| Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Monday, October 6, 2008 | 4:00PM - 6:00PM | Seminar Room 108N, Munk Centre For International Studies 1 Devonshire Place |
Dr. Békés will analyze the international context of the Prague Spring, from the beginning of the reform movement in January to the military intervention of five Warsaw Pact states on August 21. He will draw on his research in multiple archives.
While previous Soviet interventions in East Berlin (1953) and Hungary (1956) were unilateral decisions by Moscow, the crushing of the Prague Spring was a joint action preceeded by intensive coordination among the leaders of the Soviet bloc (excluding Romania). The Kremlin and its allies held seven multilateral summit meetings between March and August at which the East German, Polish, and Bulgarian leadership fostered a military option basically from the beginning while the Soviets and the Hungarians were working for a political solution until the last moment.
It will also be argued that the Warsaw Pact intervention in reality did not block, as often suggested, the evolution of a modest reform movement aimed merely at introducing “socialism with a human face.” On the contrary, archival evidence makes it clear that the political transformation that was underway in Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1968 had gradually but rather quickly progressed from notions of a reformed socialist model towards the goal of a Western-type democratic system that would have been introduced in a short period of time without external intervention. This is indeed what happened in 1990.
Csaba BÉKÉS is founding director of the Cold War History Research Center and Senior Research Fellow at the 1956 Institute, both in Budapest. His main fields of research are Cold War history, the history of East–West relations, Hungary’s international relations after World War II, and the role of the East Central European states in the Cold War. He is the author or editor of 11 books and some 60 major articles and chapters, has participated in some 60 international conferences, and has been a visiting professor at New York University and at Columbia University. He is also a contributor to the forthcoming three-volume Cambridge History of the Cold War and is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Cold War Studies and Cold War History.
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