World: The Lingering Effects of the Invasion

THOUGH water cannon and police truncheons kept last week’s demonstrations in Czechoslovakia under control, mere force is not likely to suppress other aftereffects of last year’s invasion. Reflecting on the developments of the past twelve months, TIME Correspondent, Jerrold Schecter reports from Moscow: “The invasion of Czechoslovakia is now regarded as an overt admission of the inability of the Soviet leadership to accept and deal with political and economic change in the Communist world. Though most Soviet citizens accept the official explanation that counterrevolution and the threat of West German aggression required the intervention in Czechoslovakia, the fact remains that the invasion has unleashed forces that will not be stilled either in the Soviet Union or in Eastern Europe.”

The most ironic consequence of the invasion may be that it transformed Moscow’s most loyal allies into enduring enemies. Betrayed by the West at Munich in 1938, the Czechoslovaks embraced the Soviets as their wartime liberators and protectors. No amount of Communist propaganda can now convince the mass of Czechoslovak people that the Soviets remain their benefactors. As wall posters in Prague put it,

CAIN AND ABEL WERE BROTHERS, TOO.

Within the Soviet Union, the invasion produced intense disaffection, particularly among intellectuals. For the first time in Soviet history, groups of dissident intellectuals publicly defied the regime in protest. “The secret police have really been shaken by what has happened in the past year,” says Russian Author Anatoly Kuznetsov, who last month defected to the West. Kuznetsov may be exaggerating somewhat. But it is no exaggeration to say that the Kremlin has reacted harshly, tightening police controls, jailing some intellectuals and firing others from important posts on journals and newspapers.

In Eastern Europe, the immediate effect of the invasion has been to slow down or snuff out entirely all but the most cautious experiments in economic reform —at least for the time being. Outside the Soviet bloc, the invasion has accelerated the fragmentation of Communist parties into rival factions, a process begun with the outbreak of the Sino-Soviet schism of the early 1960s. It also greatly weakened Moscow’s claim to be the sole rightful interpreter of the true path of Communism.

In most respects, the U.S. has carried on business as usual with the Soviets. In the area of arms control, however, the invasion may prove to have had a lasting and lamentable impact. On the eve of the invasion, Moscow had advised Washington that it was ready to launch the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) on Sept. 30, 1968 (see THE NATION). After the Soviet tanks rumbled into Prague, the U.S. felt compelled to cancel the talks. They have yet to be rescheduled. Meanwhile, the race between the two superpowers to develop antiballistic missile systems and rockets with multiple warheads has gained momentum.

As British Political Scientist Philip Windsor points out in the new book Czechoslovakia, 1968, the invasion undermined the West’s assumption that growing prosperity in the Soviet Union would lead to greater preoccupation with domestic affairs and a more relaxed political attitude toward Eastern Europe. “This assumption was the comfortable one that ‘a fat communist is better than a thin communist,’ ” writes Windsor. “Unfortunately, it failed to take into account the possibility that if he was pushed too far, a fat apparatchik might feel that he had more to lose than a thin apparatchik.”

Reflecting that feeling, U.S. Secretary of State William P. Rogers said at his news conference last week that Czechoslovakia was “a grim reminder of the difficulties we face in entering an era of negotiations with the Soviet Union.” Indeed, the Soviets have demonstrated since the invasion a renewed hostility by denouncing Western attempts at “bridgebuilding” as plots to weaken and destroy Communist solidarity. The Soviet bluster does not mean that the U.S. and the Russians cannot conclude specific, mutually advantageous treaties. But it may well mean that a general relaxation in U.S.-Soviet relations, however desirable, remains a highly elusive goal.