Soviet tanks rolling through Prague... and Bucharest

Susano

Banned
Erm, why exactly?

Because Romania wasnt exactly the most loyal WarPact state. So, the Soviets might decide if theyre going to clean up the Czechoslovakia mes,s they might as well take care of that as well.

Besides, with a name as yours, shouldnt you have answered something like "the Hindenburg government would never allow it" or somesuch? :D
 
Because Romania wasnt exactly the most loyal WarPact state. So, the Soviets might decide if they're going to clean up the Czechoslovakia mess, they might as well take care of that as well.

Besides, with a name as yours, shouldnt you have answered something like "the Hindenburg government would never allow it or somesuch? :D
The Romanians had been assiduously ignored ever since the early sixties, when the USSR decided they were too reactionary even for the Warsaw Pact. They were the only large WP member who hadn't denounced Stalin.

Oh, and BTW, they hadn't even been invited to the invasion they were refusing to join. Just like in the gendarmerie recruitment joke.
 
The fact is, who are the Soviets going to replace Ceauşescu with? Unlike in Hungary, where you had loads of loyal Muscovites waiting to depose Dubček, the Romanian Party was totally under the control of Ceauşescu and his cronies. Unless Brezhnev becomes even more reactionary that the Prague Spring crisis made him, he's going to find it very hard making Romania adhere to Moscow's line. The Romanians did have a pretty large military at this point, and NATO would be fairly likely to back Bucharest in a way very unlike their reaction to OTL.

Just my personal musings you understand.

:eek:
 
The Romanians had been assiduously ignored ever since the early sixties, when the USSR decided they were too reactionary even for the Warsaw Pact. They were the only large WP member who hadn't denounced Stalin.

Oh, and BTW, they hadn't even been invited to the invasion they were refusing to join. Just like in the gendarmerie recruitment joke.

Reactionary as in getting two American presidents on their soil? :D

Nobody really denounced Stalin. There were two main documents of the period, one a report of Imre Nagy presented to the Hungarian Politburo and the other, the well-known Hrusciov report, that was properly introduced to the Soviet people only during Gorbaciov. They dealt with Stalin and the stalinist system, but took no real measures in a proper destalinization. The documents were used by Hrusciov and his sattellite allies to replace the old Stalinists with the new Hrusciovists. Dej's explanation was that he had already disposed in the previous years of the Stalinists: which was almost correct. The victims were mostly old communists that lived in USSR during the war and very devoted to Stalin. Of course, Dej was as devoted...but he proved in the 1956-1965 period to know that the russified course was a death sentence for his regime.

In 1968, Romania seemed in many ways a new Yugoslavia. The subsequent history shouldn't make us forget that.

The fact is, who are the Soviets going to replace Ceauşescu with? Unlike in Hungary, where you had loads of loyal Muscovites waiting to depose Dubček, the Romanian Party was totally under the control of Ceauşescu and his cronies. Unless Brezhnev becomes even more reactionary that the Prague Spring crisis made him, he's going to find it very hard making Romania adhere to Moscow's line. The Romanians did have a pretty large military at this point, and NATO would be fairly likely to back Bucharest in a way very unlike their reaction to OTL.

Just my personal musings you understand.

:eek:

In 1968 Ceausescu was still Primus Inter Pares. The total Party control came after 1971-1974 period. The Soviets could have found a lot of guys willing to serve as leaders of the new Romania.

If USSR intervenes (which seems unlikely, since Ceausescu's reformist speech was clearly inferior to Dubcek's), Ceausescu is f****ed. NATO has nothing to do with this
 
The Soviets could have found a lot of guys willing to serve as leaders of the new Romania.

I'm thinking Gheorghe Apostol, the guy Ceausescu outmaneuvered to get the top seat in '65, or even someone who supported Ceausescu in the power struggle - Ion Gheorghe Maurer or Emil Bodnaras would be interesting. Both were in their late '60s and not ethnic Romanians, thus they'd have to rely on Soviet support. This could count both for them (obedience) and against them (fragility).

Oh, and its "Khrushchev" and "Gorbachev" in English.
 
In this case, the USSR has had to intervene in three out of seven Warsaw Pact members, by force, in order to keep those governments on a shorter leash.

Won't that make the WP look even weaker? How confident can a Soviet premier be that one of their "allies" in Central or Eastern Europe won't get uppity at an extremely inopportune moment?
 
If USSR intervenes (which seems unlikely, since Ceausescu's reformist speech was clearly inferior to Dubcek's), Ceausescu is f****ed. NATO has nothing to do with this

So what if Dubcek's speech had been a little less reformist? No invasion of Czechoslovakia?
 
So what if Dubcek's speech had been a little less reformist? No invasion of Czechoslovakia?

Yes. The key word here is reformist. Unlike 1956 (when in Hungary the trend was clearly anti-communist), the 1968 reforms actually strengthened the Czechoslovak Communist Party. In no way wanted Dubcek to dispose of communism.

We should remember that Kadar made some great economical reforms in Hungary while Romania really shone for several years in the diplomatic field. They were never in danger because neither regime touched the existing communist political structure. Dubcek wanted to democratize the party... and this was the thing that worried USSR the most.
 
One urban legend says that soviets afraid about some kind of secret laser weapon invented by Henri Coanda, and that was the reason they not invaded us. Another variant says that some soviet tanks were melted/cutted with those laser weapons or another type of secret one. :)
 
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