Czechoslovakia, located in the center of Europe, was a kind of corridor between East and West. Because of this, it has become a kind of bone of contention for the two superpowers - the USA and the USSR. In pursuit of gaining control over her, they began a sophisticated covert struggle.
After the end of World War II, Czechoslovakia returned to the pre-war state structure - it again became an independent multi-party republic. But the attitude of Czechs and Slovaks to the outside world has changed markedly. In their eyes, Western countries have significantly lost their authority. Especially England and France, which actually surrendered them to Hitlerite Germany as a result of the so-called Munich Agreement signed in September 1938. And vice versa, the USSR, which brought them freedom, became a “friend forever”.
Sly Allen Dulles
The change in mood was also reflected in the balance of political forces in Czechoslovakia. In the elections on May 26, 1946, the Communist Party won 40% of the vote and became the most influential force in the country. Under her influence, in 1947, Czechoslovakia refused to participate in the "Marshall Plan" - an American assistance program for the restoration of the post-war economy. Thus, she avoided the inevitable dependence on the United States, in contrast to many European countries. And in 1948 a communist regime was established in Czechoslovakia. However, the United States was not going to put up with the inclusion of Czechoslovakia in the socialist camp and began a secret struggle for influence on this country.
It is believed that the head of the CIA Allen Dulles came up with an insidious plan during the Cold War, which consisted in the latent moral corruption of the USSR population. But the existence of this plan in reality is questionable. It is quite possible that it was invented in the USSR to justify the mistakes made by the leadership of the Soviet Union in domestic policy.
Much more interesting is another plan of Dulles, embodied in Operation Split, about which the English journalist Stephen Stewart wrote in the 1970s. There is no convincing evidence of the reality of this operation either. But if Allen Dulles, who was then deputy director of the CIA, who was responsible for conducting covert operations of this department, really invented and implemented it, then we must admit that he did it very ingeniously.
American analysts from the CIA believed that Czechs and Slovaks were not fighters by nature. For three centuries they lived under the heel of Austria-Hungary and made no attempts to escape from under it. Therefore, one should not expect that they would oppose the communist regime with arms in hand. But it was quite possible to undermine their confidence in the communists. Allegedly, according to Dulles's plan, it was necessary to make the communist regime itself ruin its reputation with a wave of bloody repression in the countries of Eastern Europe. And the leaders of these countries fell into the trap of Dulles, starting large-scale repression against their peoples. No matter how beautiful ideals the communists proclaimed after this, no matter how much they talk about universal equality and brotherhood, they could no longer wash the blood of those executed.
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Operation Sundering
By and large, what could the USSR teach Czechoslovakia, which is at a higher stage of economic development? Fight? Yes, but peacetime has come. As a result, the Soviet leadership began to teach the Czechs and Slovaks what they themselves knew how to do perfectly - to identify "enemies of the people" among their citizens and break them in prison. At the same time, the Kremlin created fear in those who ruled the pro-communist countries and ensured their subordination.
As if following Dulles's instructions, the USSR instigated a campaign of repression throughout the Eastern European bloc. "Gangs of vile traitors, Tito and Anglo-American spies" were massively identified in Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania, Romania, Poland. In the course of political processes in Hungary, evidence was obtained that spies of Western imperialism were operating in the highest echelons of power in socialist Czechoslovakia.
The chairman of the Communist Party and the President of Czechoslovakia, Clement Gottwald, asked the USSR for help in a cipher program: "We ask the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) to send us specialists who are familiar with the results of the judicial investigation in Hungary, who would help us conduct an investigation in this direction." State security "advisers" were sent to Czechoslovakia to teach comrades there how to obtain confessions from political suspects.
First, in 1950, in Czechoslovakia, a skating rink of repression went through the activists of the National Socialist Party. Four of them were sentenced to death. For the first time in the history of Czechoslovakia, a woman, Milada Gorakova, was executed for her convictions, although Albert Einstein and other famous people sought her pardon. She was hanged on June 27, 1950. Then repressions in Czechoslovakia began against prominent leaders of the Communist Party. In this, according to Stephen Stewart, the Czechoslovak state security agencies were pretty much "helped" by Allen Dulles, skillfully substituting the Communists.
Stewart described how the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czechoslovak Republic, Vladimir Clementis, was skillfully defamed. In October 1949, he attended the UN General Assembly in New York. At this time, Western newspapers began to write that Clementis was fighting against the increasing Stalinist pressure on Czechoslovakia. Clementis was forced to call Gottwald on the phone almost every day to refute another statement addressed to him.
Then an article appeared in a Swiss newspaper stating that Clementis would be arrested as soon as he returned to Prague. This time, Gottwald had to call Clementis and say that he did not intend to arrest him. But trust was undermined. The case ended with the fact that at the end of January 1951 he fell under the roller of repression, when the "big purge" began in Czechoslovakia. In addition to Clementis, another 169 thousand members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia were arrested, which constituted 10% of all its members.
Price of the Prague Spring
An important role in these repressions was played by Rudolf Slansky, who was the second person in Czechoslovakia after Gottwald. The CIA believed that the determined Stalinist Slansky was the only one capable of keeping Czechoslovakia in the communist bloc, and framed him with the same grace.
According to Stewart, the Czechoslovak security officers working for Western intelligence forced the defendant Otto Sling to testify against Slansko. And they convinced fellow workers to send the materials of the interrogations not to President Gottwald, but to the Russian ambassador in Prague. The materials ended up on Stalin's table. The result was quite predictable.
The General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia Rudolf Slansky and 13 other high-ranking party and state leaders, 11 of whom were Jews, were arrested at the end of 1952 and accused of a "Trotskyist-Zionist-Tito conspiracy." In particular, Slansky was accused of "implanting enemies of the Czechoslovak people who had gone through the school of American intelligence agents Dulles and Field on leading posts in the party and the state apparatus." At the trial, Slansky and 10 others were sentenced to death.
After all these intrigues in the early 1950s, the USA and the USSR as a whole remained "with their own people." The CIA undermined the credibility of the communists in Czechoslovakia, but the Soviet Union still retained control of that country. It rumbled already in 1968, when the Prague Spring began. But by that time the USSR and the USA had learned to find compromises.
After US President Lyndon Johnson assured Brezhnev that the Yalta agreements regarding Romania and Czechoslovakia were not subject to revision, the Soviet leadership knew that NATO would not go to war over Czechoslovakia. So it quietly brought tanks into this country, which turned the Prague spring into a "late autumn". As a result, in the short term, the USSR won, securing the borders of the socialist camp from the NATO threat. But then he lost the Cold War, and Czechoslovakia not only ceased to be communist, but also divided into two independent states.
Oleg LOGINOV
