Traditional Subversion

Abstract

Abstract This chapter provides the first systematic analysis of the role and impact of subversion in the Soviet Union’s efforts to crush the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia that culminated with the Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968. While most historiography has focused on this invasion, the analysis shows that subversion played a key role from early on in this crisis. Integrating existing evidence and new archival sources, it documents the KGB’s efforts to manipulate Czechoslovakia’s government and neutralize its liberalization movement through illegal agents. These commenced with a string of daring operations, attempting to kidnap civil society leaders, planning assassinations, planting false evidence of an impending armed revolution, and, ultimately, attempting an internal coup. Yet as the theory predicts, these operations pursuing highly intense effects under significant time pressure by and large failed. With time pressure easing following the invasion, in the subsequent years subversive efforts bore more fruit and produced at least plausible successes—among others triggering the resignation of Czechoslovakia’s reformist leader Dubcek as well as facilitating the arrest of civil society. These successes underline the importance of enabling conditions that facilitate subversion, foremost the extent of available vulnerabilities and suitable means of exploitation. Despite these successes, however, the Soviet Union deemed perennial armed occupation necessary to maintain control—contrary to its goals. The analysis thus provides clear evidence of the constraining role of the subversive trilemma and the limited strategic value of subversion.