1968 (50 page)

In the beginning of July, after the Cierna meeting had appeared to resolve the crisis, the Soviet Union had genuinely decided against invasion and it is still not completely clear what changed its mind. In 1989 Vasil Bilak, who had been one of the pro-Soviet officials in the Czechoslovakian government, revealed in his memoirs that on August 3, two days after the Cierna meeting, he and eighteen other pro-Soviet Czechoslovakian officials had given a letter to Brezhnev. The nineteen secretly renounced Dub
ek and asked for Soviet military assistance for a coup d’état. They wanted a decision before August 19, because on August 20 the presidium was going to meet for the last time before the Slovak Party Congress on August 23, which the pro-Soviet conspirators insisted would be “counterrevolutionary.”

So the Soviets after all, as they had claimed, had been asked to invade by pro-Soviet elements who wanted to take over the government and then welcome the troops. But this faction was small, and the conspirators did not have enough support to act on their plan. When the troops arrived, the pro-Soviet plotters had failed to take control of anything, including the television station they had conspired to seize.

Also contributing to the Soviet decision to invade, possibly, were extravagant KGB reports about counterrevolutionary plots in Czechoslovakia. Soviet sources in Washington reported that contrary to what some in Moscow believed, the CIA was not involved in events in Prague and, in fact, had been caught completely by surprise by the Prague Spring. But these reports were destroyed by KGB chief Yuri Andropov, who reportedly said, “We cannot show such things to our leadership.”

At 11:00
P.M.
central European time, August 20, the summer night air was suddenly filled with sound, the earth rumbled, and the invasion code-named Operation Danube had begun. This was not a film shoot. That night 4,600 tanks and 165,000 soldiers of the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia across twenty crossing points, rolling west from East Germany, south from Poland, west from the Soviet Union, and north from Hungary into the undefended nation of Czechoslovakia. Five countries participated in the invasion, including token forces from Hungary and Bulgaria. East Germany and Poland sent a division each; the Soviets sent thirteen divisions. In seven hours 250 aircraft delivered an entire airborne division, including small armored vehicles, fuel, and supplies. The operation was the largest airlift ever carried out by the Soviet military outside of its borders. Militarily it was magnificent, except that no army was fighting back.

Dub
ek and the other leaders waited in the Central Committee building. Dub
ek kept staring at the telephone, half expecting the call that would explain it had all been a misunderstanding. At 4:00
A.M.,
a black limousine led a tank column toward the Central Committee building. Faced with an angry crowd, the Soviet column opened fire with machine guns and one young man was shot to death while Dub
ek and the other leaders, angry but helpless, watched from their window.

Though Czechoslovakia was thought to have the best-trained and best-equipped fighting force in the Warsaw Pact, it was under orders from Dub
ek not to resist. Dub
ek and his government had quickly discussed and rejected the possibility of armed resistance. The Czechoslovakian army, like all the Warsaw Pact armies, had no independent chain of command and would function poorly without Soviet leadership. They all agreed without argument that armed resistance was impossible and would not only cost too many lives but would aid the Soviet claim that it was putting down a counterrevolution, as it did in Hungary in 1956. Better to have the world see peaceful Czechoslovakia crushed by a brutish foreign military. As far as is known, not a single border guard fired a shot or in any way tried to impede the armored columns. Nor was there an effort to stop troops and equipment arriving at Czechoslovakian airports. But by the end of the first day, twenty-three Czechoslovaks were dead.

Paratroopers surrounded the Central Committee building, and all the phones inside went dead. It was not until 9:00 in the morning that paratroopers burst into Dub
ek’s office. They blocked the windows and doors, and when Dub
ek reached to pick up a phone, forgetting that they no longer functioned, one of the soldiers menaced him with an automatic weapon as he tore the phone out of the wall. Half a dozen high officials were with Dub
ek watching this when a very short KGB colonel festooned with decorations burst into the office, accompanied by several other KGB officers and an interpreter. After listing the members of government present, he announced that they were all being taken “under his protection.” They were then all seated at a long table, and behind each of them was a soldier pointing a weapon. Then Dub
ek was taken away. As he passed his office manager, he whispered for him to secure his briefcase, which contained papers he hoped to keep from the Soviets. A week later, when he got back to Prague and found his briefcase empty, Dub
ek finally understood that his office manager had been a Soviet agent.