Authoritarian Public Opinion and Intelligence Disclosure: Soviet Domestic Disclosures during the Prague Spring and Sino-Soviet Border Dispute

• In Event: Moldova between Past and Present: Experiences and Views of Soviet and Romanian Rule

Abstract

In 1968 and 1969, the Soviet Union intervened in Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring, confronted China at their shared border, and tried to convince Warsaw Pact members to support the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The USSR’s Committee for State Security (KGB) collected credible evidence across the country that events in Czechoslovakia were increasing nationalist protests. Preempting further public dissent, the Communist Party across the Soviet republics engaged in a lecture series called “On the Current Situation,” and this paper examines the lecture series in the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic. These lectures in local party meetings, factories, and collective farms tried to explain Soviet foreign policy choices to Moldovans, including intelligence disclosures about Soviet military action. These meetings included frank discussions about Czechoslovakia and China, and held special interest in Moldovan’s views of Romania. Meeting minutes collected intelligence about Moldovans’ questions regarding Soviet policy in order to inform further transparency.
The intelligence disclosure literature argues that intelligence disclosures are for an international, and not a domestic audience, and that intelligence disclosures in autocracies are typically propagandistic. Yet, in Soviet Moldova, an authoritarian state measured public opinion and used disclosure to moderate domestic externalities caused by foreign policy. This paper examines this dynamic using recently declassified Soviet KGB records from the Moldovan National Archives and shows granular reactions to public disclosures during a tumultuous time in Soviet foreign policy and the communist bloc more broadly."

Author

• Suzanne Freeman, MIT