Katushev’s report and Behice Boran’s defence of the occupation of Czechoslovakia

Soviet tanks in Prague (August 1968)

While working on the article entitled “Decay as seen from the Kremlin - The Warsaw Pact in 1973: Rising foreign debt, repression and the unravelling of Stalinist regimes”, I found myself thinking of what Behice Boran (1910-1987) -one of the foremost defenders of the Stalinist Soviet bureaucracy in Turkey- said in mid-1986 to the journalist Uğur Mumcu (1942-1993) about the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. [*]

In her response, Boran deliberately avoids using the word “invasion” and, with typical Stalinist cynicism, opts instead for the term “the Czechoslovakia incident”. She maintains that, immediately after the intervention, she had condemned and sharply criticised the military action, but admits that at the time she failed to recognise that what was unfolding in Czechoslovakia was an attempt to revive capitalism. 

It was clear to me that the Party had committed serious errors and had largely lost control of a rapidly worsening situation; yet I believed that the Party and the socialist system could renew themselves and correct their course through the healthy and capable elements and forces emerging from within. I viewed the initiatives of Dubček and his supporters in this light. My failure to grasp the underlying realities of the situation and developments in Czechoslovakia, together with the support extended to Dubček in Western communist circles and the talk of a “Prague Spring”, must undoubtedly have influenced this assessment. Seen in these terms, I regarded the conduct of the Soviets as gravely mistaken. I maintained this view for a time. (p. 56)

Boran explains to Mumcu how she came to revise her view on the matter as follows:

Time untied the knot in my mind. Whether what was done was right or wrong is ultimately proven by the results obtained, and the validity of assessments and criticisms concerning these actions must likewise be judged by those results. With the benefit of hindsight, the Party’s rapid recovery from the latter half of 1968 onwards and its arrival at its present state demonstrated the fallacy of my views and interpretations.

Had there not been healthy and solid elements and forces within the Czechoslovak Party and social system, had the Party not enjoyed the backing of society through these forces, it would not have recovered so swiftly after the 1968 crisis. “Revolution cannot be exported” is a profoundly true and important maxim. I was mistaken in identifying who those healthy and solid elements within the Party actually were. (p. 57)

Yet the “rosy” picture Boran painted of the country in 1986 -only a few years before the collapse of the Stalinist regime in Czechoslovakia- bore no relation to reality, as is made clear in the diary of Anatoly Chernyaev, where he recounts the contents of a “for official use only” report prepared in 1973 by Konstantin Katushev for the highest echelons of the Kremlin bureaucracy. In this report, the situation in Czechoslovakia is described in stark terms:

• heavy industry had virtually ground to a halt;
• economic reserves had been exhausted;
• young people joining the Party were experiencing social isolation;
• creative intellectuals were collectively boycotting the regime;
• students lay entirely outside the Party’s influence;
• the Church was regaining strength;
• the Politburo was deeply divided.

Behice Boran and Uğur Mumcu (1986)

What Boran described as a “rapid recovery” after 1968 was therefore, ironically, registered just five years later in the Kremlin’s own internal documents as a collapse of legitimacy. “Time”, far from vindicating Boran as she claimed, does precisely the opposite: it strips away the illusion and exposes the error of her judgement.

Had Behice Boran not died on 10 October 1987 and lived a few more years, she would have seen for herself that the veil had been fully lifted and that the king was naked. Fate did not grant her the time.

Contrary to what Boran imagined -and sought to have the reader believe- there was no process that could plausibly be described as the “Czechoslovak Party renewing itself from within”. What existed instead was a bureaucratic apparatus severed from society and wholly alienated from it, kept in place by military discipline -or, more bluntly, by the threat of Soviet military intervention.

Did Behice Boran genuinely regard this forced and fragile stability as an organic and healthy recovery? Was she labouring under a sincere misapprehension, or was she wilfully distorting reality? These questions do not admit of easy answers. One thing, however, is beyond doubt: by as late a date as 1986, it was impossible not to be aware that the Stalinist regimes were mired in a profound crisis. Even so, she sincerely believed that this crisis could be overcome and that, in the process, one of her principal tasks was to serve as an apologist for the Kremlin.

[*] In 1986, while living in exile abroad, Uğur Mumcu conducted a lengthy interview with Behice Boran for the newspaper Cumhuriyet. The interview was later published as a book under the title Bir Uzun Yürüyüş [A Long March] (Uğur Mumcu, Bir Uzun Yürüyüş, um:ag Vakfı Yayınları, Ankara, 20th edn, March 1999).