Czechoslovakia, Warsaw Pact and invasion of 1968

The intervention of the armies of the five Warsaw Pact member countries into Czechoslovakia in August 1968 represents a significant event in modern history, remembered primarily in the national memory of Czechs and Slovaks. And given the decisive role of the Soviet Union, primarily as a trauma of bilateral Czechoslovak-Soviet relations. In political journalism and professional literature, we often encounter a broader concept, when the intervention is presented as an action of the Warsaw Pact. Therefore, the main goal of this study is to examine what role and whether the Warsaw Pact and especially its highest body, the Political Advisory Committee, played in this intervention. Therefore, even though the suppression of the democratization process in Czechoslovakia - known as the Prague Spring - was carried out by brutal means in the form of a massive military invasion, the author focuses in this study primarily on the political aspect of the issue, because the use of military means was based on a political decision. The decision to intervene was not made at any meeting of the aforementioned Political Advisory Committee of the Pact. The intervention was decided by the highest representatives of the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and East Germany. And moreover, without the participation of other member countries, i.e. Romania, Albania and especially Czechoslovakia, which was the victim of the intervention. The military intervention against Czechoslovakia in August 1968 was therefore not an action of the Warsaw Pact. It was a separate action of the Soviet Union and some other countries of the Pact, that pretended to act on behalf of the Pact to justify their action. Doing so, they acted contrary the proclaimed principles and rules of the Pact.