This article focuses on the question, which kind of diplomacy we have to deal with within the Warsaw pact states. Taking the invasion in Czechoslovakia in 1968 as an example, three theses are discussed: (1) Brezhnev transferred his inner-party concept of „trust in cadres“ and his „scenario of power“ based on trust to foreign politics and treated Dubček as a client whom he addressed in a patrimonial and familiar way. (2) He lost faith in Dubček when the latter established a new democratic discourse denying the central power of the party. (3) The diplomatic language within the Warsaw pact states referred more to socialist common values and party discipline than to the language and setting of international meetings with third party states.
Historische Anthropologie 21(2): 227–250.