Czechoslovakia

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A is East Germany and B is Hungary.

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Source A opposes the invasion because Ceaușescu calls it 'a great mistake' and 'a serious danger to peace in Europe and to the future of socialism', which directly rejects the Soviet claim that the invasion was defending socialism. He also says that nothing could justify interfering in the internal affairs of another socialist state, rejecting the idea that the communist states had a shared right to intervene, which Brezhnev later set out as the Brezhnev Doctrine. His announcement of armed Patriotic Guards shows that Romania feared it might be invaded next and was ready to defend itself. The provenance makes the opposition even clearer. Ceaușescu was the leader of a Warsaw Pact member, and Romania was the only member that refused to send troops. He had visited Prague only days earlier and signed a friendship treaty with Czechoslovakia. By speaking to a huge crowd on the day of the invasion, he was openly defying the USSR. He was not a reformer like Dubček, but he wanted to defend Romania's independence, which made him popular at home.

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Source B is useful because it sets out exactly what the Prague Spring reforms were meant to be. The Action Programme promised freedom of speech, the press and assembly, freedom to travel abroad, more power for parliament, the rehabilitation of the victims of the purges of the 1950s and limits on the secret police. It also promised economic reform with some market forces and a federation that would give Slovaks equal status. This was Dubček's 'socialism with a human face'. Importantly, Source B also shows the limits of the reforms: the party would keep its leading role and Czechoslovakia would stay in the Warsaw Pact and loyal to the USSR. The provenance makes it very reliable as evidence of the leaders' aims, because it is the Communist Party's own official programme, adopted in April 1968. However, it only shows intentions, not what actually happened, and it was written partly to reassure the Soviet Union, so it may play down how far reform might go.

Source C is useful because it shows how the reforms were experienced by ordinary people. The student says that for the first time he can believe the newspapers and that people argue openly on television about the trials of the 1950s. This fits my knowledge that censorship was relaxed from March 1968 and that the press exposed the crimes of the Stalinist years, such as the Slánský trial. Source C supports Source B that the party would keep its leading role, but it also shows that many people wanted to go further and have opposition parties. This matches my knowledge of new clubs such as KAN and K231, and of the 'Two Thousand Words' manifesto of June 1968, which urged people to push reform from below. The father's fear that 'the Russians will never allow it' shows that people knew of the Soviet hostility already shown at the Dresden meeting in March. The provenance adds to its value: it is a private letter written in May 1968, at the height of the Prague Spring, so the student had no reason to hide his feelings. However, it is the view of one young, educated person in Prague, and may not reflect the views of workers, Slovaks or conservative communists.

Overall, both sources are useful, and they are most useful together. Source B shows what the party leaders officially intended, while Source C shows the excitement that free speech released and the pressure to go further than Dubček wanted. This gap between Dubček's limited aims and the people's growing demands helps to explain why the USSR became so alarmed and invaded in August 1968, although neither source shows the Soviet response directly.

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The Soviet Union responded to the Prague Spring first with pressure and then, on 20-21 August 1968, with a Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. Its aim was to end Dubček's reforms and keep Czechoslovakia firmly under communist control and inside the Soviet bloc. In the short term the response was clearly a success, but it came at a high price, and in the long term it weakened the USSR and communism itself. Overall, I agree with the statement only for the short term.

The response succeeded in its main aim. The invasion ended the Prague Spring within days. The Czechoslovak army was ordered not to resist, and about 100 Czechoslovaks were killed - far fewer than the thousands who died in Hungary in 1956. Under the Moscow Protocol of 26 August, Dubček and the other leaders agreed to restore censorship and abandon most of their reforms. In October 1968 a treaty allowed about 75,000 Soviet troops to stay in the country, and in April 1969 Dubček was replaced by Gustáv Husák. Husák's 'normalisation' purged reformers from the party and from their jobs, and kept Czechoslovakia a loyal Soviet ally for twenty years.

The response also strengthened Soviet control over the rest of Eastern Europe. The Brezhnev Doctrine, announced in November 1968, made clear that no socialist country would be allowed to abandon communism. For more than a decade no satellite state attempted anything like the Prague Spring. The West protested but did nothing, accepting that Czechoslovakia lay within the Soviet sphere. Relations with the West recovered quickly: talks on limiting strategic arms began in November 1969, West Germany's Ostpolitik accepted Europe's post-war borders, and Brezhnev and Nixon signed SALT 1 in May 1972. In terms of security and power, the USSR lost very little.

However, the response did serious damage to the Soviet Union's reputation. It was condemned around the world, and the USSR had to veto a UN Security Council resolution. Even communists turned against Moscow. The Italian and French Communist Parties criticised the invasion, and Western communism began to drift away from Soviet control. Within the Warsaw Pact, Romania refused to take part and condemned the invasion, and Albania formally left the alliance. Most seriously, China denounced the invasion and feared that the Brezhnev Doctrine might be used against it. The Sino-Soviet split deepened into armed clashes on the border in 1969, and China then moved closer to the USA, leading to Nixon's visit to Beijing in 1972. This was a major setback for the USSR in the Cold War.

The response also failed to win the support of the Czechoslovak people. They resisted the invasion, refused to form a puppet government and continued to protest: in January 1969 the student Jan Palach set himself on fire in protest, and in March 1969 the ice hockey victories over the USSR led to anti-Soviet riots. Normalisation kept order through fear, but communism lost any real popular support, and the economy stagnated. The invasion also destroyed the hope that communism could be reformed from within. When Gorbachev abandoned the Brezhnev Doctrine in 1989, the regime collapsed in the Velvet Revolution, and Dubček returned to public life.

In conclusion, the Soviet response was a success in its immediate aim of keeping Czechoslovakia communist and inside the Warsaw Pact, and it did not stop détente with the West. However, it damaged the USSR's reputation, split the communist world and left a people who resented Soviet rule. It was a short-term success that stored up long-term problems, so I only partly agree with the statement.