The Brezhnev Doctrine and Soviet Control in Czechoslovakia

• Brezhnev could not accept Dubcek reforms and the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968. Brezhnev then established the Brezhnev Doctrine.
• While it was not the intention of Dubcek to weaken the warsaw pact, his reforms risked it being broken up
• Brezhnev failed to convince Dubcek to stop the reforms, so the Soviet Union sent tanks to Prague and Dubcek was arrested
• Czechoslovakia returned to being under strict Soviet control and Husak was made leader. This was known as ‘normalisation'
• In the Brezhnev Doctrine, the Soviet Union declared the right to invade any Eastern bloc country that was threatening the security communism in the Eastern bloc as a whole
• The USA condemned the invasion but did nothing to stop it: it feared war. Western European communist parties were horrified and declared themselves independent from the Soviet Communist Party.
• Yugoslavia and Romania also backed off from the Soviet Union, weakening the Soviet Union’s grip on Eastern Europe.
• The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia was important because the Brezhnev Doctrine meant that the Soviet Union reserved the right to invade any country that threatened the security of the Eastern bloc
• Due to the Brezhnev Doctrine, other East European states, such as Poland or Hungary, were required to rigidly stick to Soviet-style communism or risk invasion themselves.