Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia - Soviet Fears

Soviet Fears

Leonid Brezhnev and the leadership of the Warsaw Pact countries worried that the unfolding liberalizations in Czechoslovakia, including the ending of censorship and political surveillance by the secret police, would be detrimental to their interests. The first of such fears was that Czechoslovakia would defect from the bloc, injuring the Soviet Union's position in a possible war with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Not only would the loss result in a lack of strategic depth for the USSR, but it would also mean that it could not tap Czechoslovakia's industrial base in a potential war. Czechoslovak leaders had no intention of leaving the Warsaw Pact, but Moscow felt it could not be certain exactly what Prague's intentions were.

Other fears included the spread of liberal communism and unrest elsewhere in Eastern Europe. The Warsaw Pact countries worried that if the Prague Spring reforms went unchecked, then those ideals might very well spread to Poland and East Germany, upsetting the status quo there as well. Within the Soviet Union, nationalism in the republics of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine was already causing problems, and many worried that events in Prague might exacerbate those problems. KGB chairman Yuri Andropov and Ukrainian leaders Petro Shelest and Nikolai Podgorny were the most vehement proponents of military intervention.

In addition, part of Czechoslovakia bordered Austria and West Germany, which were on the other side of the Iron Curtain. This meant both that foreign agents could potentially slip into Czechoslovakia and into any member of the Communist Bloc and that defectors could slip out to the West. The final concern emerged directly from the lack of censorship; writers whose work had been censored in the Soviet Union could simply go to Prague or Bratislava and air their grievances there, circumventing the Soviet Union's censorship.