No Thaw This Spring: The Competing Values of Lyndon Johnson and Alexander Dubcek

Abstract

American scholars have shown considerable interest in the geopolitical consequences of the Czechoslovak reform movement now known as the Prague Spring. Research has focused on the Soviet decision to put a stop to the Prague Spring through military intervention (Soviet-Czechoslovak relations) and the considerable effect this decision had on superpower politics (Soviet-American relations). This thesis expands on previous analysis by examining US-Czechoslovak relations during the Prague Spring and in doing so sheds new light on the Cold War dynamics of the watershed year 1968. Using a variety of US and Czechoslovak sources, including diplomatic records, letters, and memoirs, this thesis shows that a significant divergence in the values of American President Lyndon Johnson and Czechoslovak Party Secretary Alexander Dubcek contributed to the continued chill in US-Czechoslovak relations, a phenomenon that scholars have traditionally assumed stemmed almost entirely from a mutual fear of angering the Soviets. Johnson perceived Czechoslovakia as an "Eastern" nation that rightly existed in the Soviet Bloc, while Dubcek perceived the United States as a capitalist power that threatened his own Marxist agenda. This mutual apathy not only assured that the United States and Czechoslovakia would not cooperate in deterring intervention in the Prague Spring by the Soviet Union, but also revealed that the United States' shared history with Eastern Bloc nations could continue to manifest itself even under the shadow of Soviet domination.