As Jan Masaryk, foreign minister in post-war Czechoslovakia, said, "It is not easy to be a bridge between East and West. In times of peace it is a place of traffic jams and in times of war it is the first thing you blow up".

This joke sums up the destiny of his country, whose democratic regime and advanced economy between the two world wars meant that, after liberation, it was the focus of a discreet struggle for influence in the country.The Warsaw Pact troops intervened in 1968 and the Soviets took direct control of business in Prague for the next twenty years.

In her well-documented work (derived from a doctoral thesis), the historian Justine Faure describes the singular place occupied by Czechoslovakia since theThe historian Justine Faure describes the unique place occupied by Czechoslovakia from the very beginning of the East-West confrontation, when the American forces slowed down their advance to give the Red Army the honour of entering Prague... and of being able to adorn itself with the title of liberator of the country.

We see there, under Roosevelt and Truman, the American leaders believe in the possibility of a harmonious cohabitation in Europe of "open spheres of influence". Czechoslovakia, at the junction of these spaces and thanks to its political and economic culture more developed than that of its neighbours, seems to them a key country, where a policy of compromise with the Soviet Union could materialise. The "Prague coup" [1][2] of February 1948surprised them; from then on, and even more so after Eisenhower's election, the policy of "containment" teaGeorge Kennan's policy of "containment" still recognizes Czechoslovakia's essential place, but this time by the potential it offers for the penetration of Western ideas and influences.

The so-called "détente" phase (after Khrushchev came to power in Moscow) dictated a less offensive attitude on the part of the United States. Having measured, during the Polish and above all Hungarian crises of 1956, the limits of their grip on events in the Soviet zone, and finding their interest in "peaceful coexistence", the United States is now in a position to take a less offensive stance."They turned their eyes away from central Europe to take a greater interest in the Third World, where a new competition with the USSR was not long in coming. Over time, weary of the stubbornly closed attitude of the Czechoslovak communist leaders to their economic and cultural initiatives (and increasingly engaged in Vietnam), the Czechoslovak leaders have become more and more interested in the Third World, where a new competition is about to emerge between them and the USSR.American leaders will convince themselves that the country does not deserve special attention and will take up some clichés such as the artificial character of its state and the atavistic passivity of its people. The 1968 crisis will not mark a break in this respect.

This book accurately describes the decision-making process, and shows that despite the often emphatic rhetoric, especially when the party republican party was in power, American policy towards the "socialist camp" was often cautious and even hesitant. It analyses in detail the role (and instrumentalization) of non-state actors, be they emigrants and refugees, often a devalued source of information, diaspora organizations, which exert effective pressure on the "congressmen", or the "socialist camp". of Washington, the media, such as, for example, the attitude of Radio Free Europe, which never fully recovered from the accusation of having incited the Hungarians to revolt in 1956 by promising them Western military support, and which came to self-censor itself with regard to Czechoslovakia in 1968. But also of some CIA fiascos, which fortunately remained without consequences (except for those directly concerned...) It also shows the difference between the external perception of the various societies of Central Europe: the Polish and Hungarian, dynamic and subject to violent jolts, and the Czech, where immobility reigns (while a slow and undetectable maturation continues there). Finally, he explains why the United States, if it had not anticipated the Soviet withdrawal from Central Europe, was able to react quickly by applying some of the lessons learned from the Czechoslovak laboratory in the 1960s to Poland and Hungary, which had become the most important countries for them.

All in all, a book that stimulates reflection on American and European political phenomena right up to the most recent upheavals, such as the controversy over the new Europe or the difficulties of the European Union's eastward enlargement. Easy to read, as long as you are not afraid of details, it should be recommended to those who, far from conspiracy theories or rhetoric, are looking for keys to understanding History... and the current situation of our continent.

[1] A coup by the Czechoslovak Communist Party, already associated with the government, but which seizes all the levers of state power.