Igor Lukes. On the Edge of the Cold War: American Diplomats and Spies in Postwar Prague.

Abstract

This account by Igor Lukes throws a narrow shaft of light upon a crucial period in the postwar history of Central Eastern Europe and documents the tragic sequence of events in fine detail from a multitude of Czech and U.S. archives. Czechoslovakia had a geopolitical dilemma that was as unenviable as that of Poland: destined to be fought over by those who wished to hold the balance of Europe in their hands, it was the ham in the international sandwich. During World War II, its leaders, notably Edvard Beneš, had been a little too quick to embrace the Russians as a future ally, thus rendering British plans to work Poles and Czechoslovaks into one postwar system utterly impracticable, even as a bargaining tool to avert the worst outcome. Arguably, the Kremlin's appetite grew with the eating. At the end of the war, however, Joseph Stalin seemed prepared to watch and wait—but that did not last long. After the Communist parties were toppled from office in both France and Italy during May 1947, the Russians, doubting the capacity of the Czech Social Democrats to resist American importuning with Marshall Plan aid, eventually pushed the Czechoslovakian Communist Party into seizing power in February 1948, thus consolidating Soviet control over Central Eastern Europe at a stroke. The fact that the Czech Communists were so reluctant to act, despite their undoubted strength, and that they wanted the Red Army to enter the country before they acted was documented by this reviewer in English before this book was written. So Lukes has nothing new to offer here. And the absence of any Russian documentation is undoubtedly a weakness given Moscow's pivotal role in what occurred. But in other respects Lukes gives us plenty of food for thought, not least from the StB archives.