prague, testifies to the way the shadow of the Moscow Protocol began, from late August 1968 on, to fall upon Czechoslovakia, accompanied also by the first measures of the pro-Soviet régime’s ‘normalization’.
With this number, Soudobé dějiny is introducing as a supplement to its Reviews and Bibliography a regular section containing annotations of recent books and articles from home and abroad (including documents in print) relevant to Czechoslovak, Czech, Slovak and general history from 1918 to the present.
The Editors welcome annotations on books and articles. This volume will contain annotations (of up to forty typewritten lines) on books published during the last three years (since 1 January 1994) and annotations (of up to twenty typewritten lines) on materials and articles from journals published in the previous and current year (since 1 January 1996).
Contributors
Leonid Gibiansky (1936) is Head Researcher in the Institute of Slavonic and Balkan Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. His main areas of interest are the Soviet-Yugoslav conflict, 1948-53, and the history of international relations in central and south-east Europe.
Milan Hauner (1940) took degrees at Charles University and Cambridge. A resident of the USA, he is a visiting professor at universities in America and Europe. He is the author of India in Axis Strategy (Stuttgart 1981), Hitler: A Chronology of His Life and Time (London 1983), What is Asia to Us? Russia’s Asian Heartland Yesterday and Today (1990; 1992).
Václav Kural (1928) was elected Vice-Chairman of the Government Commission on the Events of 1967-70, in December 1989, and is currently at the Institute of International Relations, Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He is the author of a number of articles and books on the period of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Czech-German relations and the 1968 reform process.
Bohuslav Litera (1950) is a senior researcher in the Historical Institute, Academy of Sciences, Prague. He is concerned with the history of international relations after WW II and with the Soviet Union and Russia.
Piotr Madajczyk (1959) is a researcher at the Institute of Political Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences. He is concerned with the 20th-century Polish-German relations, which is the topic of his most recent book, Przylaczenie Slaska Opolskiego do Polski 1945-1948 (1996).
Petr Mareš (1953), formerly or the Historical Institute (Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences) and the Czechoslovak Film Institute, is currently Head of the Department of American Studies in the Institute of International Studies, Charles University. He is particularly concerned with the history of international relations and of US foreign policy during WW II and the Cold War.
Vojtěch Mastný (1936) was Professor of International Relations at the School of Advanced International Relations, and Director of the Research Institute of International Relations, the Johns Hopkins Bologna Centre, John Hopkins University. He is now at the Woodrow Wilson International Center of Scholars, Washington D.C. His most recent book, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years (1996), takes up where his Russia’s Road tu the Cold War (1979) left off.
Jindřich Pecka (1936) is Senior Researcher in the Institute of Contemporary History, Prague, and Docent of History at South Bohemian University, Budějovice. He has published on the history of WW II, the Czechoslovak crisis 1967-70, and Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia, 1968-91.
Michal Reiman (1930) is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Modern East European History at the Freie Universitaet Berlin, and is now at the Institute of International Studeis, Charles University.
Arthur Schlesinger Jr (1917) is Professor Emeritus of History, Harvard University. In the 1960s he was an adviser to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, then became Professor of the Humanities at City University, New York. He received the Pulitzer Prize for history and biography. Among his many publications are A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (1965), The Imperial Presidency (1973), and Cycles of American History (1986).
František Šmahel (1934) is Director of the Institute of History, the Academy of Sciences, and Professor of History, Charles University. He is concerned with Czech and European medieval history, and his most recent work is a history of the Hussite wars.
Miroslav Tejchman (1938) is a senior researcher in the Historical Institute, Academy of Sciences, Prague. He is concerned with the modern history of the Balkans.
Jitka Vondrová (1953), previously an archivist in the State Central Archive, Prague, is now a researcher in the Institute of Contemporary History, Academy of Sciences, Prague. She is concerned mainly with the compiling and editing of primary sources on the Czechoslovak crisis, 1967-70.
