WI: No Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia

BigBlueBox

Banned
This seems to be an unused PoD, but I think it could have significant effects. I think the 1968 invasion was one of the USSR's worst foreign policy mistakes. It was completely unnecessary because Dubcek had never shown any indications that he would leave the Warsaw Pact. It worsened the Sino-Soviet split and weakened support for the Soviet Union in leftist movements around the world. What if the Soviets decided not to invade, and let Czechoslovakia's communists determine their own domestic policy?
 
You would need someone else as leader as Brezhnev. Someone who is not so hardliner and orthodox on Leninism.

But it would indeed keep image of USSR undamaged and probably rises more of reformist ideas around WarPac.
 
There were worries that Czechoslovak reform could have a dangerous influence not only on the other "people's democracies" but on the USSR itself--especially Ukraine which bordered on Czechoslovakia (which had a substantial Ukrainian or at least "Rusyn" minority even after giving up Carpatho-Ruthenia to the USSR in 1945). Petro Shelest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petro_Shelest the First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party (and a member of the Politburo of the CPSU) was especially worried about this.
 
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