Reluctant revolutionaries: Czechoslovak support of revolutionary violence between decolonization and détente

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper explores the shifts in the Czechoslovak approach to revolutionary violence during the 1960s and 1970s. Whereas the secret services supported the anti-colonial struggle of the early 1960s, they adopted a more careful stance towards leftist terrorist movements in Western Europe at the end of the decade. The paper finds reasons for this change in the expansion of the revolution to Europe, which led to the process of détente and a new trans-bloc cooperation. Furthermore, using the framing of various conceptualizations of asymmetric violence, the author finds motives for the changes in political, economic, and ideological spheres.