page_title: Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia
section_title: Czechoslovak negotiations with the USSR and other Warsaw Pact states
hierarchical_section_title: Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia / Czechoslovak negotiations with the USSR and other Warsaw Pact states
caption_attribution_description: Čeština: Hořící barikády a zapálené sovětské tankyEnglish: Barricades and Soviet tanks on fire
context_page_description: The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, officially known as Operation Danube, was a joint invasion of Czechoslovakia by five Warsaw Pact countries – the Soviet Union, Poland, Bulgaria, East Germany and Hungary – on the night of 20–21 August 1968. Approximately 250,000 Warsaw Pact troops attacked Czechoslovakia that night, with Romania and Albania refusing to participate. East German forces, except for a small number of specialists, did not participate in the invasion because they were ordered from Moscow not to cross the Czechoslovak border just hours before the invasion. 137 Czechoslovakian civilians were killed and 500 seriously wounded during the occupation.
  The invasion successfully stopped Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring liberalisation reforms and strengthened the authority of the authoritarian wing within the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. The foreign policy of the Soviet Union during this era was known as the Brezhnev Doctrine.
  Public reaction to the invasion was widespread and divided.
context_section_description: The Soviet leadership at first tried to stop or limit the impact of Dubček's initiatives through a series of negotiations. the Czechoslovak and Soviet Presidiums agreed to bilateral meeting to be held in July 1968 at Čierna nad Tisou, near the Slovak-Soviet border. The meeting was the first time the Soviet Presidium met outside Soviet territory.
  At the meeting, with attendance of Brezhnev, Alexei Kosygin, Nikolai Podgorny, Mikhail Suslov and others on the Soviet side and Dubček, Ludvík Svoboda, Oldřich Černík, Josef Smrkovský and others on the Czechoslovak side, Dubček defended the program of the reformist wing of the KSČ while pledging commitment to the Warsaw Pact and Comecon. The KSČ leadership, however, was divided between vigorous reformers (Josef Smrkovský, Oldřich Černík, Josef Špaček and František Kriegel) who supported Dubček, and conservatives (Vasil Biľak, Drahomír Kolder, and Oldřich Švestka) who represented an anti-reformist stance. Brezhnev decided on compromise. The KSČ delegates reaffirmed their loyalty to the Warsaw Pact and promised to curb "anti-socialist" tendencies, prevent the revival of the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party, and control the press by the re-imposition of a higher level of censorship. In return the USSR agreed to withdraw their troops (still stationed in Czechoslovakia since the June 1968 maneuvers) and permit 9 September party congress. Dubček appeared on television shortly afterwards reaffirming Czechoslovakia's alliance with the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.
  On 3 August, representatives from the Soviet Union, East Germany, People's Republic of Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia met in Bratislava and signed the Bratislava Declaration. The declaration affirmed unshakable fidelity to Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism and declared an implacable struggle against bourgeois ideology and all "antisocialist" forces. The Soviet Union expressed its intention to intervene in a Warsaw Pact country if a bourgeois system – a pluralist system of several political parties representing different factions of the capitalist class – was ever established. After the Bratislava conference, Soviet troops left Czechoslovak territory but remained along Czechoslovak borders.
  As these talks proved unsatisfactory, the USSR began to consider a military alternative. The Soviet Union's policy of compelling the socialist governments of its satellite states to subordinate their national interests to those of the Eastern Bloc (through military force if needed) became known as the Brezhnev Doctrine.
caption: Barricades and Soviet tanks on fire
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