CHAPTER 3

‘THEY ARE AS BUSINESSLIKE ON
THAT SIDE OF THE IRON
CURTAIN AS THEY ARE ON
THIS': CZECHOSLOVAKIA AND
BRITISH GUIANA

Jan Koura and Robert Anthony Waters Jr¹

The ideological struggle at the heart of the Cold War created many odd international alliances. The symbiosis of interest between the Soviet bloc and radical Third World regimes rested on the shared belief that freedom from the West's colonial and neo-colonial embrace would lead to true freedom and economic development while undercutting the imperial base of Western economies, thus speeding up the West's inevitable transition to scientific socialism. The quiet relationship between Czechoslovakia and British Guiana – Great Britain's only South American colony – was one of the Cold War's many such unlikely pairings. The Czechoslovaks acted as the Soviet bloc's bridge into Latin America.

This chapter uses a series of Czechoslovak foreign-policy documents to show the evolution of Prague's policy in Latin America from 1948 to 1966. Two of these documents, which the Czechoslovaks called ‘conceptions’, assessed the state of their Latin America policy and offered guidance on how to continue strengthening Eastern bloc ties while undermining US regional hegemony. Joseph Stalin pursued a ‘hands off’ policy towards Latin America. That changed with First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, who had high hopes for socialist transformation in the region following the victorious Cuban Revolution in 1959. By 1964, though, general malaise in the Soviet bloc came accompanied by the conclusion that revolution in Latin America was a distant prospect. The Czechoslovak ‘conception’ illustrated the change in attitudes over the intervening period. Czechoslovakia's relationship with British Guiana and its primary leaders, Cheddi and Janet Jagan, provides an excellent but little-known test case that illustrates this jagged path from ignorance to optimism to resignation.²

Stalinism and the Early Thaw, 1948–58

Amongst Soviet satellites, Czechoslovakia was well positioned to move quickly from foreign-policy stagnation to activism in Latin America. Czechoslovakia was a highly industrialized country, which had a brief postwar and more lengthy pre-war history of diplomatic and business relations with Latin America. The country also had a small pool of experienced diplomats who had survived Stalinist purges. In essence, Czechoslovakia was a known ‘brand’ in Latin America, which opened the door for the rest of the Soviet bloc. Initially, Czechoslovak trade missions began to mend economic ties with the region. Restoring business relations opened the door to rebuilding political and cultural ties, although a Czechoslovak conception document later admitted that the Communist Party and the government had done a poor job of coordinating their efforts. Trade with Latin America was small – less than 2 per cent of the national total – but it continuously grew and offered a crucial opening to create a Latin American future in which anti-imperialist movements would step up their struggle for economic and political independence. Czechoslovakia made progress despite US pressure on Latin American countries not to open relations.³

By the end of 1958, Czechoslovak policy makers believed that Latin America's ‘colonial and dependent nations’ had reached a new historical stage of development, evidenced by popular rebellions overthrowing dictatorships in Colombia, Venezuela and Cuba. The struggle against US imperialism had also begun, exemplified by Venezuela's ‘tumultuous demonstrations’. In May 1958, demonstrators attacked the motorcade of US Vice President Richard Nixon and his wife, nearly killing them both. The Czechoslovaks believed that they were in the best position to provide a ‘counterweight against imperialism in Latin America’. Working with the other Soviet bloc countries, they could ‘show Latin American countries the true path out of economic difficulties and help them end their dependence on the United States’. In the light of these developments, the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party formally and completely revised its Latin American policy in June 1959, creating its first ‘conception’ of relations with the region. By this time, it had diplomatic relations with Mexico and every South American nation except Venezuela, Chile and Peru; the Soviet Union, by contrast, had relations with only Mexico, Uruguay and Argentina.⁴

The new conception stated that Czechoslovakia would help its allies, ‘especially the Soviet Union’, by following a ‘far more active policy’ in Latin America: expanding trade, cooperation and political relations across the region. The Czechoslovaks vowed to use trade relations as a wedge to increase political cooperation. They also planned to intensify cultural contacts by providing academic scholarships to students from the region. Unfortunately for them, communist heavy-handedness, everyday racism and bitterly cold winters often caused the scholarships to backfire, turning Latin America students into ardent anti-communists.⁵

Fidel Castro's revolution accelerated Czechoslovakia's plans. The Czechoslovak Communist Party (CCP) had been in occasional contact with Cuban communists since the early 1950s, but their first contact with Castro only came in December 1958 when his forces, working through a Costa Rican import-company front, asked Czechoslovakia for weapons. The Czechoslovaks quickly and enthusiastically contacted the Soviets, who showed remarkable speed in granting permission on 27 December 1958, with the strict instruction that the Czechoslovaks must maintain the utmost secrecy and deniability. Five days later, Cuban President Fulgencio Batista fled the country and Fidel Castro led the victorious rebels into Havana. Czechoslovakia now had a friend in a Latin American presidential palace.⁶

The story of Czechoslovakia's involvement with British Guiana's Cheddi and Janet Jagan illustrated the ups and downs of policy in Latin America. Dr Cheddi Jagan was an American-trained dentist who was the son of East Indian sugar workers in British Guiana. First elected to the Legislative Council of British Guiana in 1947, in 1950 Jagan became leader of the newly founded People's Progressive Party (PPP). He was elected British Guiana's chief minister in 1953, and premier in 1957 and 1961. His wife and closest adviser, Janet Jagan (née Rosenberg), was born and raised in Chicago. She was the PPP's general-secretary, edited the party newspaper, was elected to the Legislative Assembly and served as a cabinet minister. She had been a member of the Young Communist League as a college student in the USA, and had a reputation as a Stalinist. The British and the Americans considered her to be the only competent leader in the PPP.⁷

British Guiana's relationship with the Soviet bloc appears to have begun in 1947, when Cheddi Jagan was seen entering the Soviet Embassy in Washington, DC. Thereafter, his dealings with the communists shifted to the headquarters of the British Communist Party and the Soviet bloc's London embassies. He first visited the Czechoslovak Embassy in 1949 and secretly met with the vice consul whenever he was in London during the next four years. Telegrams from the embassy to Prague inevitably referred to him as a ‘progressive statesman’ who was fighting for his nation's independence and to uplift his people from poverty.⁸

Cheddi Jagan formally introduced himself and British Guiana to the CCP's leadership during a 1951 visit to the Eastern bloc. He told the party's leaders that he led a communist-dominated political party, which needed anti-colonial assistance. The Czechoslovaks cabled Moscow to find out what they should do, and the Soviets replied that they had no interest in opening ties with British Guiana. Less than two years later, the Jagans and the PPP won an overwhelming victory in British Guiana's April 1953 national election.⁹

Once in office, the Jagans set themselves in opposition to the British authorities. They constantly criticized the British Governor despite the relatively few limits that he put on them, claiming theirs was a ‘government that was in office but not in power’. They repeatedly went out of their way to antagonize the British and extend the party's tentacles across the colony through the creation of numerous party-backed intermediate institutions, from labour unions to peace councils and youth groups. Cheddi Jagan approached the Czechoslovak Embassy in London to make a secret request for a loan of US$5 million with which he could begin the industrial development of his country. He also suggested that they open a business office. Before the Czechoslovaks could respond, the British Government removed the Jagans and the PPP from power in October 1953. Cheddi Jagan rushed to London to plead his case to parliament. While there, he stopped by the Czechoslovak Embassy and asked for a printing press, printed propaganda, 16-mm movie projectors, loudspeakers and newsprint. Unexpectedly, in the light of Stalin's recent death and the ensuing confusion in foreign policy across the Soviet bloc, the Czechoslovaks were interested in helping. Before they could fill the order, however, the British jailed Cheddi Jagan and much of the party's leadership. Upon his release, Jagan quickly wrote a short and critical history of the intervention, Forbidden Freedom, published in 1954.¹⁰

Jagan's story captivated the Soviets. In 1955, they published a Russian-language edition of Forbidden Freedom that was translated by a Soviet intelligence officer, Ovidy Gorchakov. Possibly that same year, the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties (Cominform) began to include the PPP on its ‘Communist Parties Leaders List’, identifying it as the ‘Communist Party of British Guyana’, with General-Secretary Janet Jagan listed as party leader. Of note, the list did not include any ‘bourgeois’ nationalist parties, and several backsliding communist parties were also omitted. A second list, handwritten and dated 28 March 1955, likewise listed the PPP as the Communist Party of British Guyana with Janet Jagan as leader.¹¹

The PPP was initially a multiracial party in a country evenly divided between East Indians and other ethnic groups, the second-most numerous of which were Africans. The shock of its overthrow soon split the party. In 1955, the moderate PPP members who favoured British-style Fabian socialism split from those like the Jagans who supported Soviet-style scientific socialism. The British kept the PPP on the sidelines until the 1957 election, which the party won. The victorious Jagans and their colleagues began to govern more moderately, toning down their rhetoric to gain British confidence and thereby win independence. Following the election, the ideological split turned racial. Jagan's faction became an overwhelmingly East Indian party, while his leading opponents coalesced around a party dominated by members of African descent. In each succeeding election, the racial split grew more pronounced and violent.¹²

Latin American Communism Ascendant, 1959–63

Nikita Khrushchev liked to brag that ‘Stalin had not penetrated the Western Hemisphere whereas he had’. It was through Czechoslovakia's link to Cuba that he did so. Castro's regime gave the Czechoslovaks the best intelligence contacts amongst the Soviet bloc nations, although their own post hoc analysis admitted that these contacts were not very good. Cuba used its connection to ask the Czechoslovaks to sell it guns, and in late 1959, Nikita Khrushchev personally overruled the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs – which was frightened that if discovered, it would infuriate the Americans – and allowed the sale to go through. At the end of March, Castro's rapid turn to the East prompted Khrushchev to grant the Czechoslovaks even greater leeway in their trade with Cuba. They opened a very favourable line of credit and agreed to provide as much military assistance as the Cubans wanted. Defence Minister Raúl Castro visited Czechoslovakia in June 1960 (the Cubans naively believed that the Americans would find it less objectionable than a visit to the Soviet Union itself) and the KGB smuggled him to Moscow, where he negotiated further arms shipments and the Soviets agreed to send Spanish-speaking Soviet military advisors.¹³

The remarkable success of Soviet and Czechoslovak foreign policy prompted the KGB to call a 26 June 1961 meeting with Czechoslovakia's secret police, the Státní bezpečnost (StB), to discuss accelerating their support for anti-imperial forces in the Third World. The Soviets had transformed the January 1961 assassination of the Congo's prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, into a worldwide indictment of imperialism. In the Congo itself, Lumumba's supporters had taken control of half the country and were recognized by a dozen communist countries and their sympathizers. Ghana, Guinea and Mali were moving away from the Western camp and towards the Soviet bloc. In April, Fidel Castro defeated the US colossus at the Bay of Pigs, and at the start of June, Khrushchev himself had humbled President John Kennedy at the Vienna Summit Conference. With so many victories and the prospect for many more, the StB and the KGB had a great deal to talk about. The meeting lasted four days. Its length suggested that they actually discussed issues, rather than the KGB giving orders and the StB stenographically recording them. No doubt Czechoslovakia's successes in Cuba and Africa had caused the Soviets to view it with a new respect.¹⁴

Nonetheless, despite the meeting's length and the euphoria that the KGB and StB agents must have felt, the expanded Latin America programme was rather slim and unoriginal. Their new goals were to uncover and exploit opportunities to fight imperialism in the Third World; ‘intensify activities for the consolidation and defence of the Cuban Revolution’; take ‘active measures’ to elevate ‘progressive’ figures into leadership of Third World liberation movements; expand anti-American movements in Latin America by working together through exiles and opposition movements; and work to subvert the Organization of American States, which they identified as the US enforcement arm for the Monroe Doctrine.¹⁵

Perhaps as a result of this confident new offensive, Czechoslovakia's relationship with Cuba grew rocky by the end of 1961. Czechoslovak intelligence pushed too hard to recruit agents within the Cuban Government and the Soviets warned them to ease up. There is evidence that the Soviets' motives stemmed as much from jealousy over the Czechoslovaks' successes as from concern that they would alienate the Cubans. Nonetheless, by March 1962 the Czechoslovaks had trained 178 Cuban military specialists ranging from fighter pilots to tank commanders.¹⁶

One month after the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Czechoslovaks again revised their policy, issuing a new conception in November 1962. The document explained that the reason for revision was to take advantage of the ‘favourable conditions’ created by the ‘boom in the national liberation movement and the anti-imperialist struggle in Latin America’ that had begun in 1961. Despite the very recent embarrassment caused by the missile crisis, the conception was very optimistic. Its analysts concluded that Czechoslovakia had made significant progress across the region, but agreed that lack of policy coordination continued to bedevil its efforts along with a surprising (for Marxists) failure to ‘deeply analyse economic and political developments in Latin America’. In particular, they had failed to see the revolutionary potential offered by the Cuban Revolution and the ripple effect that it caused across the continent. The CCP's analysts did, however, credit themselves with having helped to lay the ideological groundwork for Castro's victory.¹⁷

Learning from their mistakes, for the first time, they argued that the region was not an undifferentiated mass. Henceforth, they would treat Latin America as consisting of countries with different economic, cultural and political conditions, and would analyse each country as being at different stages in its ‘anti-imperialist, national-liberation struggle’. They analysed national trends and made projections for their future development. Along with the usual calls for increased economic and diplomatic penetration, the new conception emphasized the need to use propaganda to resist US President John Kennedy's ‘reinforced anti-communism’, which it said was exemplified by his Alliance for Progress and its focus on ‘bourgeois’ economic development. Prague proposed to counteract Kennedy by promoting the ‘advantage’ that socialism had given the people of Czechoslovakia, especially ‘the growth of living standards and economic growth’. The report also noted that trade with Latin America would benefit Czechoslovakia and its ‘growing need’ for food and raw materials.¹⁸

Just as Castro's revolution had changed the Czechoslovaks' conception of their relations with the region, it had also transformed the Jagans' belief in the imminence of the Latin American revolution. In consequence, the Jagans dropped the mask of moderation. The PPP boldly supported Castro, and its rhetoric turned back to favouring the East. Likewise, the Guianese opened trade negotiations with the Soviet bloc. The government pushed hard to buy factories in order to start the rapid industrialization of the country. Covertly, Czechoslovak intelligence began to work with the PPP.

The PPP started to cooperate covertly with Czechoslovak intelligence at the end of 1960, during preparation for important national elections that it believed would determine who would rule the new nation of Guyana after independence. The PPP sent the leader of its Progressive Youth Organization, Moses Bhagwan, to Prague to meet with Czechoslovak officials. The Czechoslovaks must have believed that the meeting was important because Bhagwan met with Antonín Novotný, the eponymous son of the Czechoslovak Communist Party's General-Secretary. Bhagwan carried a letter of introduction from the PPP stating that he was ‘empowered to interact with communist parties to ask for assistance with the upcoming election’. He explained the long-term significance of the election and said that he would be touring the communist world in search of ‘material assistance’. Novotný told him that he would consult with the CCP's Central Committee. Strangely enough, after so many years of the Jagans meeting with officials at the London embassy and party leaders taking junkets to international meetings and festivals in the Eastern bloc, the Central Committee concluded that its contacts with the PPP had been too minimal to assess ‘the character of the party’. They asked the Soviet Union what they should do. The Czech archives do not provide the answer.¹⁹

Whether or not anyone provided them with electoral assistance, the PPP won British Guiana's August 1961 election. Anxious for independence but worried that Britain or the USA would again remove the PPP from power, Cheddi Jagan proclaimed British Guiana's neutrality in the Cold War as he worked behind the scenes to move towards the Soviet bloc. He and Janet quickly set to work trying to acquire the money and expertise needed for rapid industrialization. The colony's economic relations with both East and West were hampered by Guianese failure to understand economic planning, Guianese grandiosity, US anti-communism and Soviet bloc parsimony. For Cheddi Jagan and his government, ‘planning’ meant bringing in Leftist economic development experts ranging from communists to Crippsian Labourites and asking them to create plans that would solve all the colony's economic difficulties. Then, without providing technical specifications or detail beyond the big picture overview, the Guianese would present the proposal to whatever country or international agency they thought might give assistance. It never went well. Most famously, with much fanfare, Jagan met with President Kennedy in October 1961 in search of US$40 million in aid. He returned to British Guiana with a tentative promise from Kennedy's foreign assistance advisers for US$5 million in infrastructure spending – and only if he provided the USA with extensive technical details about the projects. Furious and humiliated, Jagan turned to the Soviet Union and its satellites for help.²⁰

Two months later, undeterred by her husband's US failure but exhibiting greater caution than the voluble and enthusiastic Cheddi could ever muster, Janet Jagan toured the Soviet Union, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Her purpose was ostensibly to discuss the possibilities of opening trade relations and attend international peace conferences. Along with the trade proposals, she carried a list created by famed French communist economist Charles Bettelheim – the man who had created Cuba's plan for crash industrialization. It truly was a wish list: seven single-spaced pages requesting factories, technicians and scholarships to train Guianese technicians. The plan was remarkable for its unblinkered naiveté. Working from Bettelheim's crash-industrialization plan, Mrs Jagan asked the Soviets for US$275 million in assistance over 12 years in the form of prefabricated factory kits that the Soviets would build on land donated by the Guianese Government. Moscow was not impressed. Instead of assurances of assistance, Jagan listened to ‘an exhaustive explanation of the USSR position in the matter of economic cooperation’. The upshot, the Soviets told her, was that ‘[t]he actual colonial status of British Guiana makes it impossible to establish direct economic contacts’. Jagan left the Soviet Union for Poland to speak to the All-Polish Peace Committee and ask for aid, and from there to Czechoslovakia for a meeting of the Czechoslovak Committee of Peace Defenders and to talk to the government about aid.²¹

After these meetings, Jagan flew to London for a quick visit on her way back to the Caribbean. She ruefully told the Colonial Office's Richard ‘Peter’ Piper that she had learned: ‘they are as businesslike on that side of the Iron Curtain as they are on this’.²²

From London, Jagan went to Cuba to meet with Fidel Castro. According to an StB report based on Cuban sources, she asked Castro if he thought Czechoslovakia would sell weapons to her government. With a flourish, he handed her a Czechoslovak pistol. He told her that she could be confident that they would. Whether or not she subsequently asked Czechoslovakia for weapons is unclear, but a few Czechoslovak machine guns had reportedly made their way into the PPP's hands by April 1964.²³

During a stop in Trinidad, Jagan received the news that an anti-government general strike had broken out in Georgetown, the Afro-Guianese-dominated capital. The strikers quickly turned violent. Looting turned to arson, and rioters burned several dozen stores in the city's business district. The British used the conflict as an excuse to postpone independence. Claiming that they needed more time to restore interracial peace, they began to lay the groundwork for removing the PPP from power. In response, the Jagans redoubled their efforts to cement British Guiana's relationship with the Soviet bloc.

While Janet Jagan's first trip to the Soviet Union was somewhat disappointing, she apparently had some successes. The Soviet Communist Party sent the PPP US$38,000 in 1962 and US$40,000 in 1963. She also made progress during her meetings with the fraternal socialist states, which apparently had no qualms about providing development assistance to colonies. Over the course of the next three years, Czechoslovaks, East Germans, Hungarians and even a Soviet mission went to British Guiana to discuss building factories on credit; Poles tried to sell a fleet of fishing trawlers; and everyone looked into buying Guianese agricultural commodities or lumber. The closest relationship, though, was with Czechoslovakia – with the Soviets in the background. The Czechoslovaks took the lead in sending trade and economic-development experts to the colony, and the Guianese Government sent leading PPP members to Prague to appeal for assistance.²⁴

Cheddi Jagan wanted more than just trade, though. He repeatedly asked the Czechoslovaks if they could send an intelligence officer to British Guiana for a meeting. The Czechoslovaks trod lightly. They sent trade officials who were posted to their embassies in Brazil and Mexico, but not did not tell the Guianese that these men were StB agents who had been sent to analyse the situation. The last to visit, Jaroslav Mercl, was a high-ranking StB officer with much experience in the USA and Canada. After meeting with the Jagans and other top officials, Mercl reported to Prague: ‘There are good conditions in this country for work against our main enemy’ – i.e., the USA.²⁵

Mercl's meeting was arranged through the cooperation of Rudolf David, an Afro-Guianese who was studying film in Czechoslovakia. The StB said that David was a ‘close friend’ of Cheddi Jagan, who had personally selected him to study in Czechoslovakia. Janet Jagan met with David during her stay in Czechoslovakia, the StB reported, and she told him that he would be appointed minister of education when he returned home. Although the StB did not register David as a spy, their records show that he had ‘promised us every help’. They gave him the absurdly transparent code name, ‘Black’.²⁶

In March 1963, as British Guiana suffered a violent 80-day anti-government general strike that was backed by US labour unions, the Guianese pressured the Soviet bloc for aid. The KGB asked the StB if they had secret code connections in Georgetown that they could use. The StB said they did not, but added that they would arrange such a capability if they could establish a trade mission in the colony. Later that year, the British vetoed the request, killing the possibility of establishing an intelligence outpost. In June, Cuban intelligence sent two agents to British Guiana under cover as trade representatives, fulfilling the Soviets' need for a conduit.²⁷

Czechoslovak Decline; Guianese Disaster, 1964–6

By the beginning of 1964, revolutionary fervour in Latin America had begun to decline. Economic problems also had begun to bedevil the Soviet bloc. In response, the Soviets and Czechoslovaks met on 4 January to assess whether or not they needed to create a new conception of Czechoslovakia's Latin American relations.

Their analysts concluded that Fidel Castro was their biggest problem. He believed that the Soviets had betrayed him during the Cuban Missile Crisis when they removed the missiles without consulting him. He felt humiliated, treated as if he were a Soviet pawn instead of the leader of a revolutionary state who had fought his way to power. His response was repeated sharp criticism of the Soviets and the other ‘fraternal parties’ for lacking ‘revolutionary determination’. The attacks became so harsh and his efforts to launch revolutions in Latin America so overt that the Soviets and Czechoslovaks concluded that he had shifted to an ‘erroneous’ and ‘adventurist’ anti-imperialist line. Castro had also become much less enamoured with the way the Soviets managed socialism. They provided Cuba with shoddy goods, poor technical assistance and frequently sloth-like movement when it came to providing commodities and services that the Cuban economy required. Compared to recently departed US businesses, many Cuban Government officials grumbled, Soviet economic managers did a lousy job but were as interested in the bottom line as the Americans had been. Castro even began to praise the Chinese communists, infuriating the Soviets. In an unsuccessful effort to keep him in the fold, the Soviets agreed to let Castro use Czechoslovakia as a trans-shipment point for returning Latin Americans to their home countries after they had received guerilla training in Cuba, since most Latin American nations would bar people from entering after having visited Cuba. ‘Operation Manuel’, as it was known, returned 1,179 revolutionaries to their home countries between December 1962 and 1969.²⁸

Across the hemisphere, reported the Czechoslovak analysts, problems were mounting for Czechoslovak foreign policy beyond the problem of Fidel. The US Alliance for Progress had proven to be a ‘strong weapon of anti-communism’, strengthening right wing governments. The Chinese were also making progress with revolutionary movements around the hemisphere, dividing Latin America's anti-imperialist front. The Czechoslovaks themselves had suffered a precipitous drop in trade with the region. Nonetheless, the analysts wrote, they should continue their policy unchanged.²⁹

British Guiana was also turning into a foreign policy setback. Following the 80-day general strike, on 31 October 1963, the British called a new Guianese election for one year hence and amended the Guianese constitution to favour the PPP's opponents. Desperate, Jagan's supporters launched a union-recognition strike in the sugar industry on 17 February 1964, with the goal of taking over the colony's biggest workforce. Controlling the sugar workers would help in the electoral campaign and give the PPP powerful leverage over the economy if they lost the election. The strike lasted 161 days and led to the deaths of 176 people, but the PPP's union failed to win recognition.³⁰

Four days after the strike began, Czechoslovak Ambassador to Cuba Vladimír Pavlíček sent the foreign ministry a ‘Special report about government, political parties and trade unions in British Guiana’. The Ambassador wrote that the PPP ‘is with great effort trying to remain in power in order to liberate the masses from the horrors of colonialism and capitalism’. Its goal was ‘to transform British Guiana from a capitalist state into a socialist state in which the major means of production and trade will be in the hands of the working class’. The government faced a ‘corrupt’ trade-union movement in league with the opposition and funded by US dollars. The report was purely informational, and Pavlíček offered no suggestions as to how the foreign ministry should handle the situation. Another report from Cuba – sent on 27 June, apparently by an StB agent and complete with comments from the Soviet ‘friends’ – claimed that the British were creating a ‘special armed unit’ to help ‘limit the power of Jagan's government’. The unit would be ready to respond if the PPP began using ‘guerrilla tactics’. The report also cited differences within the Guianese opposition party's leadership, which the ‘friends’ called ‘valuable information’.³¹

As the situation worsened, Jagan sent a representative to Prague to ask for help. George David, Rudy David's brother and a man whom British intelligence characterized as ‘a well-known Guianese Communist’ and PPP fundraiser, met with the CCP Central Committee. He explained that the election was coming and, although the PPP had handily won all three prior polls, the recent British-imposed constitutional amendments favoured the opposition. David asked if the Czechoslovaks could help the PPP campaign by providing two motorbikes, six loudspeakers for street agitation, 12 short films about Czechoslovakia and a collection of communist propaganda. The Central Committee approved each of these requests. Perhaps emboldened by his success, David then asked the Czechoslovaks for weapons: hand grenades, pistols, ammunition and small explosives. The Central Committee decided not to provide them. The method he had suggested – hiding them in a delivery of Czechoslovak beer – was too ‘risky and unrealistic’. Due to Czechoslovakia's sclerotic bureaucracy, only the motorcycles made it to British Guiana before the election, which the PPP lost on 7 December 1964.³²

Out of office but hopeful that he would win the next election, Cheddi Jagan travelled to Czechoslovakia in 1965 looking for assistance. A CCP International Department report called the PPP ‘a progressive, radical party whose leading cadres tend to support socialism. Its leadership was seeking assistance from socialist countries to fight against imperialism.’ The CCP said it was eager to help. Czechoslovakia would provide political backing, it told Jagan, and, if necessary, ‘possibly adequate material assistance’. The nebulousness of the fiscal commitment suggests the impact of Czechoslovakia's growing economic difficulties. Jagan asked if they could give him movie projectors and tape recorders. The Czechoslovaks agreed to help, using the unspent funds that they had appropriated to pay for George David's pre-election request.³³

On 26 May 1966, British Guiana received its independence as Guyana, under the leadership of Jagan's opponent, Forbes Burnham. Four days later, the Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted that, while in office, the PPP had ‘relentlessly struggled to elevate the workers’ class consciousness and cohesion' so that the Guyanese could understand ‘the illegal way’ that Britain and the USA were using local proxies to implement an ‘imperialist policy’ of divide and rule along racial lines in order to maintain neocolonial power. The report added that the CIA continued this ‘dangerous policy’ through agents who were ‘spread out across the country’. Rather than a plan of action, the report sounded like a regretful farewell. That year also saw the StB shelve its file on British Guiana. Burnham cut off relations with Czechoslovakia and every other communist country. He began to move leftwards in 1970, and established relations with Czechoslovakia in 1975.³⁴

As for Latin America, in November 1966, the CCP reported that the problems identified in 1964 had metastasized. Castro was out of control, attacking some communist parties as ‘pseudo-revolutionary’ and accusing the Soviet bloc of viewing the ‘revolutionary struggle’ through a ‘mercantile perspective’. The Chinese were adding confusion, US imperialism continued to gain strength, the ‘revolutionary wave’ that had followed in the wake of the Cuban Revolution receded, and Latin America's revolutionary forces had proven themselves unprepared to take power. Unmentioned in this analysis were Czechoslovak economic reverses, which had hobbled its efforts across the Third World. The CCP reached the glum realization that Latin America was no longer in ‘an imminent revolutionary situation’.³⁵

Conclusion

Czechoslovakia's relationship with British Guiana demonstrates several important but heretofore hidden facets of Czechoslovak and Guianese foreign policy. In British Guiana, as in Latin America in general, the Czechoslovaks showed an impressive determination to support and vindicate the Soviet Union's international goals. They pushed the Soviets to arm the Cubans in 1959, and their work in British Guiana from 1962 to 1964 was thorough and ideologically correct. The greater freedom in conducting their Latin American policy after the StB's 1961 summit with the KGB suggests that the Soviets recognized their expertise and granted them greater independence in executing foreign policy. This was seen when the Soviets inquired if the Czechoslovaks had a means of communicating directly with the PPP during the 1963 general strike: the KGB had loosened its grip over the StB in British Guiana so much that it did not know this basic yet crucial fact.

The Czechoslovaks were ostensibly interested in trade relations with British Guiana, but the way in which they conducted the relationship suggests that Czechoslovak business was ancillary to espionage. Both of the trade representatives who visited British Guiana were StB agents working under cover, and the key figure in the trade delegation that followed them was a high-ranking StB officer. Likewise, when the British vetoed Cheddi Jagan's proposal to open a Czechoslovak trade consulate, the Eastern bloc was prevented from setting up an intelligence outpost. Shortly thereafter, Cuba sent two intelligence agents to British Guiana, apparently filling that need, and the StB closed its file on the colony. The relative importance of intelligence versus diplomacy can also be seen in the Czech National Archive. The StB file for British Guiana is thick and filled with analyses of Guianese politics and personalities, while the country files for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are thin.

The Czechoslovak documents also go a long way towards answering one of the important and vehemently argued questions from Guianese history: were the Jagans preparing to align British Guiana with the Soviet bloc? Cheddi Jagan's repeated requests to meet with Czechoslovak intelligence agents, his government's secret request for money to conduct the 1961 election, Janet Jagan's request for weapons from Fidel Castro in 1962, her apparent request for Soviet Communist Party funding for the PPP in 1962 and 1963, and the government's secret request for Czechoslovak weapons in 1964 all suggest that the PPP was preparing a covert alliance with the Soviet bloc.

Although the Jagans never turned against the Soviet Union and its satellites in word or deed, their defeat in the 1964 election left the Soviet bloc with the same result. The loss in British Guiana was the latest defeat for Soviet bloc foreign policy in the region, but it was by no means the key reason that the Czechoslovaks decided to reassess and conclude that the Latin American revolution was not imminent. Much more important were Fidel Castro's ferocious turn against the mercenary and stodgily anti-revolutionary East, US success in using the Alliance for Progress to put counter-revolutionary regimes on the offensive and a lack of money to provide aid thanks to the failure of Czechoslovakia's five-year economic plan. But the PPP's defeat did reinforce the idea that US imperialistic power was back in the ascendancy and Latin America's revolutionary moment had passed, at least for the moment.

Notes

 1.Work on this project was supported by the European Regional Development Fund Project, “Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions for the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World” (No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000734). The authors would like to thank Professor Catherine Albrecht for assisting with translations.

 2.For an overview of Czechoslovakia's Cold War relationship with Latin America, see Josef Opatrný, ‘Czechoslovak-Latin American Relations 1945–1989’, Central European Journal of International and Security Studies [hereafter, CEJISS] 7 (3) (2013), pp. 12–37, available at http://www.cejiss.org/static/data/uploaded/1393887975565903/cejiss_7.3_eJournal_1.pdf (accessed September 2017); and Josef Opatrný, Michal Zourek, Lucia Majlátová and Matyáš Pelant, Las relations entre Checoslovaquia y América Latina 1945–1989 en los archives de la República Checa [Relations between Czechoslovakia and Latin America 1945–1989 in the archives of the Czech Republic] (Prague, 2015).

 3.‘The Conception of relations between Czechoslovakia and Latin America’, November 23, 1962, f. 1261/044, box 5, Novotný Papers II, Czech National Archives, Prague, Czech Republic [hereafter, NA], Appendix III, p. 5; ‘The Conception of relations between Czechoslovakia and Latin America’, 23 June 1959, f. 1261/044, box 5, Novotný Papers II, NA, Appendix III, pp. 15–16.

 4.‘The Conception of relations between Czechoslovakia and Latin America’, 23 June 1959, f. 1261/044, box 5, Novotný Papers II, NA, Appendix III, pp. 3, 5–6.

 5.Ibid., pp. 5–6, 8–9. For the difficulties faced by African students in Czechoslovakia, see Muehlenbeck, Czechoslovakia in Africa (New York, 2015), pp. 168–73. For the difficulties faced by Cuban students in Czechoslovakia, see Hana V. Bortlová, Československo a Kuba v letech 1959–1962 [Czechoslovakia and Cuba in the years 1959–1962] (Prague, 2011), p. 152. For a novelistic portrayal of the problems faced by international students in the Soviet bloc, written by one of the earliest Guianese scholarship students in Czechoslovakia, see Jan Carew, Moscow is Not My Mecca (London, 1964).

 6.Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, ‘One Hell of a Gamble’: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964 (New York, 1997), pp. 12–13, 22–5.

 7.On Cheddi Jagan, Colin A. Palmer, Cheddi Jagan and the Politics of Power: British Guiana's Struggle for Independence (Chapel Hill, NC, 2010) is sympathetic; a more critical perspective is presented by Clem Seecharan, Finding Myself: Essays on Race, Politics & Culture (Leeds, 2015). There is no biography of Janet Jagan, but books are in the early stages of research by Gaiutra Bahadur and Robert Anthony Waters Jr.

 8.Christopher Andrew, Defend the Realm: The Official History of MI5 (New York, 2009), pp. 459–60.

 9.A copy of the letter can be found at http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/121125. The letter is part of a Cold War International History Project [hereafter, CWIHP] e-Dossier. Other documents on Czechoslovak–Guianese relations are included in the dossier, along with an essay: Jan Koura and Robert Anthony Waters Jr, ‘Cheddi Jagan and Guyanese Overtures to the East: Evidence from the Czech National Archives’, 7 October 2014. Available at https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/cheddi-jagan-and-guyanese-overtures-to-the-east-evidence-the-czech-national-archives (both accessed September 2017).

 10.See, for example, Stephen Rabe, U.S. Intervention in British Guiana: A Cold War Story (Chapel Hill, NC, 2005), pp. 33–46; Jagan, Forbidden Freedom: The Story of British Guiana (Milton, ON, 1954).

 11.The Russian version of Forbidden Freedom can be found at http://books.google.ru/books/about/Forbidden_Freedom_Свобода_под.html?id=xs-NMwEACAAJ&redir_esc=y (accessed September 2017); ‘Communist parties leaders list’, n.d. (between 1950 and 1955 – most likely, 1955), Russian State Archive of Social and Political History [hereafter, RGASPI], Fond 575, Inventory 1, File 440, pp. 15–18; Malov, ‘A List of Communist Party leaders’, March 28, 1955, RGASPI Fond 575, Inventory 1, File 440, pp. 19–24.

 12.See, for example, Rabe, U.S. Intervention in British Guiana, pp. 52–3.

 13.Fursenko and Naftali, ‘One Hell of a Gamble’, p. 21; Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The World was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World (New York, 2005), pp. 36–7. See also, Hana V. Bortlová, ‘Czech Tractors, Cuban Oranges: Economic Relations between Socialist Czechoslovakia and Revolutionary Cuba’, CEJISS 7 (3) (2013), pp. 77–95, available at http://www.cejiss.org/static/data/uploaded/1393887975565903/cejiss_7.3_eJournal_1.pdf (accessed September 2017). See also Albert Manke, ‘Waffen für ein revolutionäres Kuba. Kuba und die Tschechoslowakei: Der Beginn einer neuen tranatlantischen Allianz im Kalten Krieg’ [Weapons for a revolutionary Cuba. Cuba and Czechoslovakia: The beginning of a new alliance in the Cold War], in Albert Manke and Kateřina Březinová (eds), Kleinstaaten und sekundäre Akteure im Kalten Krieg. Politische, wirtschaftliche, militärische und kulturelle Wechselberziehungen zwischen Europa und Latein Amerika [The small countries and other secondary actors in the Cold War. Political, economic and cultural relations between Europe and Latin America] (Bielefeld, Germany, 2016).

 14.‘Minutes of the meeting between the KGB at the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Ministry of Interior of the CSSR about results and further expansion of cooperation in the coordination of intelligence and counterintelligence measures and for the joint implementation of these measures, Prague, 26 to 30 June 1961’, Archiv bezpečnostních složek [hereafter, ABS], Sbírka mezinárodních smluv. A copy of this document can be found at http://www.ustrcr.cz/data/pdf/projekty/mezinarodni-spoluprace/sssr/spoluprace05.pdf or http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113217 (both accessed September 2017).

 15.Ibid., pp. 4–5. In the Soviet lexicon, ‘active measures’ can refer to collection of intelligence or political activities by the KGB, including everything from propaganda and disinformation to assassination.

 16.Bortlová, Československo a Kuba v letech, pp. 136–7, 105; Fursenko and Naftali, ‘One Hell of a Gamble’, pp. 36, 46, 50, 166, 374–5, fn. 42 (the warning is noted in pp. 374–5, fn. 42).

 17.‘The Conception of relations between Czechoslovakia and Latin America’, 23 November 1962, f. 1261/044, box 5, Novotný Papers II, NA, Appendix III, pp. 8, 15, Appendix IV, pp. 4–8, 3–4, 5. The analysis was prepared for, and approved by, the Central Committee by unknown analysts who probably worked for the foreign ministry.

 18.Ibid., Appendix III, pp. 8, 15, 4, Appendix IV, pp. 4–9.

 19.Archival copies and translations of these documents from the Czech National Archives can be found at http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/121119 and http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/121120 (both accessed September 2017). The author of the report transcribed Bhagwan's name as Bhagvert Mozes. In an interview, Bhagwan did not recall asking communist parties for campaign assistance; indeed, he said his tour of the communist world turned him away from orthodox communism. Bhagwan email to Waters, 9 September 2013.

 20.See, for example, Rabe, U.S. Intervention in British Guiana, pp. 87–8; A. J. E. Longden, Senior Superintendent Head of Special Branch, British Guiana, ‘Intelligence Report for the Month of June, 1962’, p. 1, Colonial Office [hereafter, CO] 1031/3714, British National Archives, Kew, England [hereafter, BNA].

 21.Jagan to Chairman, Economic Commission for Contacts with Foreign Countries, 2 January 1961, Fond 365, Inventory 2, File 338, RGASPI [Jagan misdated the year]; ‘PPP Relations with Communists, Communist Fronts, and Communist Bloc’, 14 June 1962, 741D.00/16–1462, box 1668, RG 59, US National Archives [hereafter, USNA]; O.V. Adams to A.E.D. Chamier, 25 January 1962, CO 1031/3912, BNA; ‘Mrs. Jagan in Prague’, Rudé Právo (detailed summary), n.d. [interview held 19 January 1962], CO 1031/3912, BNA. Koura searched the Czech National Archives but could not find documents memorializing Jagan's meetings with Czechoslovak officials.

 22.[Ambassador David] Bruce to Department of State, ‘Subject: British Guiana: Janet Jagan’, 3 February 1962, 741D.00/2–362, box 1668, RG 59, USNA.

 23.An archival copy and translation of the document regarding this exchange can be found at http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/121112 (accessed September 2017); Tom Stacey, ‘Violent Prelude to British Guiana Poll’, Sunday Times (London), 26 April 1964; Stacey email to Waters, 25 July 2006.

 24.For the subvention to the PPP, see Waters and Gordon O. Daniels, ‘Striking for Freedom? International intervention and the Guianese Sugar workers’ strike of 1964’, Cold War History 10 (4) (2010), p. 551. There was no data for Communist Party assistance in 1964.

 25.Grey to N. B. J. Huijsman, 12 February 1962, CO 1031/3912, BNA; Chargé d'Affaires [Mexico], ‘Informational report on the situation in British Guiana’, 10 December 1962, 3418/62, 1667, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, NA. On the 1962 general strike, which may have been supported by the USA, see Rabe, U.S. Intervention in British Guiana, pp. 92–4; and Gordon O. Daniels and Waters, ‘The British Guiana Trades Union Council Strike of 1962’, paper presented at the North American Labor History Conference, Detroit, Michigan, 21 October 2005. Archival copies and translations of these documents can be found at http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/121112; http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/121114 (both accessed September 2017).

 26.An archival copy and translation of this document can be found at http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/121112 (accessed September 2017).

 27.An archival copy and translation of the document concerning this matter can be found at http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/121115 (accessed September 2017). Scholars have proven that the 1963 strike was funded by the USA: see Waters and Daniels, ‘The World's Longest General Strike’, Diplomatic History 29 (2005), pp. 279–307. On the Cuban agents in British Guiana, see Waters and Daniels, ‘Striking for Freedom?’.

 28.On Castro's anger over the missile crisis, see, for example, Sergo Mikoyan, in Svetlana Savranskaya (ed.), The Soviet Cuban Missile Crisis: Castro, Mikoyan, Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Missiles of October (Stanford, CA, 2012), pp. 191–234; ‘Report on implementation of the conception of relations between Czechoslovakia and Latin America’, 4 January 1964, f. 1261/044, box 5, Novotný Papers II, NA, Appendix III. On problems with Soviet economic assistance, see Oscar Sanchez-Sibony, Red Globalization: The Political Economy of the Soviet Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (New York, 2014), pp. 211–12, 212, fn. 27 and 25. On Operation Manuel, see Michal Zourek, ‘Operation MANUEL: When Prague was a Key Transit Hub for International Terrorism’, CEJISS 9 (3) (2015), pp. 132–52, available at http://static.cejiss.org (accessed September 2017); Prokop Tomek, ‘Akce Manuel’ [Operation Manuel], in Securitas Imperii, Sborník k problematice zahraničních vztahů čs. komunistického režimu [Collection on foreign relations of the Czechoslovak Communist regime], 9 (Prague, 2002), pp. 326–33; Daniela Spenser, ‘Operation Manuel: Czechoslovakia and Cuba’, CWIHP e-Dossier (with translated documents from the Czech National Archives), 7 July 2011, available at https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/operation-manuel-czechoslovakia-and-cuba (accessed September 2017).

 29.‘Report on implementation of the conception of relations between Czechoslovakia and Latin America’, 4 January 1964, f. 1261/044, box 5, Novotný Papers II, NA, Appendix III.

 30.Waters and Daniels, ‘Striking for Freedom?’.

 31.Vladimír Pavlíček, ‘Special report about government, political parties and trade unions in British Guiana’, pp. 1, 3, 5–6, ABS, 1. Správa Sbor národní bezpečnosti [hereafter, SNB], sign. I-SF-0101-15-26; ‘Extract from the report from Havana of 27 June 1964’, ABS, 1. Správa SNB, sign. I-SF-0101-15-26.

 32.An archival copy and translation of the document concerning this proposal can be found at http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/121118 (accessed September 2017); ‘Information about People's Progressive Party of British Guyana’, 15 June 1965, NA, Archiv Ústředního výboru Komunistické strany Československa [hereafter, AÚV KSČ], 02/1, sv. 111, aj. 115, b. 20, Appendix III, p. 9.

 33.‘Information about People's Progressive Party of British Guyana’, 15 June 1965, NA, AÚV KSČ, 02/1, sv. 111, aj. 115, b. 20, Appendix III, pp. 6, 9.

 34.An archival copy and translation of the document regarding this termination of relations can be found at http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/121116 (accessed September 2017). Unfortunately, the Czech National Archives for the period 1970–85, during which time Burnham turned to the left and eventually opened relations with Czechoslovakia, are in too much disarray to uncover anything significant.

 35.Ibid.; ‘Report on new phenomena in the national liberation movements in Latin America’, 4 November 1966, NA, AÚV KSČ 02/1, sv. 14, aj. 15, b. 3, Appendix III, pp. 7, 13, 16–17. For Czechoslovak economic reverses, see Muehlenbeck, Czechoslovakia in Africa, pp. 173–8.