CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY Directorate of Intelligence · 21-A~gust 1968' 
MEMOR?\NDUM 
SUBJECT: The soviet Decision to Intervene 
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l 	l. Betwee·n the end of the Cierna-Bratislava meetings and yesterday's invasion nothing happened inside Czechoslovakia to support Moscow·• s claim that these meetings were a great victory for Com­munist orthodoxy·. Neither· was the.re a notable recrudescence in Czechoslovakia of the 0 anti­socialistlf trends which brought on the Warsaw meeting and its harsh ultimatum. Thus, we doubt that a rising sense of alarm in Moscow is the essential explanation for Soviet intervention. 
2. The Soviet politburo on its return to Moscow did not surnmon the Central Committee to report on the Cierna and Bratislava meetings, but instead issued a communique in the name of the entire politburo saying that those meetings were a good piece of work. · The Soviet leaders seem shortly thereafter to have scattered for their usual summer ho.lidays. The Soviet press stood down its attacks on Czechoslovakia. The appear­ance given was that Moscow was willing at last to give the Czechs-•presumably chastened by the nearness of their approach to the brink--a respite. vntat went on in Czechoslovakia during the short span of time since Cierna proved · 
·only that the Czechs had not understood Cierna to mean that they should put their reform move• ment into reverse. 
3. It is not likely that the Soviets 1 .even tho~g.h they have persistently underestimated the s.trength o~ reformist spirit in Czechoslvakia1expected' miracles to be done by· Dubcek in three weeks' time . Even if Dubcek had promised them, there was no chance he could deliver. What, .then, bro~ght the Russians, .after they had decided to 
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step back at Cierna, to give the signal yesterday 
to crush the Czechoslovaks? 

4. It may be some time before we can answer this ·question with any assurance. On the strength of what we know now, the· most likely explanation appears to be that, under the impact of internal pressures within the leadershfp and of importuningfrom its anxious allies in Eastern Europe, the so­viet decision at Cierna to give Dubcek and company more .time became unravelled. This would suppose-­as there seems some reason to suppose--that the Soviet politburo when it went to Cierna was divided ih mind,-.,and that the standoff reached there de­rived mostly from Soviet irresolution. ·The fragilebalance in the Soviet leadership which produced the Cierna agreement has, _in the space of less than three weeks, been upset in favor of those who may all along have wanted the toughest kind of policy and have made use of the time and developments since Cierna to undo the ~greement. 
s. If, _indeed, :the political scales in Moscow have been in such precarious balance, _it would not have needed a great shock to upset them, .but only the absence of solid signs that developments in Prague were going Moscow• s ,.~ay. There were few of these. In the short time available to Dubcek his efforts to demonstrate that he could insure the unquestioneddomi"nation of the Communist party had not been impres­sive. Czechoslvak information media remained unruly and unrepentant. There was no indication that non­Communis t political elements--for example, the Club of Conunitted Non-Party People and the revised Socialist party--were being forced to take cover. Despite the renewed pledges of fidelity to CEMA given at Cierna, .there continued to be much talk 
· in Pr~gue of broader economic ties with the West. 
G~ The viaita to Prague of Tito and Ceausescu 
were all too visible reminders that the ranks of in­
dependent Communist states wero swelling. And, 
finally, with preparations moving ahead rapidly 
for the party congress scheduled to open on 9 Sep­
tember, .it was beoomi~g clear that the co!lgress 

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might sound the death knell over the 'Czechoslovak party conservatives, .Moscow's last hope for a brake on reformism in Prague. The congress would have meant not a check on the momentUm of the Czechoslovak reform movement, put its confirmation. In addition, . the cost of maintaining the mobilization of massive intervention forces may have created pressures in the 
leadership to use these forces or disband them. 
7. Despite the smoothness of the soviet mili­
tary operation in Czechoslovakia, a number of Soviet 
political actions suggest that the decision to exe• 
cute tl)e plan of intervention came at a fairly late 
stage. 1\rnong these were Dobrynin•s approach to the 
President, _the convening of the· Central Committee 

_in the midst of the top leaders' vacation, the flimsi­ness of the legal base for Soviet action, and the failure to surface quickly an alternative leadershipin Prague. Thus it would appear that Soviet inter­vention in Czecho.slovakia did not follow naturally from the Cierna meeting but represents / .instead, a sorappi~g of the position arrived at there.