Events in Czechoslovakia (1968). Family archive In 1968, Soviet troops were introduced
At the beginning of 1968, the Czechoslovak Republic experienced a period of liberalization associated with the name of Alexander Dubcek and his active reform activities. It caused a negative reaction from the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The events went down in history as the Prague Spring, the basis of which was to expand the rights and freedoms of the population, decentralize power in the state, weaken control over the media, and provide greater rights to freedom of movement.
A. Dubcek's reforms
The official date of liberalization is considered to be January 4, 1968, when A. Novotny, who was then the president of Czechoslovakia, was removed from power. The government and party were headed by A. Dubcek, who immediately set a course for a market economy and the weakening of total control in the country. His supporters were elected to the presidium and secretariat of the Communist Party, which helped Dubcek implement his reforms.The changes affected the following areas:
Censorship and freedom of expression;
Control over the work of security agencies has been established;
Creation of private enterprises;
Plants and factories received more choice in organizing production. Bodies of workers' self-government were created;
The beginning was laid for the emergence of new political forces and informal associations.
Separately, it was planned to expand the rights of the republics, for which Dubcek wanted to carry out federalization. The Greek Catholic Church in Slovakia was restored.
Support for the reforms of the new leadership of the country was provided by all layers of society - from village residents to the political elite.
Simultaneously with domestic politics, Dubcek and his supporters sought to distance themselves from the Soviet Union. This was also facilitated by the mood in society, in which protests against the total rule of the party were increasingly heard. This was also stated by representatives of the intelligentsia, who issued declarations against the dominance of Soviet power. In addition, the media launched an active propaganda campaign directed against the USSR and the method of control.At the same time, Czechoslovakia did not intend to leave the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO), but only wanted to gain more internal economic and political independence.
USSR reaction
The General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union L. Brezhnev adopted a special doctrine providing for the limitation of the sovereignty of socialist countries. As part of it, an order was given to send ATS troops into Czechoslovakia, which happened on August 21, 1968. The operation was called the Danube, which began in Prague. In total, 300 thousand troops and several thousand tanks were brought into the country. Within a few days, the entire political leadership of the country was arrested, and important strategic objects were taken. The Czechoslovak armed forces offered no resistance.Protests in the country
The wave of public resistance was raised thanks to the active participation of the media. Activists scattered leaflets along the city streets telling about the deployment of troops. Therefore, protests began, barricades were erected, and attacks took place on Soviet military personnel, tanks, and armored vehicles. Mostly Molotov cocktails were used.As a result of the unrest, 11 Soviet soldiers were killed and more than 80 were wounded or injured. Losses among the civilian population were much more significant. More than 100 people were killed and half a thousand were injured.
Radio and television were disabled, and city transport was stopped.
Such a policy of the USSR caused a wave of mass protests in other Soviet republics, as well as abroad and a number of international organizations. The slightest dissent was dismissed from work, and those who protested were arrested.
The Dubcek government was forced to sign the Anti-Crisis Program dictated by the party leaders of the Communist Party. All achievements of liberalization were reduced to zero. A wave of repression swept across Czechoslovakia, a strict occupation regime was established, and dissidents were persecuted. Moscow’s protégé, Gustav Husak, again became the head of the country.
In 1968, the Soviet Army carried out the most ambitious military action in the post-war years. More than 20 divisions of ground forces occupied an entire country in the center of Europe in one day and with virtually no losses. Even the Afghan war involved a much smaller number of troops (see the corresponding section of the book).
That year again I had to fight the “counter-revolution” in Eastern Europe - this time in Czechoslovakia. The developments in Czechoslovakia and the Prague Spring have long worried the Soviet leadership. L.I. Brezhnev and his comrades could not allow the fall of the communist regime in this country and were ready to use force at any moment. The “Brezhnev Doctrine,” formulated by this time and carefully hidden from everyone, assumed the use of military power to maintain Soviet influence in the socialist countries of Europe without regard to their sovereignty and international norms.
In January 1968, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPC), A. Novotny, ceded his post to A. Dubcek, who immediately assured Moscow that he would make every effort to stabilize the situation in the party and society. Being a convinced Marxist, he still considered it necessary to carry out some reforms in economics and politics. Public opinion generally supported Dubcek's reform aspirations - the existing model for building a socialist society did not allow him to catch up with the industrialized countries of Western Europe in terms of living standards.
N. S. Khrushchev and L. I. Brezhnev on the podium of the Mausoleum
Dubcek took the initiative to approve a “new model of socialism.” At the next (April) plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, the so-called Program of Action of the Czechoslovak Communists was adopted. If we consider this document from a modern perspective, then in general it was maintained in the communist spirit, with the exception of two points - the party leadership abandoned the command-administrative system of management and freedom of speech and press was declared.
In the country, including in the official press, heated discussions took place on various socio-political issues. The most frequently voiced theses were the removal of government officials who had compromised themselves from government bodies and the intensification of economic relations with the West. The majority of official circles in the countries of the socialist community perceived the events taking place in Czechoslovakia as nothing other than a “counter-revolution.”
Soviet political leaders showed particular concern, fearing a change in the foreign policy course of Czechoslovakia, which could lead to a reorientation to the West, an alliance with Yugoslavia, and then to withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, as at one time almost happened with the Hungarian People's Republic.
During this period, the so-called “Brezhnev Doctrine” was finally formed, which in foreign policy became the cornerstone and connecting link of everything socialist camp. The doctrine was based on the fact that the withdrawal of any socialist country from the Wars of Internal Affairs or the Comecon, or a departure from the agreed line in foreign policy, would disrupt the existing balance of power in Europe and would inevitably lead to an aggravation of international tension.
One of the main sources of information about the internal situation in Czechoslovakia for the leadership of the USSR were reports from informants and Soviet diplomats. Thus, member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia F. Havlicek directly warned about the “inevitable rapprochement of Czechoslovakia with Yugoslavia and Romania,” which would lead to a weakening of the positions of the socialist bloc.
The train of thought of the Soviet leaders is clearly illustrated by the story of the Soviet “curator” in Czechoslovakia, member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee K. T. Mazurov: “Despite the nuances, the general position was the same: it is necessary to intervene. It was difficult to imagine that a bourgeois parliamentary republic (!) would appear on our borders, flooded with Germans from the Federal Republic of Germany, and after them Americans. This did not in any way meet the interests of the Warsaw Pact. During the last week before the entry of troops, members of the Politburo hardly slept and did not go home: according to reports, a counter-revolutionary coup was expected in Czechoslovakia. The Baltic and Belarusian military districts were put on state of readiness number one. On the night of August 20-21, they gathered for a meeting again. Brezhnev said: “We will send in troops...”.
Judging by the recollections of eyewitnesses, in December 1968, Defense Minister Marshal Grechko, discussing the issue, indicated that Brezhnev did not want to send troops for a long time, but Ulbricht, Gomulka, and Zhivkov put pressure on him. And our “hawks” in the Politburo (P. G. Shelest, N. V. Podgorny, K. T. Mazurov, A. N. Shelepin and others) demanded that the problem be solved by force.
The leaders of the countries of the socialist community also viewed the Czechoslovak events as a “dangerous virus” that could spread to other countries. This primarily concerned East Germany, Poland and Bulgaria, and to a lesser extent Hungary.
From the point of view of the military (according to the memoirs of the former chief of staff of the United Armed Forces of the Warsaw Pact states, Army General A. Gribkov), the main danger of Czechoslovakia’s independence in matters of foreign policy was that it would inevitably lead to the vulnerability of borders with NATO countries, the loss control over the Czech armed forces. The refusal of the Czechoslovak leadership to voluntarily station a group of Soviet troops on their territory seemed, to say the least, illogical and requiring adequate immediate measures.
Preparations for Operation Danube - the entry of troops from the Warsaw Pact countries into the territory of Czechoslovakia - began in the spring of 1968 and were initially carried out under the guise of the Šumava maneuvers. On April 8, the commander of the Airborne Forces Margelov, in preparation for the exercises, received a directive from the Minister of Defense Marshal Grechko, which read: “ Soviet Union and other socialist countries, faithful to their international duty and the Warsaw Pact, had to send in their troops to assist Czechoslovakia people's army in protecting the Motherland from the danger looming over it.”
At the signal to begin the Šumava exercise, two airborne divisions should be ready to land in Czechoslovakia by parachute and landing methods. At the same time, our paratroopers, who recently wore “speckled” (red) berets at the parade in November 1967, like most special forces units around the world, put on blue hats in the summer of 1968.
This “move” of the Airborne Forces commander, Colonel-General Margelov, judging by the stories of eyewitnesses, later, during the “Danube” operation itself, saved more than a dozen lives of our paratroopers - local residents who tried to resist the Soviet troops, at first mistook them for representatives of the UN peacekeeping forces, the so-called “blue helmets”.
The commanders of regiments and divisions that were supposed to be involved in the invasion operation got acquainted with the roads and cities of Czechoslovakia, studying possible routes for moving troops. Joint Soviet-Czechoslovak exercises were held, after which Soviet units lingered on Czechoslovak soil for a long time and left it only after numerous reminders from the Czech leadership.
“Early in the morning of June 18, 1968, the operational group of the field command of the army crossed the state border of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic,” described the events of those days, the head of the political department of the 38th Army of the Carpathian Military District, S. M. Zolotev. - Three days later, the main forces of the army, allocated to participate in the exercise, crossed the Soviet-Czechoslovak border.
Already from the first meetings on Czechoslovak soil, it became clear that changes had occurred in the consciousness and behavior of a significant part of the Slovaks and Czechs. We did not feel the brotherly warmth and friendliness that distinguished our Czechoslovak friends before; we became wary. On July 22, a group of senior officers of the Czechoslovak People's Army arrived at the headquarters of our army... On behalf of the Minister of National Defense of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, they posed questions to us: why, contrary to the promise given by Marshal I. I. Yakubovsky to withdraw Soviet troops by July 21, they are still in the area teachings; for what reasons are we delayed and what are our future plans... We find ourselves in a difficult situation.”
Only in early August, after repeated demands from the Czech government, did units of the 38th Army return to their garrisons. Let us again give the floor to S. M. Zolotov: “Soon I received the command to return to the army command post. There was a lot of work to be done here to familiarize ourselves with new units and formations... In addition to the regular army formations, there were already transferred divisions from other regions here. Together with the commander, I visited these formations and talked with people. Although there was no direct talk about a possible push across the Czechoslovak border, the officers understood why such a powerful group of troops was being created in Transcarpathia. “On August 12, the Minister of Defense of the USSR, Marshal of the Soviet Union A. A. Grechko, arrived in our troops.”
But even earlier, in mid-July, the leaders of the USSR, Poland, East Germany, Bulgaria and Hungary gathered in Warsaw to discuss the situation in Czechoslovakia. At the meeting, a message was developed to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, demanding the adoption of energetic measures to restore “order.” It also said that the defense of socialism in Czechoslovakia is not a private matter of this country only, but the direct duty of all countries of the socialist community.
Consultations and exchanges of views between Soviet leaders and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia began in Czerne nad Tisou. As a result, by August 3, when at the Bratislava meeting communist parties a joint communiqué was signed, it was already possible to create a split in the ranks of the leadership of the Czech Communist Party. In Bratislava, it was decided that “the defense of the gains of socialism. is. the international duty of all fraternal parties.”
The Czechs themselves also did not exclude the possibility of using their own armed forces within the country. Thus, Defense Minister Dzur considered the possibility of dispersing demonstrations in front of the building of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia with the help of army armored personnel carriers, and Dubcek at a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee on August 12 directly stated: “If I come to the conclusion that we are on the verge of a counter-revolution, then I myself will call in the Soviet troops.”
An analysis of the statements of Western politicians suggested that the United States and NATO would not interfere in the conflict. The main reason for such optimism was the statement of US Secretary of State D. Rusk that the events in Czechoslovakia are a personal matter, first of all, of the Czechs themselves, as well as other Warsaw Pact countries (a similar statement was made during the Hungarian crisis, then the Americans did not officially intervene) . Thus, the intervention of NATO and US armed forces in the conflict was not expected, at least at the first stage, until serious resistance was put up.
At an extended meeting of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee on August 16, a decision was made to send troops. This decision was approved at a meeting of leaders of the Warsaw Pact countries in Moscow on August 18. The reason was a letter of appeal from a group of Czech party and government officials to the governments of the USSR and other Warsaw Pact countries to provide “international assistance.” As a result, a decision was made to change the country's political leadership during a short-term military intervention. After completing this mission, the main group of troops was supposed to be immediately withdrawn, leaving only a few units to stabilize the situation.
On the same day, August 18, the entire leadership of the Armed Forces, the commanders of the armies that were destined to go to Czechoslovakia, gathered in the office of the USSR Minister of Defense, Marshal Grechko. The subsequent conversation is known from the words of the commander of the 38th Army, General A. M. Mayorov:
“The assembled marshals and generals waited for a long time for the late minister, already guessing what would be discussed. Czechoslovakia has long been the number one topic around the world. The minister appeared without preamble and announced to the audience:
I just returned from a Politburo meeting. A decision was made to send troops from the Warsaw Pact countries into Czechoslovakia. This decision will be implemented even if it leads to a third world war.
These words hit those gathered like a hammer. No one imagined that the stakes were so high. Grechko continued:
With the exception of Romania - it does not count - everyone agreed to this action. True, Janos Kadar will present the final decision tomorrow morning, Monday. He has some complications with members of the Politburo. Walter Ulbricht and the GDR Minister of Defense prepared five divisions for entry into Czechoslovakia. Politically this is not yet feasible. It's not 1939 now. If necessary, we will connect them too.
After a short pause, while those present considered what they had heard, the minister demanded a report on the readiness of the troops for the operation and gave the last instructions:
Commander of the first tank!
Lieutenant General of Tank Forces Kozhanov!
Report back.
The army, Comrade Minister, is ready to complete the task.
Fine. The main attention, Comrade Kozhanov, is the rapid advance of the army from north to south. Bring four divisions to the west... Keep two divisions in reserve. KP - Pilsen. Of course, in the forests. The army's area of responsibility is the three northwestern and western regions of Czechoslovakia.
Commander of the Twentieth Army!
Lieutenant General of Tank Forces Velichko.
Report back.
The army is prepared to carry out the task you have assigned.
Fine. Commander, 10–12 hours after “H”, one, or better yet two divisions, you should link up with the airborne division in the area of the Ruzine airfield southwest of Prague.
The commander of the airborne troops, Colonel General Margelov, who was excited by the upcoming operation, expressed himself most temperamentally:
Comrade Minister, the airborne division is on time... We will smash everything to smithereens."
The direct preparation of the group of Soviet troops for the invasion, already under the personal leadership of Defense Minister Grechko, began on August 17–18. Draft appeals to the people and army of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, a government statement from the five participating countries and a special letter to the leaders of the communist parties of Western countries were prepared. All prepared documents emphasized that the deployment of troops was only a forced measure taken in connection with “the real danger of a counter-revolutionary coup in Czechoslovakia.”
Il-14–30D (according to NATO classification - Crate) was intended to transport 30 paratroopers or 3 tons of cargo
During the direct training of troops, a white stripe was applied to armored vehicles - a distinctive feature of Soviet and other “friendly” troops being brought in. All other armored vehicles were subject to “neutralization” during the operation, preferably without fire damage. In case of resistance, “stripeless” tanks and other military equipment were subject, according to the instructions communicated to the troops, to destruction immediately upon opening fire on our troops. When meeting, if something like this happens, with NATO troops, they were ordered to immediately stop and “do not shoot without a command.” Naturally, no “sanction from above” was required to destroy the Czech equipment that opened fire.
The last time the date and time for the start of the operation was clarified and finally approved was August 20, approximately late in the evening. According to the general plan, during the first three days, 20 divisions of the countries participating in the Warsaw Warsaw Forces enter Czechoslovakia, and in the following days, another 10 divisions are introduced. In case the situation worsens, 6 of the 22 military districts of the USSR (which is 85–100 combat-ready divisions) are put on heightened combat readiness. All forces armed with nuclear weapons had to be brought to a state of full combat readiness. In Poland, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary and Bulgaria, an additional 70–80 divisions were deployed to wartime levels to be deployed if necessary.
By August 20, all preparatory activities were completed. Formations of the 1st Guards Tank, 20th Guards Combined Arms and 16th Air Armies of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, 11th Guards Combined Arms Army of the Baltic Military District, 5th Guards Tank and 28th Combined Arms Armies of the Belarusian Military District, 13 1st, 38th combined arms armies and 28th Army Corps of the Carpathian Military District, 14th Air Army of the Odessa Military District - up to 500 thousand people in total. (of which 250 thousand were in the first echelon) and 5,000 tanks and armored personnel carriers were ready for action. Army General I. G. Pavlovsky was appointed commander-in-chief of the group of Soviet troops.
However, even on the eve of the deployment of troops, Marshal Grechko informed the Czechoslovakian Defense Minister about the impending action and warned against resistance from the Czechoslovak armed forces.
The political and state leadership of the country was “temporarily neutralized,” which was not in the plan approved in advance. But it was necessary to stop possible incidents like the speech of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia on Prague radio. A reconnaissance company led by Lieutenant Colonel M. Seregin captured the building of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia at seven o'clock in the morning, disarming the guards and cutting all telephone wires. A few minutes later, the paratroopers already burst into the room where the Czechoslovak leaders were meeting. To the question of one of those present: “Gentlemen, what kind of army has come?” - followed the exhaustive answer:
It was the Soviet army that came to defend socialism in Czechoslovakia. Please remain calm and remain in place until our representatives arrive; security of the building will be ensured.
Fighting on the streets of Prague - the outcome is clearly a foregone conclusion...
Soviet BTR-152 on a city street
At seven o'clock in the afternoon on August 21, the entire Czechoslovak leadership, on two armored personnel carriers, under the escort of paratroopers, was taken to the airport and flown by plane to Legnica (Poland), to the headquarters of the Northern Group of Forces. From there they were transported to Transcarpathia, and then to Moscow for negotiations with Soviet leaders.
Column of T-54A with identification stripes “friend or foe”
Some of the paratroopers took up positions along the highway from the airfield to Prague in order to stop possible attempts by the Czechoslovak army to prevent the invasion. But at about four in the morning, instead of Czech cars, blinding the soldiers with headlights, the first column of Soviet tanks from the 20th Guards Army thundered.
A few hours later, the first Soviet tanks with white stripes on the armor appeared on the streets of Czechoslovak cities so that they could distinguish their vehicles from similar Czech tanks. The roar of tank diesel engines and the roar of caterpillars woke up peacefully sleeping townspeople that morning. On the streets of morning Prague, even the air was infused with tank smoke. Some people, both soldiers and civilians, had an uneasy feeling of war, but in general it can be seen that for the most part the Czechs turned out to be passive - the introduction of troops aroused curiosity rather than fear in them.
the main role in the operation to establish control over the situation in the country, it was assigned to tank formations and units - the 9th and 11th Guards Tank Divisions of the 1st Guards Tank Army, Lieutenant General of Tank Forces K. G. Kozhanov from the GSVG, 13th Guards Tank Division from the Southern Group of Forces, the 15th Guards Tank Division of Major General A. A. Zaitsev from the Belarusian Military District, the 31st Tank Division of Major General A. P. Yurkov from the 38th Combined Arms Army of the Carpathian Military District and tank regiments motorized rifle divisions.
Given the difference in speed of movement, the Soviet command ordered the ground group to cross the border while the paratroopers were still preparing to land. At one in the morning on August 21, 1968, units and formations of the 38th Army of Lieutenant General A. M. Mayorov crossed the state border of Czechoslovakia. There was no resistance from the Czechoslovak side. The advanced motorized rifle division of Major General G. P. Yashkin covered 120 km in 4 hours.
At 4 a.m. the loss account was opened. 200 km from the border, near the small town of Poprad, a Volga stopped in front of a reconnaissance patrol of three T-55 tanks, in which the commander of the 38th Army, General Mayorov, was sitting. Lieutenant Colonel Shevtsov and the head of the Special Department of the Army, Spirin, approached the car, accompanied by KGB special forces (they were assigned to the general on the eve of the invasion, and they controlled his every step). Mayorov ordered Shevtsov:
Lieutenant Colonel, find out why the tanks stopped.
Before the general could finish speaking, one tank rushed towards the Volga. Spirin grabbed Mayorov by the shoulder and pulled him out of the car. The next moment, the Volga crunched under the tank’s tracks. The driver and radio operator sitting in the front seats managed to jump out, and the sergeant sitting next to the general was crushed.
What are you bastards doing?! - the army commander yelled at the tank commander and driver, who jumped to the ground.
We need to go to Trencin... Mayorov ordered,” the tankers made excuses.
So I am Mayorov!
We didn’t recognize you, Comrade General...
The cause of the accident was fatigue of the driver.
Having stopped the car to transfer control to a replacement, he left the tank on the brake without turning off the first gear, and forgot to say about it. The driver started the car and released the brake. The tank jumped onto the Volga standing in front of it. Only a happy accident saved General Mayorov from death, otherwise the whole army could find itself without a commander in the very first hours of its stay on foreign soil.
By the end of August 21, the troops of the 38th Army entered the territory of Slovakia and Northern Moravia. Ordinary citizens began the fight against uninvited guests. In Prague, young people hastily tried to build flimsy barricades, sometimes throwing cobblestones and sticks at the military personnel, and removing signs with street names. The equipment that suffered the most was left unattended, even for a second. During the first three days of our stay in Czechoslovakia, 7 combat vehicles were set on fire in the 38th Army alone. Although there were no hostilities, there were still losses. The most impressive and tragic feat was performed on a mountain road by a tank crew from the 1st Guards Tank Army, who deliberately sent their tank into the abyss to avoid hitting the children posted there as pickets.
The Soviet BTR-40, despite its obsolescence, again performed very well on paved roads
At five o'clock in the morning, the first Soviet T-55 tank appeared on the right bank of the Vltava. He stopped at the main entrance and turned his gun towards the building of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. He was followed by dozens of other combat vehicles. The commander of the 20th Guards Motorized Rifle Division was appointed commandant of the city. Several thousand tanks appeared on the streets of Czechoslovak cities, marking the end of the Prague Spring.
T-55 and next to it a German anti-tank gun from the Second World War Pak-37
All power in the country ended up in the hands of the mysterious “General Trofimov,” who for some reason appeared in public wearing a colonel’s uniform. Only a few knew who this man was, who passionately wished to remain anonymous. The role of a simple army general was played by K. T. Mazurov, a member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Sending his comrade-in-arms on a “combat mission,” Brezhnev admonished him:
We need to send one of us to Prague. The military can do such a thing there... Let Mazurov fly.
General I. G. Pavlovsky, who led Operation Danube, described the events of those days as follows: “I received my appointment on August 16 or 17, three to four days before the start of the operation. Initially, it was planned to put Marshal Yakubovsky at the head of the allied forces. He organized all practical training. Suddenly Defense Minister Grechko calls me: “You are being appointed commander of the formations that will enter Czechoslovakia.”
I flew to Legnica (in Poland), to the headquarters of the Northern Group of Forces. I found Yakubovsky there. He showed on the map which divisions were leaving from which direction. The start of the operation was scheduled for August 21 at zero one o'clock. Grechko warned: “The team will be from Moscow, your job is to ensure that it is carried out.” At the appointed hour the troops left.
And then Grechko called again: “I just spoke with Dzur (Minister of National Defense of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic) and warned that if the Czechs, God forbid, open fire on our troops, it could end badly. “I asked to give a command to the Czechoslovak units not to move anywhere, not to open fire, so that they would not offer resistance to us.” After the troops left, about an hour later, Grechko called again: “How are you?” I report: such and such divisions are there. In some places people take to the roads and create rubble. Our troops are avoiding obstacles... He warned me not to leave the command post without his permission. And suddenly a new call: “Why are you still there? Fly to Prague immediately!”
We flew up to Prague, made two or three circles over the airfield - not a single person. Not a single voice is heard, not a single plane is visible. We sat down. With Lieutenant General Yamshchikov, who met me, we went from the airfield to the General Headquarters to see Dzur. We immediately agreed with him: that there should be no fights between our soldiers and that no one would think that we had arrived with some tasks to occupy Czechoslovakia. We brought in troops, that's all. And then let the political leadership sort it out.
The Soviet embassy recommended meeting with the President of Czechoslovakia L. Svoboda. I took with me a Hungarian general, our German one. I said: “Comrade President, you know, troops of the Warsaw Pact member states entered Czechoslovakia. I came to report on this issue. And since you are an army general and I am an army general, we are both military. You understand, the situation forced us to do this.” He replied: “I understand...”.
Two decades later, in 1988, I. G. Pavlovsky admitted the fact that “the attitude of the population towards us was not friendly. Why did we come there? We scattered leaflets from the plane, explaining that we entered with peaceful intentions. But you yourself understand that if I, an uninvited guest, come to your home and start giving orders, you won’t like it very much.”
The Czechoslovak army did not offer resistance, showing its discipline and loyalty to the orders of its superiors. For this reason, large casualties were avoided.
T-55 took a position on the streets of Prague
However, there were still losses: during the deployment of troops from August 21 to October 20, 1968, as a result of hostile actions of individual Czechoslovakian citizens, 11 military personnel, including 1 officer, were killed. During the same period, 87 people were wounded or injured, including 19 officers. On the Czechoslovak side, from August 21 to December 17, 1968, 94 civilians were killed and 345 were seriously injured.
From a military point of view, it was a brilliantly prepared and executed operation, which came as a complete surprise to the NATO countries.
In total, in the first three days, according to the plan, 20 foreign divisions (Soviet, Polish, Hungarian and Bulgarian) entered the territory of Czechoslovakia, and in the next two days - another 10 divisions.
However, despite the military success, it was not possible to immediately achieve political goals. Already on August 21, a statement appeared from the XIV Extraordinary Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, which condemned the introduction of troops. On the same day, representatives of a number of countries spoke at the Security Council with a demand to bring the “Czechoslovak issue” to a meeting of the UN General Assembly, but consideration of this issue was blocked by the “veto power” of Hungary and the USSR. Later, the representative of Czechoslovakia demanded that this issue be removed from the agenda of the General Assembly.
Romania, Yugoslavia, Albania and China condemned the “military intervention of five states.” However, most of these “protests” were purely declarative in nature and could not have a noticeable impact on the situation.
"Striped" T-54
The heads of the main states of Western Europe, and indeed the United States, considered the Prague Spring and the related disagreements within the Eastern Bloc a “domestic squabble of the communists” and avoided such interference in the affairs of Eastern Europe, which could be regarded as a violation of the results of Yalta and Potsdam. Another aspect was the ongoing negotiations on arms limitation, which began to take on real features (in 1972, an ABM treaty would be concluded), and interference in the internal affairs of the countries participating in the Warsaw Warsaw War could nullify the entire progress of these negotiations.
But, despite the “non-interference” of the West, there was no quick normalization of the situation. The expectation of receiving broad support from opposition groups also did not materialize. The successful military action, as noted in one of the documents, “was not accompanied by the mobilization of healthy forces in the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.” Moreover, as one of the Czechoslovak reformers M. Miller put it, the “healthy forces” were suppressed and frightened, faced with the unanimous condemnation of the “interventionists” and their assistants from Czechoslovak society.
Finding themselves in a political deadlock on this issue, the Soviet side was forced to return to its previous policy. Since it was not possible to form a “revolutionary workers’ and peasants’ government,” we had to return to attempts to put pressure on A. Dubcek and his colleagues in order to direct it domestic policy in the right direction. But now the position of the Soviet side was already much stronger - the Czechoslovak leaders brought to Moscow signed a corresponding agreement, and the presence of allied troops on the territory of Czechoslovakia gave a certain carte blanche.
The new line of “normalization” began to be implemented immediately, during the visit of the Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia O. Chernik to Moscow on September 10. The Czech comrades were promised not only significant economic assistance, but also certain political pressure was exerted on them. Demanding that Chernik immediately implement the Moscow Agreement, the Politburo insisted that the precondition for the withdrawal or reduction of Allied troops was “a complete cessation of the subversive activities of anti-socialist forces and the granting of conservative leaders a more active role in political life.”
After three weeks, the situation in Prague and other large cities of Czechoslovakia had almost completely stabilized: the President of Czechoslovakia L. Svoboda appointed a new government, which immediately declared the importance of friendship and close cooperation with the socialist countries.
Sometimes the “striped” ones burned
On September 10–12, the main formations and units of the Soviet troops and troops of the countries participating in the Warsaw Warsaw War were withdrawn and headed to their places of permanent deployment. By November 4, 1968, 25 divisions had been withdrawn from the country.
"We're here for a while..."
And the Central Group of Forces stayed on the territory of Czechoslovakia until 1991 Soviet army, which included the 15th Guards and 31st Tank Divisions, the 18th, 30th Guards, and 48th Motorized Rifle Divisions. When signing the agreement on the temporary presence of a group of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia (this happened on October 16), it was determined that its strength could not exceed 130 thousand people. This force was quite sufficient to stabilize the situation, taking into account the fact that the Czechoslovak army at that time numbered 200 thousand people. When confirming Colonel General A. Mayorov for the post of commander, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee L. I. Brezhnev told him as parting words: “The Group’s troops will be stationed temporarily under the agreement. But it’s not without reason that they say: there is nothing more permanent than temporary. We are talking, Alexander Mikhailovich, not about months, but about years.”
The Central Military Command proved its effectiveness already at the end of 1968, when our troops managed to disrupt a major anti-government political strike. Democratic forces have scheduled mass political demonstrations for December 31. However, the day before, in accordance with the commander’s pre-developed plan called “Gray Hawk”, 20 Soviet motorized rifle and tank battalions were introduced into all major cities “to control order” during the demonstration - anti-government demonstrations did not take place. The usual demonstration of equipment was enough; there was no need to use weapons.
The situation in the country began to gradually normalize only in mid-1969, when the reorganization of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the government of Czechoslovakia was completed (that is, when the main “troublemakers” were politically isolated).
Well, the events in Czechoslovakia were then considered for quite a long time in military academies as an example of the clear organization and conduct of a large-scale operation in the European theater of operations to provide “fraternal assistance to friends and allies.”
However, in 1989, the last Soviet leader M. S. Gorbachev officially admitted that the introduction of troops was an unlawful act of interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign country, which interrupted the democratic renewal of Czechoslovakia and had long-term negative consequences. In 1991, the Central Military Command was liquidated as soon as possible, and the troops were withdrawn to their homeland.
A few years later, the “democratic” traditions, so praised by the first and last president of the USSR M. S. Gorbachev, finally took over, and the country, which had collapsed into two sovereign states (Czech Republic and Slovakia), entered into the American program of “NATO expansion to the East.”
Notes:
15 developing countries have ballistic missiles in service, and another 10 are developing their own. Research in the field of chemical and bacteriological weapons continues in 20 countries.
Mayorov A. M. Invasion. Czechoslovakia. 1968. - M., 1998. S. 234–235.
Quote by: Drogovoz I.G. Tank sword of the Soviet country. - M., 2002. P. 216.
USA, England, France, Canada, Denmark and Paraguay.
Quote from: Russia (USSR) in local wars and military conflicts of the second half of the 20th century. - M., 2000. P. 154.
Mayorov A. M. Invasion. Czechoslovakia. 1968. - M., 1998. P. 314.
In accordance with the principles of socialist internationalism, agreements concluded between the allies on Anti-Hitler coalition, the very fact of the creation of the Department of Internal Affairs and CMEA, the countries of the socialist camp were considered the sphere of interests of the USSR.
The Soviet leadership did not interfere with the change in the party and state leadership of Czechoslovakia at the beginning of 1968. In January 1968, instead of A. Novotny, A. Dubcek became the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, declaring the need to update the party's policy. Censorship restrictions began to disappear in the country, and heated discussions began about the need to liberalize economic relations. But when the new leaders of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic tried to proclaim and implement reforms of the country that threatened a departure from the principles of socialism and rapprochement with the West, the leaders of the USSR (L. Brezhnev), the GDR (E. Honecker), Poland (W. Gomulka) and other socialist countries regarded this as an undermining foundations of socialism. After a series of fruitless negotiations, on August 21, 1968, troops of five Warsaw Pact states - the USSR, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany and Poland - simultaneously entered the territory of Czechoslovakia from different directions. Its president, L. Svoboda, gave the army the order not to engage in battle. The First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party A. Dubcek and other leaders of the country were arrested and taken to Moscow, where “negotiations” were held with them, as a result of which Moscow’s proteges came to power.
The deployment of troops into Czechoslovakia, unlike the Hungarian events of 1956, did not lead to large losses. The picture looked usual when Prague residents, surrounding Soviet tanks, tried to reproach innocent soldiers and officers and start political discussions with them. However, the very fact of the deployment of troops hit the authority of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact countries, contributed to the growth of dissident sentiments in the Union itself and criticism of the Kremlin in various states of the planet. The Czechs and Slovaks themselves, having come to terms with the state of affairs, harbored a deep grudge against the USSR, which poisoned the former warm and good neighborly relations.
At the same time, as a result of Operation Danube, Czechoslovakia remained a member of the Eastern European socialist bloc. The Soviet group of troops (up to 130 thousand people) remained in Czechoslovakia until 1991. The agreement on the conditions for the presence of Soviet troops on the territory of Czechoslovakia 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 Department of Internal Affairs. However, Albania withdrew from the Warsaw Pact as a result of the invasion.
“WE MUST GIVE A NEW SHAPE TO SOCIALIST DEVELOPMENT...”
We must make our way through the unknown, experiment; to give a new face to socialist development based on creative Marxist thinking and the experience of the international labor movement and with the belief that we will truly be able to use the socialist development of Czechoslovakia, a country that is responsible to the International Communist Movement for the use of a highly developed material base, a high level of education and culture of the population and undeniable democratic traditions in the interests of socialism and communism.
Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia Hayek Jiri
FROM TASS STATEMENT DATED AUGUST 21, 1968
TASS is authorized to declare that party and government officials of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic have addressed the Soviet Union and other allied states with a request to provide urgent assistance to the fraternal Czechoslovak people, including assistance from the armed forces.”
FROM TASS STATEMENT DATED AUGUST 22, 1968
On August 21, military units of the socialist countries entered Czechoslovakia - in all regions, including Prague and Bratislava. The advance of the troops of the fraternal countries occurred unhindered... The population is calm. Many Czechoslovak citizens express their gratitude to the soldiers of the Soviet army for their timely arrival in Czechoslovakia to help in the fight against counter-revolutionary forces.”
MEMORIES OF PATRONOUSER LEV GORELOV
In May 1968, I received an encrypted message to urgently arrive in Moscow to see Margelov. I arrive, we kissed him, he says: “We’re going to the boss, the Minister of Defense”...
We arrive, enter the office, there are cards.
The commander reports:
Comrade Minister of Defense, Commander of the Airborne Forces with the commander of the seventh division have arrived on your orders!
Hello! General, do you know the situation in Czechoslovakia? - to me.
Comrade Minister of Defense, according to the press...
Well, here's what: you take the regimental commanders, change into a different uniform and fly to Prague. Reconnaissance, objects that you will take, and take these objects.
And he shows me: the Central Committee, the Council of Ministers, the Ministry of Defense, bridges, a television center, a radio center, a train station.
I speak:
Comrade Minister of Defense, the airborne division is not ready to fight in a populated area,” he plucked up courage, “We don’t even have it in our charters and instructions - take it, fight in the city.” We need time to prepare.
He answers:
You are a general, just think about it, be healthy...
I fly to Vitebsk, where my plane is in Vitebsk, I change planes and fly to Kaunas. I didn’t have time to eat, suddenly, urgently: “In the KGB on HF...” - in my office there was no HF, but there was a ZAS. That's why...
I’m coming, Margelov: “Tomorrow, at so many hours, there will be a plane - with the regiment commanders, go to Prague for reconnaissance, under the guise of diplomatic couriers, there will be packages for you, which you must hand over there.”
We arrive in Prague, we arrive at the headquarters of the SHOV, the headquarters was like that, Yamshchikov. And there I meet about 20 of our generals, they are already working.
I introduced myself to him, came, show me these, such and such objects, so as not to have to look for a long time. Go. The Central Committee looked, the Ministry of Defense looked, the Council of Ministers, everyone looked, they gave everyone cars.
I arrive in Moscow at night, I am met by Kripko, the commander of military transport aviation, Margelov. I am reporting the situation, I have reported everything.
Then we returned to Vitebsk from Moscow.
"What do we do?" - I ask the regiment commanders. Not a single exercise was conducted with either a company, or a battalion, or a regiment to capture a settlement or any house.
I gathered retired veterans who once took settlements during the war. We are writing temporary instructions for taking over the house. We are withdrawing the division and regiments, but the regiments stood separately, and in each city there are microdistricts.
So here we are at dawn, until people come home from work, we were training there - we were practicing the capture of a populated area. And this is a different tactic: an assault detachment, a support detachment, fire support, cover squads - this is a whole new tactic for paratroopers, and for everyone. Taking a populated area means creating assault groups. I’ve been training for a month, they say: “The division commander has gone crazy, what’s wrong, they took everyone out, from morning to night, until the working class arrived, they stormed...”
In the Baltics, all airfields are used, the Kaliningrad airfield, one Belarusian airfield. The division went there, to the original areas, and stood there. What to do, wait.
450 aircraft, sorties, took me to Prague, three aviation fighter regiments in Germany and Poland covered the transfer.
And we went to Prague.
But there is one moment. A division means artillery on vehicles, 120mm mortars on vehicles... Well, self-propelled guns, of course, and so on. But all the infantry... Only the commanders have radio stations. After all, the paratroopers didn’t have cars. Now they are in combat vehicles, but we had no vehicles.
So, we landed and went, everyone knew where to go, who was in the Central Committee, who was going where, but how to go? And at the airfield, there are hundreds of cars, these are foreigners, they don’t even lock these cars, and the paratroopers all know how to drive cars, so they stole all these cars! You saw in the movies how Father Makhno plays the accordion and sits on a cart. So they sit on these cars, stick around them, and enter Prague.
We entered. 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, led by Smarkovsky, an ideologist, and others who opposed Freedom. 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 so on, 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...
At 10 o'clock, an order was received from Moscow to take the government and Dubcek to the airfield and send them to Moscow for negotiations. All of them were taken there, but not by paratroopers, but by armored personnel carriers of the 20th Army. I just helped take them all out, pull them out.
We were taken to the airfield, received a transcript - to leave Dubcek. Send them by plane, and leave Dubcek to address the people. I think, let me go and look at Dubcek. Well, we have to take a look, right? I arrive and introduce myself to him: “Comrade General Secretary, commander of the seventh division so-and-so, hello!” He gets out of the car, and there is a guard there, guarding him, the deputy divisional commander is a colonel, the chief of the guard.
He tells me....
When I told this, the Minister almost died laughing!
He says: “Comrade General, don’t you have a check, how about a drink? That is, 100 grams, not checks, 100 grams?
I say: “Comrade General Secretary, we have crackers, we have dry rations, we have everything I can feed you, but there is no vodka...”
And the sergeant stands behind him and says: “Comrade General, I have a check!”
I am proud that the operation was carried out bloodlessly. I lost one soldier there, and then later, in ordinary life.
THE LIGHT OF HOPE WENT OUT
“From the Czechoslovak point of view, the intervention was treacherous. Aggression left a deep mark on the Soviet Union. Intervention in the internal affairs of Czechoslovakia extinguished the flame of hope for the reform of socialism - a flame that flickered within Soviet society. A dogmatic approach to society was established... The decision to invade exacerbated internal divisions in both Soviet and Eastern European society. For 20 long years, politics dominated, as a result of which the lag in global development began to grow.”
A. Dubcek - head of the Czechoslovak communists before the Soviet invasion in 1968
NEGOTIATIONS between BREZHNEV and DUBCHEK (TRANSCRIPT)
A. Dubcek. I, comrades, cannot make any proposal, because I saw the last scene from the window of my office, but then your people came in with machine guns, snatched the phones - and that’s it. There has been no contact with anyone since then and we don't know what happened. I met with Comrade Chernik, he says that he also doesn’t know anything, because he was taken in the same way as me. He was in the basement with the others until things were sorted out. That's how we got here. We don’t know what’s happening, who’s in charge, how life is going in the country. I would like to find a solution together with you. I agree with you that we need to seriously think about how to help, because this is a terrible tragedy.
L. I. Brezhnev. We understand correctly, Alexander Stepanovich, that we will not interpret your message now, this will not help the matter. It is important to find a real way out now, to find a solution that would, of course, not today or tomorrow, but in the future, restore the situation. Therefore, we understand your last words as a desire, mutually with us, with all other socialist countries, to find a solution that will take us through certain difficulties, but will lead to friendship. We want it. On this basis we want to talk. So do we understand you?
A. Dubcek. Yes.
L. I. Brezhnev. Now I must objectively show what is happening. The troops passed without firing a single shot. The army fulfilled its duty. Your armed forces were called upon by the President and your leaders not to engage in resistance, so there were no casualties.
A. Dubcek. I believe that one of the main steps taken by the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (it’s good that there was a telephone) was an instruction from our side through the army and state security, the workers' militia, there was an appeal to the people so that under no circumstances would there be any resistance anywhere, that this is our desire and our call.
L. I. Brezhnev. We are telling you that there were no casualties when we entered all the cities, the workers and workers’ militia did not offer resistance to us and do not offer them to this day, they do not act in an organized manner. But that, of course, when the troops were brought in, there was an unpleasant impression under all the circumstances and that, of course, some part of the population could take it badly, this is natural.
Our people wanted to take over and master the means of propaganda, say television, radio stations and Rude Pravo. We didn't touch the rest of the newspapers. There was no armed resistance. But huge crowds of people were organized when our troops arrived. It turned out that ours are standing and they are standing. The radio station is working at this time and scolds the Soviet government. Ours had orders not to shoot, not to hit. And so the struggle went on for a whole day. But the station is working, right-wingers are sitting there and blowing right-wing propaganda against the Soviet Union with all their might. Then they took Rude Pravo, and the same story, also without victims.
All sorts of demonstrations began, but without the working class, without working youth, mainly thugs. In some places there were large crowds of people, in others there were small crowds. Everything went without shooting. Only our sentry was killed at night - he was on patrol, and he was killed from around the corner. In Bratislava, thugs threw a car with two of our people into the Danube. As if one was saved, the other drowned. When the radio station was taken, a shootout took place, 13 of our people were wounded. Here are all the bloody clashes.
N.V. Podgorny. Shots were fired from windows in Prague.
L. I. Brezhnev. They shot from attics and windows in Prague and Bratislava. These houses were blocked, but no one came out. Prague is the most vibrant city.
FROM THE REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF THE MOSCOW CPSU GC V. GRISHINA
“At enterprises and institutions... over 9 thousand meetings were held, at which 885 thousand were present and 30 thousand (people) spoke. The speakers declared full support... for the policies of the CPSU Central Committee and the Soviet government...
At the same time, in some research institutes there were protests against the activities carried out by the Soviet government... So at the Research Institute of Automatic Devices, Candidate of Technical Sciences, senior researcher Andronov, a non-partisan, said that he did not understand who was in Czechoslovakia and on whose behalf he was asking for help Soviet Union, and proposed to postpone the voting of the resolution of the general meeting of the institute’s employees until the situation is clarified. His speech was condemned by the meeting participants.”
“HANDS OFF CZECHOSLOVAKIA”
At the time of the occupation of Czechoslovakia, 7 people went to Red Square. It was noon on August 25, 1968. Seven sat down at the Execution Ground and unfurled homemade posters: “Hands off Czechoslovakia,” “Shame on the occupiers,” “For our and your freedom.”
From a letter from Natalya Gorbanevskaya addressed to the editors of European newspapers:“...Almost immediately a whistle was heard, state security workers in civilian clothes ran towards us from all sides... shouting: “These are all Jews! Beat the anti-Soviet elements!” We sat quietly and did not resist. They snatched the banners from our hands. Victor Finderg's face was smashed until it bled and his teeth were knocked out. ... We are happy that we were able to show that not all citizens of our state agree with the violence that is carried out in the name of the Soviet people. We hope that the Czechoslovak people learned about this."
ALEXANDER TWARDOVSKY ABOUT AUGUST 1968
What should you and I do, my oath,
Where can I get the words to talk about
How Prague greeted us in 1945
And how he meets in sixty-eight.
FROM EVGENY YEVTUSHENKO’S POEM “TANKS ARE COMING THROUGH PRAGUE”
Tanks are moving through Prague
in the sunset blood of dawn.
Tanks are walking in truth
which is not a newspaper.
Tanks follow temptations
live not at the mercy of cliches.
Tanks are walking towards soldiers
sitting inside these tanks.
My God, how disgusting this is!
God - what a fall!
Tanks according to Jan Hus.
Pushkin and Petofi.
…
Before I die
what - it doesn’t matter to me - he’s nicknamed,
I am addressing a descendant
with just one request.
Let it be over me - without sobbing
they will simply write, in truth:
"Russian writer. Crushed
Russian tanks in Prague."
August 23, 1968
TWO CASES IN 68
My father was in Czechoslovakia during the events of 1968.
Czech “resisters” went out onto the roads, blocked them with themselves, preventing convoys with Soviet troops from passing.
So, my father told a story: a woman with a small child in her arms ran out onto a mountainous road, and the Soviet tank driver, without hesitation, sharply turned off the road. The tank flew off to the side of the road, slid down a cliff and caught fire. All tankers died.
Here is another father's story from that period. After all, not only Soviet, but also Hungarian and German (from the GDR) units entered Czechoslovakia. In the evenings, local resistance fighters gathered at the camps of soldiers from the GDR, bringing pots and brushes with them.
They banged on pots, making a terrible noise, shouting: “Get out.” The “cat concert” did not give the soldiers the opportunity to sleep and put pressure on their nerves.
The Germans warned the Czechs once, twice... On the third night they deployed a platoon of machine gunners, and they fired into the crowd. History is silent about how many people were killed or wounded, but the Germans were no longer bothered.
Vladimir Medinsky, “Myths about Russia”
IN 1968 WE PREVENTED WORLD WAR THIRD
Suntsev: On August 20, 1968, we received a combat order to begin Operation Danube: by the morning of August 21, our army was to make a 220-kilometer push along the Bischofswerda-Dresden-Pirna-Teplice-Melnik-Prague route and take positions on the northwestern outskirts of the capital Czechoslovakia. It is important to note that the order prohibited the use of lethal weapons except in cases of armed attack.
Culture: But were there many such cases? Today, liberal publicists persistently prove that most of our losses were “non-combat.”
Suntsev: No, this was a real military conflict. Over the past years, I have managed to compile a list of those killed in those days in Czechoslovakia - today there are 112 people on it. Many died from gunshot wounds, several people died in the downed plane and helicopter. And the death of the tank crew, who refused to crush the crowd blocking the road and fell from the bridge, in my opinion, was a military loss. All these people died while performing a combat mission.
And in Prague itself, and many other large cities - Brno, Bratislava, Pilsen - carefully trained young men took to the streets and actively resisted the troops of the Warsaw Pact, including setting fire to our tanks, armored personnel carriers and cars. But we must understand that in the period preceding Operation Danube, anti-Soviet propaganda was actively carried out among the population in Czechoslovakia. This was done by a number of organizations financed from abroad - “Club-231”, “Club of Non-Party Activists” and similar structures.
Culture: How big is the role of Western intelligence services in preparing this resistance, in the opinion of a military intelligence officer?
Suntsev: She is undeniable. I personally took part in the search for underground printing houses and radio stations, as well as warehouses with weapons and ammunition, of which there were a lot on the territory of Czechoslovakia at the beginning of Operation Danube. And it is obvious that it was only possible to prepare in this way with the help of the West. Moreover, according to available data, by August 1968, Western intelligence services had trained more than 40,000 anti-Soviet armed thugs - a special strike group that was supposed to prepare for the invasion of the territory of Czechoslovakia by NATO troops.
Culture: So it turns out that in August 1968 our troops were ahead of NATO?
Suntsev: Exactly. If we had not entered Czechoslovakia on the night of August 20-21, 1968, then literally within a few hours the North Atlantic Treaty troops would have been there. In turn, this would not stop the Soviet Union, and then the Third World War could well begin.
As a sign of protest against the actions of an illegal and stupid member of the “government” of the Russian Federation, I am posting this material. So that history must be known and protected from rewriting and distortion.
The entry of troops into Czechoslovakia in 1968 did not allow the West to carry out a coup in Czechoslovakia using the technology of “velvet” revolutions and preserved life in peace and harmony for more than 20 years for all the peoples of the Warsaw Pact countries.
The political crisis in Czechoslovakia, as in other countries of the socialist bloc, was bound to arise sooner or later after N. S. Khrushchev came to power in the USSR in 1953.
Khrushchev accused I.V. Stalin, and in fact the socialist socio-political system, of organizing mass repression, as a result of which millions of innocent people allegedly suffered. In my opinion, Khrushchev’s report at the 20th Congress in 1956 took place thanks to the grandiose victory of Western intelligence services and their 5th column inside the USSR.
It doesn’t matter what motivated Khrushchev when he launched a policy of de-Stalinization in the country. It is important that blaming the socialist socio-political system for organizing mass repressions deprived of legitimacy Soviet power. The geopolitical opponents of Russia and the USSR received weapons with which they could crush the impregnable fortress - the USSR and other countries of the socialist camp.
By 1968, for 12 years, schools and institutes had been studying works that delegitimized the Soviet regime. All these 12 years, the West prepared Czechoslovak society to renounce socialism and friendship with the USSR.
The political crisis in Czechoslovakia was associated not only with the policies of N. S. Khrushchev, which reduced the number of citizens ready to defend the socialist system and friendly relations with the Soviet Union, but also with the national hatred between Czechs and Slovaks fueled by anti-Soviet forces. A significant role was also played by the fact that Czechoslovakia did not fight against the Soviet Union and did not feel guilty before our country.
But for the sake of truth, it must be said that no less Russian blood was shed during the war through the fault of Czechoslovakia than through the fault of Hungary and Romania, whose armies, together with Germany, attacked the USSR in 1941. Since 1938 and throughout the war, Czechoslovakia supplied German troops with a huge amount of weapons, which were used to kill Soviet soldiers and civilians in our country.
Gottwald, who built a prosperous socialist Czechoslovakia after the war, died the same year as Stalin in 1953. The new presidents of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic are A. Zapototsky, and since 1957 A. Novotny became like N. S. Khrushchev. They essentially destroyed the country. A. Novotny was a copy of N. S. Khrushchev and with his ill-conceived reforms caused significant damage to the national economy, which also led to a decrease in the standard of living of the people. All of these factors contributed to the emergence of anti-socialist and anti-Russian sentiments in society.
On January 5, 1968, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia elected Slovakian A. Dubcek to the post of First Secretary of the Central Committee instead of Novotny, but did not remove Novotny from the post of president of the country. Over time, order was restored, and L. Svoboda became the President of Czechoslovakia.
Liberals call the reign of A. Dubcek the “Prague Spring”. A. Dubcek immediately fell under the influence of people who, under the guise of democratization, began to prepare the country for surrender to the West. Under the guise of building “socialism with a human face,” the destruction of the Czechoslovak socialist state began. By the way, socialism has always had a human face, but capitalism, liberalism has always had the face of the Nazis and similar US liberals who killed the children of Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Syria and other countries that the US considered insufficient democratic. The USA and its citizens were not spared.
After the January 1968 Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, frantic criticism of the situation in the country began. Using the criticism of the leadership voiced at the Plenum, the opposition political forces, calling 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 to abolish the party’s leadership of economic and political life, declare the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia a criminal organization, ban its activities, and dissolve the state security agencies and the People’s Militia. Various “clubs” (“Club 231”, “Club of Active Non-Party People”) and other organizations arose throughout the country, 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” 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.
The general secretary of the club, Yaroslav Brodsky, said at one of the meetings: “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.” Organization "Revolutionary Committee" democratic party Slovakia” called for holding elections under the control of England, the USA, Italy and France, stopping criticism of Western states in the press and focusing it on the USSR.
A group of employees of the Prague Military-Political Academy proposed the withdrawal of Czechoslovakia from the Warsaw Pact and called on other socialist countries to liquidate the Warsaw Pact. In this regard, the French newspaper Le Figaro wrote: “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.” All these media, clubs and individuals speaking on behalf of the people also spoke out against the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance.
On June 14, the Czechoslovak opposition invited the famous American “Sovietologist” Zbigniew Brzezinski to give lectures in Prague, in which he outlined his “liberalization” strategy and 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.”
It should be noted that Z. Brzezinski and many oppositionists were not interested in the fate or national interests of Czechoslovakia. In particular, they were ready to give up lands to Czechoslovakia for the sake of “rapprochement” with Germany.
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.
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” (FRG) 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.” 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.” Probably Western money helped him forget how the Sudeten Germans persecuted the Czechs. And Germany was ready to again seize these lands of Czechoslovakia.
In 1968, consultative meetings of representatives of NATO countries were held, at which possible measures were studied to bring Czechoslovakia out of the socialist camp. The Vatican intensified its activities in Czechoslovakia. Its leadership recommended directing activities catholic church to merge with the movement for “independence” and “liberalization”, and to take on the role of “support and freedom in the countries of Eastern Europe”, focusing on Czechoslovakia, Poland and the GDR. 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. In July, a special Monitoring and Control Center began operating, which American officers called “Strike Group Headquarters.” It consisted of 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 still and continue to be valuable experience for the future.” This experience was used during the destruction of the USSR.
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. 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, which, when sending troops, initially aroused the indignation of the Czechoslovak communists because they were not informed about the decision to send troops.
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 the alliance of Czechoslovakia 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. The leaders of the Warsaw Pact countries were well aware that the events in Czechoslovakia were NATO’s advance to the East. On the night of August 21, 1968, troops of the USSR, Bulgaria, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and Poland entered the territory of Czechoslovakia. Neither the troops of Czechoslovakia, nor NATO troops, nor units of Western intelligence services dared to openly oppose such a force.
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 remained in barracks, their military camps were blocked, batteries were removed from armored vehicles, fuel was drained from tractors.
On April 17, 1969, G. Husak, who at one time was the head of the Communist Party of Slovakia, was elected head of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia instead of Dubcek. The actions of the Warsaw Pact troops in Czechoslovakia in fact showed NATO the highest level of combat training and technical equipment of the troops of the treaty countries.
In a few minutes, the paratroopers captured Czechoslovak airfields and began to take over weapons and equipment, which then began to advance towards Prague. The guards were immediately disarmed and the building of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was seized, and the entire leadership of Czechoslovakia was taken to the airfield in armored personnel carriers and sent first to the headquarters of the Northern Group of Forces, and then to Moscow.
The tankers carried out the task accurately and took up positions in an extremely short time according to the operation plan. Several thousand T-54 and T-55 tanks entered Czechoslovakia, and each crew knew its place in the territory where the tank unit was located.
In Czechoslovakia, the most impressive and tragic feat among soldiers was performed on a mountain road by a tank crew from the 1st Guards Tank Army, who deliberately drove their tank into an abyss to avoid running over children posted there as pickets. Those who prepared this vile provocation were confident that the children would die and then would shout to the whole world about the crime of the Soviet tank crews. But the provocation failed. At the cost of their lives, Soviet tank crews saved the lives of Czechoslovak children and the honor of the Soviet Army. This clear example shows the difference between the people of the liberal West, who prepared the death of children, and the people of the socialist Soviet Union, who saved the children.
The aviation of the Warsaw Pact countries, including special purpose aviation, also distinguished itself in Czechoslovakia. Tu-16 jamming aircraft of the 226th Electronic Warfare Regiment, taking off from Stryi airfield in Ukraine, successfully jammed radio and radar stations on the territory of Czechoslovakia, demonstrating the enormous importance of electronic warfare in modern warfare.
The West initially understood that it would not be allowed to carry out a coup in Czechoslovakia in a Warsaw Pact country, but it waged the Cold War against the USSR with “hot spots.” Soviet troops practically did not conduct combat operations on the territory of Czechoslovakia. At that time, the Americans were fighting a war in Vietnam, burning thousands of Vietnamese villages with napalm and destroying dozens of cities. They flooded the long-suffering land of Vietnam with blood. But this did not stop them from broadcasting on all radio and television channels to the USSR, the countries of Eastern Europe and the whole world that the USSR was an aggressor country.
The topic of Czechoslovakia was discussed in the Western media several years after 1968. To give this topic an ominous overtone, they prepared a suicide bomber, just as terrorists prepare suicide bombers today, they did not spare the Czechoslovakian student Jan Palach and set him on fire, doused with gasoline, in the center of Prague, presenting it as an act of self-immolation in protest against the entry of troops of the Warsaw Pact countries.
The deployment of troops to Czechoslovakia was done in order to protect the security of the Warsaw Pact countries from NATO troops. But the security of the United States was not threatened by either Korea or Vietnam, located thousands of kilometers from the US border. But America waged large-scale military operations against them, killing hundreds of thousands of people from these sovereign states. But the world community prefers to remain silent about this. The Sudetenland remained part of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, their state exists within modern borders, and the nation avoided the huge number of casualties that always occur during a coup d'etat.
45 years ago, Soviet troops were introduced into Czechoslovakia (Operation Danube)
In 1968, liberal reforms in Czechoslovakia, called the “Prague Spring,” were in full swing. This is exactly how, according to the American scenario, preparations for a coup d’etat “peacefully” have always begun and begin. The change of power by the “angry” masses is today widely known as the “color revolution.” The Soviet Union and some socialist countries already saw in this process a threat to the existence of the Warsaw Pact, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, and finally, the entire socialist community. The leaders of the commonwealth viewed the Czechoslovak events as a dangerous “virus” that could spread to other countries.
Showed how right they were. As for Czechoslovakia, almost two decades later it was under the banner of the “Prague Spring” that the “velvet” revolution unfolded in the country. After her victory in 1989, the Czechoslovak Federal Republic (CSFR) was proclaimed. In January 1993, the Czech and Slovak Republics were officially proclaimed. The united country ceased to exist.
If the USSR and its allies had not sent troops into Czechoslovakia, the same thing would have happened back in August 1968. Then Czechoslovakia would have left the Warsaw Pact, split into two states, joined NATO with the Czech and Slovak parts, and the European Community (European Union) etc. As world practice shows, “socialism with a human face,” which Czechoslovakia decided to build, began and ended the same everywhere - in Poland, Hungary, Romania, the GDR, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia.
It was precisely about the threat of destruction of the European and world security system that the leaders of the socialist countries persistently warned the leaders of the Communist Party of Human Rights from March to August 1968.
Unbiased Western researchers also speak directly about this. Thus, the author of a book about the activities of Western intelligence services against the leadership of Eastern European countries, “Operation Split,” English journalist Stephen Stewart writes: “... in each of these cases (the introduction of troops into Hungary in 1956 and into Czechoslovakia in 1968. - V. P.) Russia was faced not only with the loss of an empire, which would have had quite a serious significance, but also with the complete undermining of its strategic positions on the military-geopolitical map of Europe. And this, more than the fact of the invasion, was the real tragedy.” Stewart goes on to conclude that it is difficult to disagree with: “It was 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 became simply to the military flanks."
The logic of the actions of the Soviet leadership of that time is quite fully illustrated by a small excerpt from the memoirs of the “curator” for Czechoslovakia, member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee K.T. Mazurova: “Despite the nuances, the general position was the same: it is necessary to intervene. It was hard to imagine that a bourgeois parliamentary republic would appear on our borders, flooded with Germans from the Federal Republic of Germany, and after them Americans.”
At an extended meeting of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee on August 16, a decision was made to send troops to Czechoslovakia. The reason was a letter of appeal from a group of Czech party and government officials (their names were not mentioned then) to the governments of the USSR and other Warsaw Pact countries to provide “international assistance.” On August 18, the Soviet leadership made the final decision to conduct the strategic operation “Danube” (introducing troops). The decision was approved at a meeting of leaders of the Warsaw Pact Organization (WTO) countries in Moscow, also on August 18.
The Minister of Defense of the USSR, Marshal of the Soviet Union A. Grechko, who gathered the entire leadership of the Armed Forces that day, said: “I just returned from a meeting of the Politburo. A decision was made to send troops from the Warsaw Pact countries into Czechoslovakia. This decision will be implemented even if it leads to a third world war."
...The combat alert was announced at 23.00 on August 20, 1968. The signal to move was transmitted to all fronts, armies, divisions, brigades, regiments and battalions through closed communication channels. At this signal, all commanders had to open one of the five secret packages stored in their possession (the operation was developed in five versions), and burn the four remaining ones in the presence of the chiefs of staff without opening them. The opened packages contained an order to begin Operation Danube and to continue hostilities (that’s right) in accordance with the Danube-Canal and Danube-Canal-Globus plans.
A few hours earlier, all officers were given ten sheets of large-scale topographic maps (secret). The sheets were glued together into one long strip that ran across the territories of Czechoslovakia, Germany, France and all the way to the English Channel. Red arrows marked their troops and the troops of other Warsaw Pact countries. Brown lines marked traffic routes reaching the western borders of Czechoslovakia. Everyone was sure that we were going to war. None of us (I was a 20-year-old lieutenant at the time) knew whether we would have to return home.
The purpose of the operation was explained simply to the soldiers and officers: the counter-revolutionaries who had seized power in Czechoslovakia had opened the border with the Federal Republic of Germany, so Soviet troops must get ahead of the invasion of NATO troops, scheduled for the morning of August 21. The likelihood of such an invasion, by the way, was quite high. So, back on May 6, 1968, at a meeting of the Politburo L.I. Brezhnev said: “...We need to protect ourselves and the entire socialist camp in the west, on the border with Germany and Austria. We proceed from the fact that on the German side, there are 21 divisions, American and German, on this section of the border. We haven’t really heard from our Czech friends, but we can roughly imagine that there is nothing serious on their part on the border... We know that the introduction of troops and the adoption of other measures that we are planning will cause a revolt in the bourgeois press. Obviously, in the Czech one too. Well, this is not the first time. But we will preserve socialist Czechoslovakia, but after that everyone will think that they can’t joke with us. If 10 of our divisions are stationed on the border with Germany, the conversation will be completely different.”
According to Vladimir Belous, professor at the Academy of Military Sciences, retired major general, in 1960-1970. The United States created a powerful tactical nuclear group in Europe, which had about 7,000 ammunition. The German army (Bundeswehr) alone numbered about 500 thousand people.
From the very beginning, the Bundeswehr was fully integrated into the NATO military structure and was subordinate to the alliance's unified command. In the USSR, the Bundeswehr was called nothing more than an “army of revenge”, since former Nazi generals actively participated in its creation. By 1957, for example, more than 10 thousand officers, 44 generals and admirals who fought in Hitler’s troops served there.
Back in July 1968, NATO's European forces were put on partial combat readiness. Special armored units of the American army advanced to the borders of Czechoslovakia in Bavaria. At the Grafenwoehr training ground (training center) in Germany, NATO tanks stood in columns, ready for immediate action. Hundreds of steel-cast trunks could be seen from the Czechoslovak side with the naked eye.
On the night of August 20-21, General Parker, who was on duty at NATO headquarters, gave the order to attach atomic bombs to aircraft. The commanders of aviation units received orders in sealed envelopes that were to be opened at a special signal. They indicated targets for bombing in socialist states.
Retired Lieutenant General of the Soviet Army Alfred Gaponenko, a regiment commander in those years, recalled: “I was given the task of striking with my regiment the flank of NATO troops, who, under the guise of the Black Lion exercises, were concentrated on the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany and were preparing to invade Czechoslovakia. The deployment lines of the regiment were determined, which was to operate as part of the 120th Motorized Rifle Division as part of the reserve headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Union. Military units were to be transferred through Polish territory to the area of possible hostilities.”
A special group was created at NATO headquarters, which included operational detachments. The task is the “Czechoslovak problem”. Beginning in July 1968, a “strike group headquarters” began operating in Regensburg (Germany), with more than 300 NATO intelligence officers and political advisers at its disposal. Three times a day, NATO headquarters received reports on the situation in Czechoslovakia, collected by the “strike group headquarters.” As it was later established, at that time there were more than 200 specialists from the NATO army and over 300 people from spy centers in the country. The CIA and the Pentagon believed that with such a number of “specialists” it was possible to provide leadership for the activities of 75 thousand “rebels”.
According to the US State Department, the number of American citizens in Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1968 was about 1,500 people. By August 21, 1968, their number had grown to 3,000. According to American press reports, most of them were CIA agents.
In the first half of 1968 alone, more than 368 thousand tourists from Germany crossed the Czechoslovakian border. There has never been such a massive influx of “travel enthusiasts” from a neighboring country.
In West Germany and Austria, centers were set up to prepare explosives and operate underground radio stations; spies and saboteurs were trained; weapons and ammunition were imported. Cache caches were created in Czechoslovakia. The country was simply flooded with weapons. Since the end of August, the Allied troops were transporting explosives, machine guns, rifles, pistols, machine guns, ammunition for them, grenade launchers and even light guns from Czechoslovakia by truck.
And already on August 22, the commander of the West German 2nd Corps, Lieutenant General Thilo, on the instructions of the Inspector General of the Bundeswehr, gave the order to create a special headquarters to coordinate “psychological warfare” against Czechoslovakia. Its official task was to “maintain technical communications” with Czechoslovakia. In fact, it was the center of the “radio war.” The activities of the headquarters were led by Colonel I. Trench, a leading West German specialist in “psychological” sabotage. He gained experience in subversive ideological actions during the counter-revolutionary uprising in Hungary. Almost all members of the headquarters managed to visit Czechoslovakia under the guise of “journalists” in order to reconnaissance of upcoming “psychological operations”. At this time, in Czechoslovakia itself, lies, disinformation, and slander were circulated around the clock by dozens of underground radio stations, print media, and television.
The standard Western interpretation of the Czechoslovak events of those years is extremely simple: they say, in the wake of a spontaneous popular movement, reformers from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, led by the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia Alexander Dubcek, took the path of building “socialism with a human face.” (Gorbachev later also wanted to build something similar and also “with a human face.”) However, it was precisely this kind of socialism that the Soviet leadership did not need, and, in the interpretation of the West, for political and ideological reasons, it organized a military intervention and interrupted the democratization of socialism, which was welcomed and supported by the West, which sought to prevent this intervention.
In Prague and others largest cities Rumors spread about Western help if the situation worsened. The Czechs and Slovaks believed this, forgetting the lessons of Munich when the Anglo-Saxons and French surrendered them to Hitler in order to provide the Fuhrer with a bridgehead and an additional military-industrial base for an attack on the USSR. In 1968, the West managed to instill in part of the country's elite and intellectuals the confidence that it would help, provoking a further deterioration in relations between Czechoslovakia and the USSR.
Inside Czechoslovakia, the counter-revolution was preparing to throw off the mask of the guardians of “socialism with a human face.”
Here is just one example: “July 26, 1968. Strictly secret (KGB resident). The facts already known to you of the discovery of weapons depots in various regions of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic indicate that the reaction not only does not exclude the possibility of an armed clash with supporters of socialism, but is actively preparing for this eventuality. Unions of officers of the former Beneshev army, “an association of foreign soldiers,” were created. And at a discussion evening at the University of Prague with the participation of several hundred people, the head of the “Club of Active Non-Party People”, officially numbering up to 40 thousand members throughout the country, Ivan Svitak openly stated that in the interests of bringing the democratization process to achieve “absolute freedom”, the path civil war."
In mid-July, the leaders of the USSR, Poland, East Germany, Bulgaria and Hungary gathered in Warsaw to discuss the situation in Czechoslovakia. At the meeting, a message was developed to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, requiring the adoption of energetic measures to restore order. It also said that the defense of socialism in Czechoslovakia is not a private matter of this country only, but the direct duty of all countries of the socialist community. The possibility of a “chain reaction” in neighboring socialist countries, where the social upheavals in the GDR (1953) and Hungary (1956) were still fresh in their memory, led to a sharply negative attitude towards the Czechoslovak “experiment” not only from the Soviets, but also from East Germany (W. Ulbricht) , Polish (V. Gomulka) and Bulgarian (T. Zhivkov) leadership. J. Kadar (Hungary) took a more restrained position. The Czechs themselves also did not exclude the possibility of using their own armed forces within the country. Thus, Defense Minister M. Dzur considered the possibility of dispersing demonstrations in front of the building of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia with the help of army armored personnel carriers.
Alexander Dubchek, at a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on August 12, directly stated: “If I come to the conclusion that we are on the verge of a counter-revolution, then I myself will call in the Soviet troops.”
The option of military intervention in the affairs of Prague was discussed in the leadership of the USSR throughout 1968. As Vasil Biljak (in 1968 - first secretary of the Slovak Communist Party) said already in 1989, on August 3, 19 prominent party leaders led by him secretly sent a letter to Brezhnev asking for military assistance against Dubcek. The position of other countries of the socialist community had a huge influence (if not decisive) on the adoption of a forceful solution to the contradictions that arose. According to eyewitnesses, Defense Minister Marshal Grechko said that Brezhnev did not want to send troops for a long time, but Ulbricht, Gomulka, and Zhivkov put pressure on him. A special certificate from the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee on this matter noted that the leaders of the GDR, Poland, Bulgaria and, to a lesser extent, Hungary “view the Czechoslovak events as an immediate threat to their regimes, a dangerous infection that could spread to their countries.” The leadership of the GDR, in a conversation with Soviet officials, expressed considerations “about the advisability of providing collective assistance from fraternal parties to the leadership of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, up to and including the use of extreme measures.”
The first secretary of the Central Committee of the PUWP, W. Gomułka, spoke even more categorically: “We cannot lose Czechoslovakia... The possibility cannot be ruled out that after it we can lose other countries, such as Hungary and the GDR. Therefore, we should not stop even before armed intervention. I have already expressed the idea before and now I see no other way out than to introduce the forces of the Warsaw Pact, including Polish troops, into the territory of Czechoslovakia... It’s better to do it now, later it will cost us more.”
The leader of Bulgaria T. Zhivkov took a similar position. Hungarian leadership. As already mentioned, it was more cautious, but at the same time it considered the situation in Czechoslovakia as “a prologue to the counter-revolutionary rebellion in Hungary.” The “hawks” in the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee P.E. also demanded a solution to the problem by force. Shelest, N.V. Podgorny, K.T. Mazurov, A.N. Shelepin and others. On August 17, Brezhnev wrote a letter to Dubcek, in which he argued that anti-Soviet, anti-socialist propaganda in Czechoslovakia does not stop and that this contradicts previously reached agreements. Dubcek did not respond to the letter. On the night of August 20-21, the Warsaw Pact countries sent troops into Czechoslovakia.
In accordance with the plan of the command, the Carpathian and Central fronts were formed. To cover the active group in Hungary, the Southern Front was deployed.
The Carpathian Front was created on the basis of the command and control of the Carpathian Military District and several Polish divisions. It included four armies: the 13th, 38th combined arms, 8th Guards Tank and 57th Air Force. At the same time, the 8th Guards Tank Army and part of the forces of the 13th Army began moving to the southern regions of Poland, where Polish divisions were additionally included in their composition.
The Central Front was formed on the basis of the control of the Baltic Military District with the inclusion of troops of the Baltic Military District, the GSVG and the SGV, as well as individual Polish and East German divisions. This front was deployed in the GDR and Poland. The Central Front included the 11th and 20th Guards Combined Arms Armies and the 37th Air Armies.
In addition to the Southern Front, the Balaton task force was also deployed on Hungarian territory. It included two Soviet divisions, as well as Bulgarian and Hungarian units. In total, about 500 thousand people took part in Operation Danube. At the same time, about 240 thousand military personnel acted as part of the 1st echelon: from the USSR - 170 thousand people, from the PPR - 40 thousand people, the GDR - 15 thousand people, the Hungarian People's Republic - 10 thousand people, from the People's Republic of Belarus - 5 thousand . Human.
During the direct training of troops, a longitudinal white stripe was applied to the top of the equipment - a distinctive feature of the troops being brought in. All other equipment was subject to “neutralization” during the operation, preferably without fire. In case of resistance, tanks and other military equipment were subject, according to the instructions communicated to the troops, to destruction immediately when fire was opened on our troops.
When meeting with NATO troops, they were ordered to stop immediately and “do not shoot without a command.” No “sanctions” were required to destroy the Czech equipment that opened fire.
On August 20, at 22:15, the troops received the signal “Vltava-666”: forward! At 1.00 on August 21, 1968, units and formations of the Warsaw Internal Affairs armies crossed the state border of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. In 36 hours they occupied a country in the center of Europe (in Afghanistan, by the way, the USSR fought with only four divisions). A total of 70 ATS divisions were put on combat readiness. This was the most ambitious strategic military operation in scale that the Soviet Army carried out in the post-war period.
In one of his speeches, L. I. Brezhnev justified the introduction of the Internal Affairs Troops into the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic: when in a particular socialist country internal and external forces hostile to socialism try to restore capitalism, when socialism is under threat in one country, this is not only a problem of a given people and a given country, but of all socialist countries. In the West they immediately called it the “Brezhnev Doctrine.” But the West, as usual, was disingenuous here; the NATO charter also states that in the event of destabilization of the situation in a NATO member country, threatening destabilization in other NATO member countries, the organization has the right to military intervention.
The conclusion made at the meeting of the advisory committee of the European Council, which took place in Strasbourg after the entry of troops into Czechoslovakia, is also very instructive. It was stated there that the introduction of troops and the resulting situation broke the East European strategy of the council, since it was assumed that Czechoslovakia would become the main “mediator” in relations between Western and Eastern Europe. In essence, the point was that it was precisely the rapidly turning pink Czechoslovakia that was assigned the role of a kind of “corridor” along which NATO troops could freely reach directly to the borders of the USSR.
In fact, this “corridor” “cut” the socialist community in half, which radically changed not only the political map of Europe, but also the world. But, most importantly, it created a real threat to the security of our country.
At the same time, an analysis of the statements of Western politicians suggested that the United States and NATO would not interfere in the conflict at the decisive moment. The main reason for this conclusion was the statement of US Secretary of State D. Rusk that the events in Czechoslovakia were a personal matter, first of all, of the Czechs themselves, as well as other Warsaw Pact countries (a similar statement was made during the Hungarian crisis, then the Americans did not officially interfered). The final position of the United States on this issue was recorded in the message of American President L. Johnson L.I. Brezhnev on August 18, which confirmed Washington’s intention not to interfere in the situation in Czechoslovakia under any circumstances.
However, on the eve of August 21, the Soviet leadership nevertheless informed the American President Johnson about the impending action.
At the same time, one gets the impression that the Czechoslovak events were a dual-purpose touchstone for the West: to test the strength of the USSR and its new - post-Khrushchev and post-Caribbean - leadership and, if possible, to recapture Czechoslovakia; if that doesn’t work, then provoke the USSR to send in troops and plant a time bomb using the Operation Split method. The second option worked, and, unfortunately, the Soviet leadership did not draw holistic and long-term lessons from the Czechoslovak events: the USSR collapsed. But intervention in the conflict by the armed forces of NATO and the United States was not expected, at least at the first stage, until serious resistance was put up, which was not at all ruled out, given the fact that the Czechoslovak “fifth column” was not only intellectuals protesting, but also several tens of thousands of people with weapons.
The USSR and four other member countries of the Warsaw Division also acted then in full accordance with the pragmatic principles of “realpolitik”. As the Russian State Duma deputy, member of the Committee on Civil, Criminal, Arbitration and Procedural Legislation Yu.P. wrote in his publication “Czechoslovak events of 1968 through the eyes of a Soviet Army sergeant and lawyer.” Sinelshchikov, “The USSR acted in accordance with Art. 5 of the Warsaw Pact, which stated that the parties to this treaty “agreed to the creation of a Unified Command of their armed forces, which will be allocated by agreement between the Parties to the jurisdiction of this Command, acting on the basis of jointly established principles. They will also take other agreed measures necessary to strengthen their defense capabilities in order to protect the peaceful labor of their peoples, guarantee the inviolability of their borders and territories and provide protection from possible aggression."
In March 2006, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia could take moral responsibility for the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, but in no case would it take legal responsibility.
According to V. Putin, ex-Russian President B. Yeltsin, during a visit to Prague 13 years ago, already stated that Russia would not take responsibility for the events of 1968. He emphasized that Yeltsin’s words do not reflect his personal position, but come on behalf of Russia. The Russian president also noted that Russia is alarmed that these tragic events are being used today by political forces to fan anti-Russian sentiments.
The following year, also after a meeting with Czech President V. Klaus, Vladimir Putin actually confirmed his position. “The Russian Federation is formally the legal successor of the USSR, but modern Russia is a completely different state in its essence political system. We not only condemn what happened negatively in the past - I mean the events of 1968, but also feel morally responsible for it,” Putin said. A little earlier, we note, he spoke sharply about the deployment of elements of the US missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Vladimir Bulgakov, Colonel General, Candidate of Military Sciences, Hero of Russia, platoon commander in Czechoslovakia in 1968, today says this: “When the question of sending troops into Czechoslovakia arises, for some reason all accusations are brought only against the Soviet leadership, forgetting that that it was a collective decision of the leaders of the states that were part of the Warsaw Pact. In the 60s the world was bipolar. There were two camps, the arms race continued, and the Cold War was at its height. The USA created blocs and military-political alliances in all parts of the world directed against the USSR, in Western Europe Nuclear potential was built up, and active subversive work was carried out to split the socialist camp. And here the Czech Republic is in the very center, the country is on the verge of a split. How NATO members wanted to use this chance! The Soviet Union and other socialist countries had every reason to send troops. Because it was not only a right, but also a duty – it was worth raising the points of the Warsaw Pact.”
Veterans of Operation Danube (1968) are not recognized as combatants
For many years it was claimed that no combat operations took place during the strategic operation Danube. Colonel General Vladimir Bulgakov says: “At that moment a correct assessment was not given. Camouflaged as international assistance. It was simply unprofitable to confirm then that we were fighting, for political reasons: as soon as the troops entered, the UN accused the Union of violating the sovereignty of Czechoslovakia. Communist ideology imposed stereotypes – communism, fraternal peoples, international assistance.”
In Soviet times, the fulfillment of international duty in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was presented to society like exercises on Czechoslovak territory called “Danube”: they threatened, they say, an armored “fist” against the “damned imperialists”, and that was the end of it.
Gennady Serdyukov, professor, head of the department of political history of the Faculty of History of the Southern Federal University, believes:
“There has still been no serious research on Operation Danube and the events of 1968. Everything can be questioned and rethought, except for one thing - the behavior of our soldier, who fulfilled his duty to the Motherland.”
In our military-political history, everything turned out exactly the opposite. Thus, during “perestroika,” M. Gorbachev, speaking about the Czechoslovak events, first gave them the following assessment (1987): “...Some socialist countries have experienced serious crises in their development. This was the case, for example, in Hungary in 1956, in Czechoslovakia in 1968... Each of these crises had its own specifics. They came out differently. But the objective fact is this: in none of the socialist countries has there been a return to the old order... Of course, it is not socialism that is to blame for the difficulties and difficulties in the development of socialist countries, but mainly the miscalculations of the ruling parties. And, of course, there is also the “merit” of the West here, its constant and persistent attempts to undermine the development of socialist states, to trip them up.”
However, soon at a meeting of the leaders of Bulgaria, Hungary, the GDR, Poland and the Soviet Union, held on December 4, 1989 in Moscow, a completely different official assessment of the Czechoslovak events was given: the entry of troops of five ATS states into Czechoslovakia was interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state and should to be condemned. At that time, the “velvet revolution” (another “color revolution”) was going on in Czechoslovakia, and the leadership of the socialist countries, including the USSR, collectively repented (to the USA, first of all) of the mistake of sending Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia in 1968. This political conclusion immediately turned all participants in the Czechoslovak events - from privates to generals - into occupiers, outcasts and generally “stranglers of democracy”. And when, finally, the USSR declassified the list of countries where Soviet military personnel took part and died in “undeclared” wars and armed conflicts, Czechoslovakia was not included.
General Vladimir Bulgakov, whom we have already quoted, also performed “international duty” in Afghanistan and has seven military orders. He served as chief of staff of the North Caucasus Military District, commander of the Far Eastern Military District, and deputy commander-in-chief of the Russian Ground Forces. Agree, with such a track record, he has the right to say: “If we evaluate the operation from a military point of view, then it was carried out brilliantly. Look at the mass of troops that were put on alert, including allied ones. How competently the operation was planned and carried out in a short time. They were simply not expected. When we figured it out, we realized it was too late. We have been preparing troops since May, but not a single reconnaissance report has reported that we are preparing a battle. As a result, the losses were minimal, for which honor and praise go to the commander of the operation. Both geopolitical and military goals were achieved with minimal losses. There was no analogue to such an operation.
Time has passed, and the situation has changed, and objectively it is high time to admit that these were military operations. There was opposition to Soviet troops.
However, most of the weapons and equipment remained in the warehouses, which were immediately captured and blocked by the Allied forces. And only for this reason the units of the regular Czech army were unable to launch large-scale military operations.” (I note that the strength of the Czechoslovak army in 1968 was about 200 thousand people.)
It is clear why the opinion took root in the USSR, and then in Russia, that the operation was completely bloodless. But there were some losses. According to the commander of the 38th Army, Lieutenant General A.M. Mayorov, cited at a meeting on August 23, seven infantry fighting vehicles were set on fire as a result of being hit by Molotov cocktails (some burned along with their crews), and more than 300 vehicles were destroyed and damaged. In total, from August 21 to October 20, 11 military personnel were killed while performing a combat mission, including one officer; 87 people were wounded and injured, including 19 officers. In addition, 85 people died in disasters, accidents, careless handling of weapons and military equipment, as a result of other incidents, and died from illnesses.
Warsaw Pact troops were generally ordered to only return fire, and this rule was generally observed. The opinion of the commander of the Alpha group of the KGB of the USSR, Hero of the Soviet Union, retired Major General Gennady Zaitsev (in 1968 he led the group of the 7th Directorate of the KGB of the USSR) is indicative: “How was it possible 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 neutralized! - V.P.) played a significant role in this course of events. But the main reason for the low number of casualties was the behavior of Soviet soldiers, who showed amazing restraint.”
But situations also arose in which even people hardened by harsh service could lose their nerves. In one of the combat reports of that period one could read: “The crew of the tank 64 MSP 55 Med (sergeant major Andreev Yu.I., junior sergeant Makhotin E.N. and private Kazarin P.D.) on the way of movement met an organized counter-revolutionary elements a crowd of youth and children. In an effort to avoid casualties from the local population, they decided to bypass it, during which the tank overturned. The crew died." And the thing, as our newspaper later wrote, was like this.
The tragedy occurred on the first day of the operation, August 21. On a narrow mountain road between the cities of Presov and Poprad, the path of a tank column was suddenly blocked by a group of women and children. They were deceived into bringing them here by extremists, who hoped to provoke a bloody incident with large casualties.
In order not to run over people, the driver of the lead vehicle had no choice but to turn sharply to the side... The tank fell from a cliff, overturned onto the tower and caught fire... Yuri Andreev, Pyotr Kazarin, Evgeniy Makhotin were subsequently awarded state awards. But at the site of their death there is not even a small sign that would somehow remind of the feat of Soviet soldiers. I will add that several thousand Soviet soldiers were awarded military awards, among them only 1000 paratroopers were awarded military orders and medals.
The news of the dead crew immediately spread throughout the Soviet troops. In those days, my mother also received a message about my death. The news was unofficial, from an officer who had come on a business trip, who decided in this way to “show off his knowledge of what was happening in Czechoslovakia...” And we didn’t even know him. But mom and dad began to wait for the “funeral.”
Officers' business trips to the Union were then frequent, and for various reasons. The border was practically open. Some of my colleagues were also sent on a business trip, and I took the opportunity to give my parents a letter written after my “death.” Everything became clear. At that time, many “opportunistically” passed on news to family and friends, which, by the way, was categorically prohibited by military censorship. As for me, later I got it too when the “contra” staged a terrorist attack, and an explosion threw me into a cliff at the pass. The Tatra Mountains, as it turned out, are very high and steep... But my mother knew nothing about this for a very long time.
Our mothers did not know what was reported in the combat reports. And there was a truth that is still unknown to many today. Here are lines from some reports from that time, and only from Prague:
“August 21. By 12 o'clock, paratroopers, overcoming barricades of cars and trams, blocked the KGB, the Ministry of Communications, took under protection the building of the People's Bank, the editorial office of the newspaper "Rude Pravo", and the international telephone exchange. The division had no losses. Only in the shootout during the capture of the television center were two paratroopers wounded.”
"25-th of August. In the afternoon, anti-Soviet demonstrations took place in certain areas of Prague, and periodic shooting took place.”
"August, 26th. At night in Prague there was a firefight in a number of places. A detachment of the 119th Guards Reconnaissance Division was fired upon three times in the area of Club 231. 2 paratroopers were wounded."
“August 27. A meeting of the National Assembly was held in Prague. Units of the 7th Guards. The airborne forces guarding the Government House, the building of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Kremlin were withdrawn 500 meters from the named objects. During the period from August 21 to August 27, the losses of the 7th Division amounted to 21 people: Private N.I. died. Byankin, 5 officers and 15 soldiers and sergeants were wounded.”
For the first time, data on irretrievable losses in Operation Danube was published by the Izvestia newspaper on February 25. 1995 According to her data, the losses were 99 people.
The book “Russia and the USSR in the Wars of the 20th Century” indicates the number 98, and another 87 people were killed in sanitary losses. In the “Book of Memory of the Central Geographical Command” there are 98 dead, without two APN journalists (the helicopter in which they were flying was fired from the ground with a machine gun, crashed and burned). The collection “Czechoslovak events of 1968 through the eyes of the KGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR” (2010) gives a figure of 100 dead. And the result of the research conducted by Vladislav Suntsev was the figure of 106 casualties. However, this figure is not final and raises doubts, because most combat reports are still classified. In 1968, V. Suntsev headed a detachment to combat counter-revolution and spies; he still collects information about the dead that are not included in official data (he lives in Zhitomir).
An interesting answer came from the Central Archives of the RF Ministry of Defense to a request from the Volgograd Veterans Council (section “Danube-68”, G. Tikhonin). Military archivists, in particular, write (kept unchanged): “In accordance with the order of the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation No. 1414 dated June 4, 2012, work on declassifying documents for the period 1946 - 1982 began in the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation in accordance with the established procedure .
In the course of the planned work, documents from the 20th Panzer Division may soon be selected for consideration first of all for possible declassification.
We inform you that in the documents of the 20th Tank Division there are no books recording personnel losses and no orders for awarding division personnel.
The information of interest is in the files with operational reports, combat reports from the headquarters, reports on the combat and numerical strength of 20 TD during the period of the Danube exercises.
Dead end! And, apparently, not at all random.
Retired Major General Vitaly Shevchenko, chairman of the Rostov regional public organization “Danube-68”, says: “... we turned to almost all the highest echelons of power - the Federation Council, the State Duma, and the government. Our arguments are that people died or were shell-shocked and injured while performing their international duty. We also contacted the Legislative Assembly of the Rostov Region, where more than 300 participants in those events live. State Duma deputies made a request to the Ministry of Defense and received a paradoxical answer: “Your appeal to classify as combat veterans those who performed military duty in the Republic of Czechoslovakia in 1968 has been considered... The General Staff of the RF Armed Forces does not confirm the fact of the participation of military personnel of the USSR Armed Forces in combat operations in Czechoslovakia in 1968."
Strange situation. Soviet troops, according to this version, did not take part in the Czech events, while Army General Nikolai Ogarkov, being at that time the first deputy chief of the General Staff, led military operations in Prague, signed orders for the combat use of equipment and personnel and sent combat reports to the Central Committee and the government, and suddenly this answer.
There is all the evidence that our soldiers and soldiers of the allied armies took part in the hostilities.
The commander of the airborne forces, General V. Margelov, clearly wrote in a report that his subordinates from the 7th and 103rd airborne divisions directly took part in the battles on the territory of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Logs of combat operations were established, which are kept exclusively during combat. For each gun, tank, and aircraft, three rounds of ammunition were issued; soldiers and officers received triple the amount of ammunition.
And here are excerpts from the response of the First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Labor, Social Policy and Veterans Affairs G.N. Karelova to the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Volgograd Region V.A. Rostovshchikov (07/03/2012), who decided to help veterans of his region with determining their social status: “... Your appeal to the Chairman of the State Duma S.E. Naryshkin on the issue of classifying as combat veterans those who performed military duty in the Republic of Czechoslovakia in 1968 , on his instructions, was considered by the State Duma Committee on Labor, Social Policy and Veterans Affairs...
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation does not confirm the fact of the participation of military personnel of the USSR Armed Forces in hostilities in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Thus, a legislative solution to the issue of making additions to the List of states, territories and periods of hostilities with the participation of citizens of the Russian Federation (Appendix to the Federal Law “On Veterans”) is possible only if the Russian Ministry of Defense confirms the facts of hostilities on the territory of Czechoslovakia in 1968 year." (Note: the State Duma requires only facts of military operations to legislatively resolve the problem.)
Participants in Czechoslovak events are ready to provide them. There are probably a lot of such facts in the archives, too. However, the acting head of the Main Directorate for Work with Personnel of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, M. Smyslov, informs the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Volgograd Region V.A. Rostovshchikov that “Your appeal to the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation on the issue of amending the Federal Law of January 12, 1995 No. 5-FZ “On Veterans” (hereinafter referred to as the Federal Law) regarding establishing the status of a combat veteran for military personnel who took part in participation in the military-strategic operation “Danube-68” (there was no operation with that name! – V.P.) on the territory of Czechoslovakia, the Main Directorate for Work with Personnel of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation was considered….
There were no military operations involving Soviet military personnel during the political crisis in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in 1968; only isolated military clashes took place.
The mentioned order of the USSR Minister of Defense dated October 17, 1968 No. 242 refers to the performance of international duty by military personnel, and not to their participation in hostilities.
In this regard, there are no grounds for classifying citizens of the Russian Federation who took part in the military-strategic operation on the territory of Czechoslovakia “Danube-68” as combatants.”
Let me remind you that in the post-war period the USSR sent troops into foreign territories three times: into Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. All three countries border on the USSR, traditionally fall within the sphere of interests of Russia/USSR, and as for Hungary and Czechoslovakia, they were, first of all, members of the socialist community, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the military-political organization - the Warsaw Pact with the corresponding international status and with all the ensuing responsibilities and consequences.
The United States, I note, used its troops abroad more than 50 times in the second half of the 20th century alone, and everyone who participated in these wars and military conflicts is clearly recognized as war veterans. For life, with appropriate pensions, benefits and regardless of the political situation. America has never condemned any of its armed interventions in the internal affairs of other states, despite the fact that the American people protested.
In a strategic study conducted by a group of scientists under the general editorship of Doctor of Military Sciences, Professor of the Academy of Sciences, Colonel General G.F. Krivosheev, in Chapter VI, dedicated to the losses of Soviet military personnel in 1946 - 1991, says: “In military conflicts of the post-war period, the participation of Soviet military personnel can be divided into several main areas...
The third area of participation of Soviet military personnel in conflicts abroad is the implementation of decisions of the highest political leadership of the USSR to preserve the unity of the socialist camp and the inviolability of the Warsaw Pact Organization.
Invited to participate in these actions big number Soviet military personnel, of which more than 800 people. died."
The authors of the study provide, among other things, data that would be useful for those who signed the above-cited answers to become familiar with. It's useful to compare. Our irretrievable losses amounted, for example, in Algeria (1962 - 1964) 25 people, in the Yemen Arab Republic (1962 - 1963, 1967 - 1969) - 2 people, in Vietnam (1961 - 1974) - 16 people, in Laos (1960 - 1963, 1964 - 1968, 1969 - 1970) - 5 people, in Angola (1975 - 1979) - 11 people, in Mozambique (1967 - 1969, 1975 - 1979, 1984 - 1987) - 8 people. This series is long, and in terms of the number of Soviet losses, Czechoslovakia occupies one of the first places in it. This is despite the fact that “no military operations were conducted there, but only isolated military clashes took place”! Where did the combat losses come from? And, in general, the opposition between “combat operations” and “military clashes” defies any logic.
In 2007, the newspaper Argumenty Nedeli published an article entitled “The General Staff has counted losses.” The beginning of the publication is as follows: “Before Victory Day, the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces prepared a report on the irretrievable losses of troops in combat operations, starting with Soviet period and ending with our days." Pay attention to the words “about irretrievable losses of troops in combat operations.” The publication further reports: “The Soviet Union paid not only with money, but also with human lives for international assistance in various areas of the world. For example, during the Korean War (1950-1953), the USSR lost 299 people. The suppression of the uprising in Hungary in 1956 cost the lives of 750 Soviet soldiers. The entry of troops into Czechoslovakia in August 1968 was also not bloodless. During this operation, 96 soldiers and officers of the Soviet Army were killed. In Asia and Africa, 145 Soviet military advisers met their deaths during various conflicts.” In fact, the General Staff admitted that military operations were taking place in Czechoslovakia. What has changed over the past six years?
Colonel General Vladimir Bulgakov says with bitterness: “The status of combat veterans, along with participants in the war in Afghanistan, is given to fighters from all other military conflicts - with the exception of Czechoslovakia. Why? After all, the blood of our soldiers was shed there too.”
At the same time, in neighboring Ukraine this problem was solved back in 1994 with the adoption of the law “On the status of war veterans, guarantees of their social protection,” which defined categories of war veterans, including disabled people, war veterans, combatants, , who are subject to the status of combatants. The list of countries where Soviet soldiers took part in hostilities includes Czechoslovakia.
And in 2004, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma issued a decree “On the day of honoring participants in hostilities on the territory of other states.” Let us note that the decree appeared on the basis of the decision taken by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine to include Czechoslovakia (1968) in the list of countries where hostilities took place. With this decree, the President of Ukraine practically once again confirmed that former soldiers and officers who took part in the defense of social gains in Czechoslovakia in 1968 were given the status of “Combatant”, “War Veteran” and provided benefits under the Law of Ukraine “On the Status of War Veterans, Guarantees of Their Social Protection”.
It is very important that these documents legally establish the period of hostilities: August 20, 1968 - January 1, 1969. Anyone who served in the Soviet troops on the territory of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic at that time is unconditionally recognized in Ukraine as a participant in hostilities with the corresponding rights and benefits .
Participants in the Czechoslovak events of 1968 living in Russia, unlike their fellow soldiers, residents of Ukraine, did not receive any status, although the risk was the same as in all local events of this kind. The paradox is that where death and destruction were massive (Hungary - 1956, Egypt - 1956, 1967, 1973, Vietnam - 1964-1972, etc.), the participants in the events received the status of combatants. And the participants in the events in Czechoslovakia, where neither massive irreparable losses nor destruction of infrastructure were allowed, were not even remembered and are not remembered (at least about those who live on Russian territory). Not only were they not removed from the list of participants in hostilities, they were not even going to be included there. Who is this time to please?
This problem automatically entails another insoluble problem. It is about her that Alexander Zasetsky, awarded the Order of the Red Star for Operation Danube, writes: “I served in Dnepropetrovsk and there I had a certificate of combat participation: in Ukraine in 1994 a law was passed recognizing us as veterans. In 2003, for family reasons, he moved here to Russia. And now here I am not a participant in hostilities - because the Russian law on veterans does not include soldiers who fought in Czechoslovakia. But I am the same person. And the events in 1968 were the same. How so?"
There are many similar stories. And the point here is not so much about benefits, but about restoring justice to former Soviet servicemen. The international strategic Operation Danube, which prevented destabilization in Central Europe, played a vital role in maintaining regional and global security. Its participants living in Russia have earned the right to be called internationalist warriors.
By the way, the legal conflicts in which A. Zasetsky and many other veterans who came from Ukraine found themselves might not have happened if the social protection authorities of the Russian Ministry of Defense had complied with the international agreements signed within the CIS on the unconditional legalization of all pension documents. Russia ignores them.
And one more thing: we have Gazprom - a national treasure, which does not exist in Ukraine and is not expected.
But for now, our veteran organizations are borrowing commemorative medals made in Ukraine for the 45th anniversary of the entry of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia...
It's a shame, gentlemen, oh, how shameful!
Relatively recently, on the initiative of former participants in the 1968 events in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, a regional public organization of internationalist soldiers (as they call themselves illegally!) “Danube-68”, which numbers about 300 people, was created in the Rostov region. All of them are 60 years old or older, but they dared to stand up to defend... No, not the Motherland - they have already fulfilled this duty long ago. We finally decided to try to protect our rights. Similar organizations have been created in the Volgograd region, Tatarstan, Dagestan, Stavropol Territory, Kabardino-Balkaria, Ulyanovsk, Voronezh... The movement of veterans of the Czechoslovak events of 1968 is gaining strength. But will the veterans themselves have enough strength and time?
Even today I am sure that every participant in the military events of those distant years will subscribe to the words of Colonel General Vladimir Bulgakov “We defended our own national interests.”
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