Misperception, Ambivalence, and Indecision in Soviet Policy-making: Czechoslovakia 1968: Lessons for today?

Rereading my 1984 article “Misperception, Ambivalence, and Indecision in Soviet Policy-making,” for the first time in many years, most of the analysis strikes me as just as valid today as it was in 1984 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1903573. 

There is, however, an important blind spot in the article.  I did not fully appreciate the panic of hardliners among the leaders of the Soviet Bloc concerning the Prague Spring.  It was clear that the Czechoslovak reform movement posed a severe threat to the Soviet-type orthodoxy of some of the Soviet Bloc regimes. Nevertheless, along with many other observers, I thought it obvious that the reform program launched from within the Communist Party was the only way to keep a deeply-flawed regime afloat. What we now know about the endemic flaws of Soviet-type regimes makes even more obvious that the reforms of the Prague Spring were unavoidable. Yet when a similar reform program emerged in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev, it actually did contribute to the collapse of the Soviet state.  To be sure, there was no danger of instability, regime collapse, or Czechoslovakia’s leaving the Warsaw Pact. Yet, the panic of some Soviet Bloc leaders was not based on mere illusion.  The ideas of the Prague Spring were contagious for one simple reason.  They made sense, and they made sense not only for Czechoslovakia but the entire Soviet Bloc including the Soviet Union.  The political system established by Stalin had reached a dead end in Czechoslovakia by 1968, and approaching dead ends in other Bloc countries.  Unconstrained, the ideas of the Prague Spring would have caught on and spread like wildfire. 

The Soviet leadership faced a dilemma.  On the one hand, it is not sufficiently appreciated how deeply the Soviets understood how necessary were the kinds of the reforms underway in Czechoslovakia. Similar reforms were in progress throughout the Soviet Bloc, including the Soviet Union itself, albeit more slowly.  The Prague Spring was no threat to the regime in Hungary, where such reforms were well advanced. It did not even pose a serious threat to the Soviet regime, where people remained passive, and control remained tight.  In Poland and the GDR, however, the Communist regimes were near the end of the rope. For them, the Czechoslovak reform movement was dangerously contagious.  

The experiences of Gorbachev’s Perestroika, the Orange Revolution and the other “color revolutions” in other former Soviet republics have made me more sober about the prospects for the Prague Spring than I was when I wrote the “Misperception” article.  Had there been no military intervention, Dubcek and his colleagues would undoubtedly have encountered problems similar to those faced later on by Gorbachev and, more recently, by the leaders of the color revolutions.  Even if Dubcek and his colleagues had exercised brilliant leadership, serious disagreements would soon have materialized within the Government and the ruling elite.  Serious opposition would have emerged outside existing power structures, as it did in the Soviet Union not too long after the launch of Perestroika. The public would have soon grown tired of the reformist leaders who were so wildly popular during the Prague Spring. There is a huge gap between ideas that fire up crowds and capability to carry through reforms.  

The situation in Czechoslovakia in 1968 was similar to that in the Soviet Union when Gorbachev launched Perestroika. It bore similarities to the recent color revolutions. Yet the Prague Spring was also significantly different from what happened in most of the Republics of the former USSR.  The civil society foundations that became visible in Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring were already stable in 1968, and they reappeared in full force during and after the "Velvet Revolution."  Prospects for a relatively rapid, successful liberal-democratic transition were far better in the Czechoslovakia of 1968 than they were in the Soviet Union during Perestroika, or for the post-Soviet color revolutions.  

In fact, had it not been for the precariousness of the Polish and East German regimes, there might have been no invasion.  A reformed Czechoslovakia might well have ended up serving as evidence that Soviet-type regimes were reformable, and that the Soviet Union was willing to tolerate genuine liberal-democratic reform.  It might have served as a model for the other Soviet Bloc states gradually to transform their Stalinist-type regimes.  

A continuation of "Novotnyism"--the system in place at the end of 1967, was not an option for the Czechoslovak leadership. The regime was too weak and indecisive, support base and legitimacy too thin to implement the kind of crackdown that could have preserved it.  Neither could the post-Novotny leadership reform further and faster without control slipping out of its hands.  Similarly, maintenance of the system of “застой” (stagnation) was not a viable option for the Soviet Union over the long run.  The reforms promoted by the Czechoslovak reformists were unavoidable. Their revival some two decades later by Gorbachev was inevitable. When a journalist asked Gorbachev's spokesman, Gennady Gerasimov, at a press conference in 1989: "What is the difference between Perestroika and the Prague Spring, he smiled and replied "19 years." In both cases, the middle-ground between defending the existing regime and radically reforming it had eroded away.  I recall a lecture given in the wake of the Czechoslovak invasion by Richard Loewenthal in 1969. The “Soviet Directoire,” Loewenthal said, was doomed, and he showed convincingly why the Soviet system was not sustainable. 

Several years ago,  in a conversation with Yuri Krasin, head of the former Institute of Social Science at the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, I mentioned the doctrine of “actually-existing socialism.” According to this doctrine, "socialism" meant what the system that already existed in the USSR. This theory appeared some two years after the Czechoslovak invasion.  Krasin smiled when I mentioned it.  He said he had been present during the discussions that led to its adoption, and that he immediately realized that it meant the death of socialism. As long as socialism remained an ideal, he said, even something to be achieved in the future, benefiting their grandchildren, many people would be willing to struggle and make sacrifices.  In looking at the socialism they experienced in their everyday lives, it was hard for them to be enthusiastic. 

The intervention in Czechoslovakia was traumatic for the Soviet leadership. Stalin had assumed that having believing Communists, friends of the Soviet Union at the helm of its allied states would guarantee firm foundations for these regimes. The Prague Spring shocked Stalin's successors to the realization that people who believed, and were also friends of the Soviet Union could subvert these regimes.  The trauma resulted in enduring paralysis of reform throughout the Soviet Bloc. Until Gorbachev, it systematically blocked all attempts to remedy the fundamental problems underlying Soviet-type regimes.   

It was a typical tragic situation.  What Stalin had done to the Soviet Union and its allied states could not be repaired without the kinds of severe bumps and crises that Russia and the other former Soviet republics have been experiencing since the Soviet collapse.  The collapse of the Soviet Union and Soviet-type regimes resulted in severe problems, some of which might well be called disastrous. Nevertheless, the fall of Communism turned out not to be nearly as cataclysmic as those who advocated military intervention in Czechoslovakia must have believed in 1968.

The East German leader, Walter Ulbricht and the Polish leader, Wladyslaw Gomulka, thought it possible to maintain the system by forces and fear. At least they could not see any other way. I still think such hardliners were even more naive than those of us who believed Soviet-type regimes might be reformable.  If I could go back in a time machine and advise the Soviet leadership on what to do about the Prague Spring, I would explain why force and fear could not maintain stability over the long run.  I would explain to them why enlightened Soviet policy had to take the bull by the horns and provide determined, energetic leadership and competent management of reform.  

Unfortunately, however, such advice would have been politically unrealistic.  Brezhnev’s political base would not have tolerated it.   Some time after the invasion, Brezhnev confided to Czech reformist, Bohumil Simon:  "If I hadn't voted for the military intervention in the Politburo at that time, what would have happened?  You certainly wouldn't be sitting here, and perhaps I wouldn't be sitting here either." Moreover, the leaderships of the USSR and its Warsaw Pact allies did not possess the necessary understanding and political and management skills that would enable them to master the situation.  If Brezhnev had accepted my “enlightened” advice, he would have been overthrown.  Yes, a tragic situation with no painless alternative.

Some of the above elaborates the line of analysis in my (1990) article, “The Gorbachev Revolution” http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1891898   See also my: "The Prague Spring," in The Encyclopedia of Europe http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1918171; "August 21, 1968, in Prague: An eyewitness account" http://fredeidlin.com/pdfs/personalexperiences/August%2021%201968%20in%20Prague%20(Munich).pdf; and The Logic of Normalization: The Soviet Intervention in Czechoslovakia of 21 August and the Czechoslovak Response http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2738197