Červený Poplach: The NATO-Soviet Standoff Over Czechoslovakia

Yeah, I just haven't decided when. Right now my focus is on outlining the circumstances that lead to mutiny within the Soviet army in the early half of 1969.

Good read pats2001 - you have chosen an interesting POD. At the moment with war in Ukraine we all know that that Communist Empire was built on sand. Looking for where You will be taking this.

PART 38/Ten Minutes That Shook The World



Russian politics have always been a volatile and highly complicated business, and few aspects of the country’s history reflect this more closely than the relationship between its armed forces and its civilian leadership. From the Decembrist rebellion of 1830 to the Kronstadt sailors’ uprising of 1921 Russia saw six occasions in less than a century where its military split in the face of internal political disagreement. During the Second World War the Red Army’s fight against the Third Reich was to an unfortunately high degree muddled by ideological interference from Joseph Stalin. And as the tide of the Czech War kept turning against the Soviets, the gulf between the ordinary Red Army soldier and his political leaders in Moscow was growing wider every day. The defeat of Operation Zaitsev would eventually prove to be the match that lit the fuse for an explosion which would blast the Soviet Union apart in the Czech War’s aftermath.


Said match would be struck in the unlikeliest of places-- the Frunze Military Academy(now the Russian Federal Combined Arms Institute), the central training ground for aspiring Red Army officers. Being the Soviet Union’s most prestigious military academy, it was considered both within and outside the Soviet Union to be a reliable bastion of pro-Brezhnev regime sentiment. On a windy Sunday in early March of 1969, the world would learn just how wrong that assessment was. Even as Brezhnev was exhorting his fracturing forces to remain united and defend the Soviet motherland to their last breath a mutiny was brewing among the Frunze Academy’s cadets….and being quietly encouraged by some of their instructors. It was into this unstable environment that Leonid Brezhnev walked at 10:30 AM Moscow time on the morning of March 2nd intending to give a speech to the cadets on the topic of loyalty to the Motherland, an ironic choice of subject given what was about to ensue.



There was little outward sign of any kind of an insurrection brewing as the CPSU General Secretary stepped out of his limousine and approached the academy’s main entrance; it was only when a sharp-eyed KGB bodyguard noticed a rifle pointing out of one of the upper floor windows that the Soviet leader began to think something was amiss. Hesitating on the academy steps, Brezhnev told a senior aide to call the academy commandant from the limousine’s car phone. Moments later, there came what one witness would later describe as “a popping sound like firecrackers”. The bodyguard quickly hustled his boss back into the limousine and the car sped off to the Red Army general staff headquarters. Brezhnev, convinced he'd narrowly escaped assassination, ordered army reserve units to secure the academy and arrest the purported assassin. It wasn't until said reserve units entered the academy grounds at 12:04 PM that the reality of the situation became clear: the gunfire which Brezhnev and his entourage had heard was not an assassination attempt, but the first shots of what is now known as "the Frunze Mutiny". A group of approximately 120 cadets had occupied one of the academy's lecture halls and were attempting to rally others to join them in seizing control of the rest of the academy grounds. Joining these cadets were a dozen or so instructors who had come to share the mutineers' disillusionment with Brezhnev's conduct of the Czech War. In a handwritten manifesto smuggled to the Associated Press bureau in Warsaw, the group demanded an end to hostilities with NATO and the commencement of cease-fire negotiations with China.

Dedicated as they might have been to their cause, however, the mutineers were no match for the better-trained Red Army reserve troops; in the ensuing firefight 80 of the mutineers, along with three of the instructors who sympathized with them, were killed outright and six more would die from their wounds en route to the hospital. The remaining mutineers were arrested at 12:14 PM, just ten minutes after the reserve forces had first entered the Frunze Academy grounds. Though it would take more than thirty-six hours for the rest of the world to begin learning of the uprising's defeat, the knowledge that such an event was even possible was an eye-opener for the West as to just how severely the war had strained Soviet society....
TO BE CONTINUED 

Update: because of a hard personal loss earlier this week, I'm temporarily suspending all work on this timeline while I work on processing my emotions.

My regards - do focus on your situation.

Take your time pats2001.