Prague, Czechoslovakia
The anger, disillusionment, fear and outrage—all those first emotions that enveloped Prague when Soviet troops occupied the city in August, 1968 have largely spent themselves. They have been replayed so often, and so often frustrated when they engendered action, that Czechoslovaks find it almost impossible to sustain them.
Rather, this spring, the many liberals who rallied to Alexander Dubcek and democratic reform confess anxiety and despair. “Rightist opportunists” are being systematically cut from the Communist Party during personal interrogations of each of 1.5 million party members. Those classed as politically unreliable face the bleak probability of unemployment, especially if they occupy positions in the governmental apparatus, the universities or the mass media.
The military, too, is undergoing a purge. At one of the numerous ceremonies in May celebrating the 25thanniversary of Prague’s liberation by Soviet forces, Defense Minister Martin Dzur declared that “We are adopting concrete and resolute measures aimed at removing all anti-socialist, rightist opportunist and anti-Soviet forces from the army.”
Political “purification” supplemented by the Interior Ministry’s omnipresent rummaging for “counterrevolutionaries” backs the liberals into watchfulness and apprehension. The mood was expressed by one pro-reform writer, who after first agreeing to meet privately later declined with the penned note: “I find it not suitable to speak to you and to anyone from abroad at this moment. I hope you can understand my complicated situation. You have come in a very unfavourable season.”
What is the more tragic and tortuous for liberals now subjected to political interviews is the knowledge that they can recant, betray their convictions and at least save their jobs, if not party membership. Anticipating his interrogation, one party member, who like many thousands of others underwrote the Dubcek democratization, explained:
“They might ask questions like my attitude toward former political leaders. I could say that I don’t know, I’m stupid. Or what is your attitude toward the entrance of the Soviet army? I’ll have to say that we did not need that kind of help. It is not the ‘correct answer.’ But that is what I think.”
Everyone is aware that opposition to the Soviet-led invasion automatically throws one into the “rightist opportunist” camp. But the alternative is an Orwellian confession to past ideological errors. Personal and political salvation now lies in making convincing declaration against counter-revolution, antisocialists and anti-Soviet elements, and an equally persuasive commitment to solidarity with the Soviet Union. One must jump intellectually from “Occupiers, go home!” one post-invasion slogan, to “The Soviet Union came just in time!” among the official chants that greeted Soviet Communist Party leader Leonid Brezhnev, Premier Alexei Kosygin and other ranking Soviet politicians when they arrived in Prague on May 5.
Some people hope they can take safe refuge in silence. Asked his opinion of the Soviet military action in 1968, one man in Prague whose business still allows him to travel out of the country replied: “What can I say? Really, what can I say?” Others believe that their past has so compromised them that it is but a matter of time before they are dropped from the party register. “The trouble is not that I wrote articles in favor of reform,” one Czeck journalist said. “Everyone did. Now they will ask me to repudiate them. How can I? They were the truth. But my articles are what they now call revisionist. I may simply be expelled from the party without an interview.”
With no organizations to fall back on for support, the reformists are especially vulnerable. Since last April, when Gustav Husak replaced Dubcek as party first secretary, the liberal coalitions have been disbanded and dispersed. Last fall, the governing committee of the Prague Journalists Union was dissolved, and that of the Czech Journalists Union resigned rather than conform. In March, the Czech Writers Union, also a center of opposition, was undercut when the government seized its publishing house and halted subsidies. The month before, the party central committee purged itself of reformists, including Dubcek who had already been sent to Turkey as the Czechoslovak ambassador.
With less publicity, several professors of the Prague University philosophy faculty, which provided intellectual impulses for democratization, are said to have been expelled from the party. In midwinter, a number of students, allegedly members of a “Trotskyite center,” were arrested and at least ten of them are reportedly being detained still in mental institutions. In the atmosphere of suspicion and secrecy that covers Prague, such information is impossible to confirm, however plausible it is.
A portrait of Vladimir Lenin decorates the National Museum on Wenceslas Place in Prague in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s birth. Smaller photos above and left look down Wenceslas Place from the museum. Below, prospective buyers examine cars offered for sale by private owners.
It is clear, however, that the few reformists who remain tenuously in positions wield no effective power against conservatives and ultra-conservatives. President Ludvig Svoboda lived his last grand hour in 1968 in Moscow, demanding the safety and release of Czechoslovak leaders seized during the invasion. He still commands admiration in Prague among liberals. But they know he is old and that like many others has accepted the reality of Soviet occupation and its consequences,
In these unhappy circumstances, as one Prague informant analyzed them, only conservatives and ultraconservatives contest for power. Husak, a balding, unspectacular man of conservative instincts even during the Dubcek days ironically represents the most hopeful alternative. Along with Svoboda, Husak resists the revenge hungering of ultra-conservatives, Were they to have their appetites satisfied, Dubcek and others might well be brought before tribunals to be convicted of treason. There would be concurrent measures against lesser reformists in a vindictive sweep of the country. The result would be even more severe suppression of dissenters.
The prevailing and pessimistic opinion is that Husak has yet to consolidate his power, He did manage to put one of his staff men in charge of the Interior Ministry. Since last August, the first anniversary of the invasion, there have been no demonstrations against the Soviets. Brezhnev’s public display of affection for Husak in Prague seemed to some to convey Soviet satisfaction with his leadership,
But these are times when official Czechoslovak politics clamor for utmost fealty to Moscow and exemplary purity in “building socialism.” Extremism in the cause of “normalization” is no vice. The most ardently pro-Soviet and authoritarian officials who were ridiculed, exposed and humbled thus recognize the opportunity to regain power. This underlayer of ultraconservatives provides a base for such men as Premier Lubomir Strougal, party presidium members Vasil Bilak and Alois Indra, and Milos Jakes, chairman of the party’s central and control commission, which is handling the exchange of party cards and interviews of members.
Given the harmonious chorus of condemnation of Dubcek et al, the present ranking of major politicians remains a problematical exercise. Some believe that Strougal could replace Husak; others even suggest Jakes. Regardless of the accuracy of these speculations, Husak’s staying power seems suspect. One analysis here argues along these lines: To survive, Husak must fend off demands to cleanse the party of everyone who was the least bit active in reform. He then must arrange election at the next party congress (possibly not until next year) of a central committee sharing his sentiments. If he can accomplish this feat, Husak could, as a western diplomat put it, “begin the reconciliation with the people,” and possibly another, but this time muted and gradual, economic reform.
That is the brightest prediction for the immediate future. The dimmest has Svoboda retired on pension, Husak given the honorary title of president of the republic, and the arch-conservative faction taking over the party—assuming Soviet consent to the arrangement.
That private political discussions in Prague present alternatives of bad or worse best documents the cynicism and bitterness that exist among many people—though certainly not among the anti-Dubcek circles. Even in chance encounters in Prague with Czechs of no particular authority or political involvement, one collects comments like, “The people are for Dubcek,” “Everyone hates Husak,” and “This is a Soviet colony.”
It is difficult to tell how widespread these attitudes are. They conform to expectations and logic. But accurate measures of public opinion are scarce. The once flourishing and probing opinion surveys have been halted or turned into self-serving exercises. A recent opinion poll in Slovakia asked 1,304 persons “Are you ready to help with the construction of socialism in the forthcoming period?” According to CTK, the Czechoslovak news agency, the “majority” said yes. Among other yardsticks, people in Prague either refuse to speak Russian or do so with obvious discomfort. High up on a gray plaster wall of an apartment building one can see DUBCEK painted in white letters. On one university building, the name DR. HUSAK has been crossed over with black paint. Still visible on the base of a fountain in a small square are the words, in Russian, “Go Home!” Here and there along back streets in Prague, PALACH — Jan Palach, the Prague student who immolated himself in Wenceslas Square in January, 1969 — survives weather and censorship. But most political graffiti has vanished beneath brushes or paint.
An Overhanging sign (right) advertises a nightclub in Prague. Below, window shoppers along a Prague street. Some stores display sign of Diners Club and American Express. Bottom, a scene in Staromestske Place on a warm spring day.
The major vehicle of public opinion, the mass media, has been subverted by the regime. The liberal Prague journalists who poked into Czechoslovakia’s political past, challenged the leadership and discussed the shape of socialist democracy no longer have a forum. Rude Pravo, the party newspaper; Prace, the trade union organ; Mlada Fronta, the youth newspaper and the others largely speak in concert. Although formal censorship has not been revived, editorial management is plugged into the party apparatus again. Journalists who find themselves incapable of expounding the standard themes of unity, discipline, productivity, allegiance to Moscow and opposition all the various enemies of socialism drift away, or hunt for niches where they can avoid sycophancy.
Representative of the loudspeaker quality of the press now, Rude Pravol’s editor-in-chief, Miroslav Moe, who came in when Dubcek went out, reflected on the May Day celebration in Prague: “The struggle against the influence of opportunism, for cleansing of the Communist Party and for international unity is but a struggle for Marxism to maintain its revolutionary ability to acquire experience in fighting.” Husak, whose May Day speech was published in all newspapers, was more succinct in his interpretation of the event: “It has shown the whole world that Prague is as we want it, that it is red, Czechoslovak, socialist and pro-Soviet.”
The drearily purposeful and repetitive statements along these themes leave little space for solid information about what is happening in Czechoslovakia. Foreign correspondents from non-Communist countries plod through the Prague papers, watch television and scan CTK’s daily run of translations and bulletins for scraps of news. They exchange and check rumors among themselves. And, entrenched in the Alcron and and Esplanade hotels, where some of them have been for months because of the critical housing shortage and because Prague authorities scarcely encourage their staying, the correspondents fight boredom and frustration. “I’ve decided,” said one, “that Czechoslovakia can’t be reported anymore in the standard way. It’s material for a novel, not a news report.” As it is, dispatches tend to sound alike, one after another, as they describe the steady tightening of Czechoslovak society.
Perhaps as a reaction to the present political monotony, there is an inclination to relive the recent past. Correspondents and Prague citizens alike recount their own thoughts before and after August 21, 1968. Would the Soviets intervene? What was said at the Cierna conference of the Czechoslovak party presidium and the Soviet politburo (Kosygin and Soviet politburo member Mikhail Suslov generally are named as the doves)? Why were the tanks and paratroopers finally ordered into Czechoslovakia? The “August events” are analyzed over and over again.
In retrospect, some Czechs fault Dubcek—although they supported reform—for permissiveness. Dubcek may have refused to order suppression of a protest demonstration in front of party headquarters after the Bratislava meeting because it would be undemocratic to do so, But, said one observor in Prague, “tell it to the Russians.” The performance of the press during the spring and summer of 1968 also is subject to hindsight criticism. The press, as one journalist said, acted like a “mad dog” when censorship was abolished and journalists were free to write as they thought. “Keep in mind,” he said, “that 80% of the journalists were party members. Still, the leadership could not or did not subject them to party discipline. So much was written that was against the interests of the state. And the foreign press did not help—with speculation, for example, that if there were an election, the party would be replaced. This was used against journalists later.”
Had liberalization been attempted piecemeal, quietly and under control, Czechs reflect, the Soviets might not have been aroused. Witness Rumania, some say. It conducts a relatively independent foreign policy, but by maintaining party authority, it enjoys Moscow’s tolerance. Hungary, while engaged in internal reforms, refrains from broadcasting them so as not to provoke Soviet apprehension. From such reflections, Czechs take the obvious and useful lesson—if another attempt at liberalization occurs, it must be more expertly managed.
Czechoslovak troops and armored and rocket forces paraded through Prague streets on May 9 in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the liberation of the city by the Soviet armed forces.
These seem, it is true, rather academic thoughts. Not only are politics coursing in another direction, away from democratization, but enthusiasm and idealism have been sapped. Few adults, it would seem, will very soon commit themselves with such trust and belief to an experiment in democratic socialism as they did in 1968. The consequences work against the spirit of social revolution. Among the youth, disillusionment is perhaps more predominant than caution. One Prague informant concluded: “The youth are apathetic now. They have no heroes. Dubcek was one, but he turned out to be an illusory hero. Whereas MY generation was raised in socialism and all, this young generation was told that democratic socialism was the goal. Then that ended. Now they are anti-communist. Ninety per cent of them. It is a tragedy.”
Successive compromises—however necessary and inevitable they appeared to adults—have yielded dismay and intolerance among the youth toward the Czechoslovak leadership. They muffle their dissent, compelled by selective measures against the most active students to restrict their hostility to private conversation. There is no talk of protest or open opposition. As Husak said in his May Day address to crowds of voluntary and involuntary demonstrators: “Normal, peaceful life was restored over the entire territory of our state. After all, even today’s rallies are evidence of this calming down and of a normalization of our life.”
The prime incentive behind normalization is provided, as everyone is daily aware, by the Soviet Union. Its forces, now estimated at 70,000 to 75,000 troops, remain discreetly garrisoned in villages and forests outside major cities and along the Czechoslovak-West German frontier. Its diplomatic staff, housed in a commanding, yellow-walled villa set back from the road atop a small rise, monitors political trends and popular opinion to assess the Husak regime’s success in restoring party authority, in reviving a sagging economy and in dispersing the liberals.
That Husak has gone far toward accomplishing these ends over the past year was confirmed by the Brezhnev-Kosygin visit. It was Husak’s opportunity, first and foremost, to show that he had Prague under control. And by consenting to sign the new friendship treaty in the Czechoslovak capital, the Soviet leadership acknowledged its confidence in Husak. The visit was, after all, the first to Czechoslovakia for Soviet politicians since the invasion. Neither they nor Husak intended to gamble with the possibility of a popular outburst against the Soviet Union.
The Soviet delegationts visit did, it was true, call for considerable play-acting on both sides. Czechoslovak authorities assembled reliable and properly briefed crowds at Ruzyne airport, at the old terminal which could be isolated and better staged. A second group of citizens, this one also including the ever-present schoolchildren, was gathered at Prague Castle, dealt Soviet and Czechoslovak flags and primed for cheers. The performance of all, as televised, photographed and described in the press, was flawless.
“The airport resounded to cheers ’Long live the Soviet Union!,” Rude Pravo reported. “’With the Soviet Union forever’ ‘Long live the Red Army.’ ‘And the Soviet Army came in time.’” Husak, accompanied by President Svoboda, exalted the friendship with the Soviet Union that “has become in the minds of our people the guarantee of their state independence.” He proclaimed that Czechoslovakia had politically defeated “reactionary forces” in the country and once again was “in firm alliance with the Soviet Union.”
Brezhnev, too, performed his role. Remaining aloof from Czechoslovak internal politics, he praised the 25thanniversary of Prague’s, liberation and predicted that the 20-year Soviet-Czechoslovak treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance would “Promote further development of fraternal relations.” For the photographic record, Brezhnev, Husak, Kosygin and Svoboda all raised clasped hands in a gesture of solidarity.
Offstage, away from Ruzyne airport and Prague Castle, the scene contrasted sharply. Czechoslovak troops had been stationed 50 feet apart along the 10-mile route that the caravan of black Chaika limousines and Tatra security cars would travel. Police in civilian clothes were interspersed approximately every 200 feet in the city proper. The route was closed to all traffic about half an hour before the closed, curtained cars carrying Brezhnev, Kosygin and other Sovict politicians (including Petro Shelest, first Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party; Petr Masherov, first secretary of the Byelorussian party; Konstantin Katushev, central committee secretary in charge of relations with foreign Communist Parties; and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko) sped to the Castle.
At one major intersection, some 400 people had gathered amidst soldiers and security police. Not official participants in the welcoming ceremonies, these Prague citizens stood silently as the Chaikas roared past, slowing only slightly to round a near right-angle corner. No cheers, no flags. Instead, it was obvious that a sullen citizenry intended to transmit its mood to the Soviet leadership. For all the pomp elsewhere, Brezhnev and Kosygin could not have but felt Prague’s mixture of indifference and hostility. No quantity of Soviet flags and banners—and there were liberal numbers of both in Prague — could conceal the authentic sentiments in the Czechoslovak capital.
It is questionable, of course, whether the Soviet leadership worries over its popularity in Czechoslovakia, The country is subdued, the party has regained dominance, Czechoslovakia again is a certain member of the Warsaw Pact, and its economy once more is oriented toward the Soviet Union. These were, after all, the objectives of the Soviet military action, not the gratitude of the Czechoslovaks. For Soviet politicians, it may well be sufficient that the people remain undemonstrative.
In May, Prague was decorated with displays recalling the liberation 25 years ago of Prague by the Soviet army. For the celebration and to sign a friendship treaty, Soviet leaders arrived in Prague. Large photo is of Prague Castle where Soviet leaders stayed. Small photo was taken as they sped through the city from the airport.
Clearly, elaborate precautions were taken for the Brezhnev-Kosygin visit. During their four days in Prague, the Soviets remained in the Castle for the various receptions and ceremonies, rather than travel in the city. Even the “public manifestation” after the treaty was signed was staged in a courtyard in the heart of the Castle for maximum security. At the end of April, “to protect citizens from antisocial elements and criminals,” the Interior Ministry rounded up 4,109 people, nearly 700 in Prague itself. Among the latter, the ministry reported, were 253 persons who had been “sentenced in the past” and 180 long-term unemployed. The ministry also discovered 152 illegally possessed guns.
It was privately retorted in Prague that the ministry as well broke up an anti-Soviet protest in the planning stage. It was said that police found “thousands” of placards bearing a clenched fist and advocating the assassination of Brezhnev and revolution. Because, however, the placards were produced on a letter press, which could easily be traced in Prague, some informants were skeptical of their source. What better proof would ultra-conservatives want that even more severe suppression of liberals was necessary? The incident was reminiscent of the cache of American rifles discovered in 1968 and publicized in the East German press as incontrovertible evidence of foreign collaboration with Czechoslovak “counterrevolutionaries” (except that the rifles were in bags brazenly marked “USA” and preserved in a lubricant manufactured in East Germany).
There may exist underground organizations in Prague and elsewhere waiting for an opportunity to provoke an incident or to reactivate democratization. On the surface, however, the Czechoslovaks strike the foreigner as exceedingly gentle, accepting people. Their attitude toward the Russians, one Prague journalist agreed, is less hatred than a combination of condescension, ridicule and antagonism. And even these sentiments seem reserved for Soviet political leaders (a taxi driver, waved away by police from the Castle, joked: “They’re afraid to let us get near Brezhnev. We might kiss him to death.”). Such men as Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov earn admiration for their own democratic ideals, Czechs have met privately with other Soviets who opposed the invasion and with whom they can discuss problems of political and economic reform in both Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. While the sight of a Soviet army officer in Prague summons up ill feeling, one gets the feeling that Czechoslovaks do not dislike the Russians en masse.
But it does appear from Prague that the Soviet leadership leans more heavily on the military, that it has become more conservative and orthodox since the fall of Nikita Khrushchev in 1964. The legendary “Leninist principles” seem increasingly subverted by state power wholly opposed to democratic socialism. Said one party member in Prague: “They have taken Lenin, and I think he was a great man, and turned his thoughts into—well, this is a sharp word—something like fascism.”
Perhaps only the once most hopeful and now most disillusioned Czechs subscribe to that view. For the majority of people in Prague and elsewhere in the country, the Soviet occupation or the visit of Soviet politicians probably does not stir much thought beyond the obvious facts. Everyone who talks privately agrees that a mass weariness and indifference have overtaken the country. For one thing, travel outside Czechoslovakia is closely controlled now. To obtain a passport, a Czechoslovak needs a recommendation from his place of work, which means the party organization, and clearance by the Interior Ministry. Added to the sense of confinement, internal policies seem to offer nothing but pacification of the Soviets, regeneration of the party machinery and demands to work harder.
The passive resistance and apathy among factory workers continues, although the government claims a slight economic improvement so far this year. At the same time, Premier Strougal lamented in a recent speech that in engineering enterprises only 70% to 85% of work time is actually spent working, and 55% to 70% in the building industry. Strougal pledged “labor law organizational and other conditions” to enforce greater productivity.
Although the government has instituted price and wage controls to halt inflation, the cost of living remains high, and the standard low. A factory worker’s monthly wage is between 1.500 and 2,000 crowns. The official exchange rate of 16 crowns to the dollar helps little in gauging the buying power of wages. Youths along Wenceslas Place approach foreigners with offers of 30, 35 and 40 crowns for a dollar, which black marketeers obviously resell for even more. As against incomes, a man’s suit costs 1,000 crowns, a woman’s pants suit 800, pair of shoes 300, a medium-sized refrigerator almost 4,000, and a used Fiat, the smallest model, 36,000 crowns. Better quality merchandise is available in Tuzek stores, which deal only in hard currency and Tuzek coupons, the latter sold for hard currency in banks and which Tuzek encourages foreigners to buy for friends and relatives in Czechoslovakia. Tuzek stores are stocked with foreign cigarettes, liquor, canned goods, clothes, watches, perfume, auto parts and antiques, all at lower prices than Czechoslovaks pay on the open market. (A package of American cigarettes costs the equivalent of $1.50 in hotels, but only 50¢ in Tuzek stores).
For the moment, Czechoslovaks seem little inspired to work very hard. Rewards are few. Prospects for improvement appear distant, despite a good deal of fanfare over the last Soviet-Czechoslovak economic agreement which promises Soviet assistance in building the Prague subway, an atomic generating plant and new housing.
A lethargic economy may compell the Soviets to concur with another effort at reform. But economic decentralization has run up against obstacles, mostly political, in the Soviet Union itself. And in Czechoslovakia, the free, market concepts of Ota Sik, the now expatriate Czech economist, are regularly condemned as the vehicle for the restoration of capitalism. Thus, for the time being, central economic planning and work discipline are the main guidelines.
Both the economic and political futures of Czechoslovakia are, in any case, now bound up with the Soviet more tightly than before. The 20-year friendship treaty forecasts, in Vasil Bilak’s words in Nova Mysl, that for the “next two decades Czechoslovakia is ensured of close cooperation with her proven and trusted friend, the Soviet Union.” The treaty restates, as the Prague press emphasized, the “internationalist obligations of the socialist states in defense of socialist achievements.” That is the doctrine of “limited sovereignty” that the Soviets advanced to justify intervention in Czechoslovakia. In a new theme, among Soviet treaties with east European states, the document also commits Czechoslovakia to aid the Soviet Union if the latter is attacked by any country, a clause inserted presumably with China in mind.
Along the bank of the Vltava River, a young couple pauses. Elsewhere in the city people examine paintings for sale and souvenir pins.
The treaty as a whole provides the conduit for Soviet hegemony over Czechoslovakia, if one wants still another legal-sounding reference. People in Prague found it incredible, bordering on the absurd, that Brezhnev described the agreement as “based on full equality, sovereignty and independence of the two sides.” But it is eminently clear to them that the Soviets are in Czechoslovakia for an extended stay, in whatever words the occupation may be phrased.
This most of all—the knowledge that the Soviet leadership has ultimate decision over Czechoslovak internal and foreign policies—is the most debilitating. After the brief release of 1968, the Czechoslovak leadership in concert with the Soviet expounds the view that a “class divided world” prevails. And Czechoslovakia is back on the Soviet side of the divide.
© 1970 Mark W. Hopkins
Photographs by Mark Hopkins
Received in New York on June 1, 1970.
Mark Hopkins is an Alicia Patterson Fund award winner on leave from The Milwaukee Journal. This article may be published with credit to Mr. Hopkins, The Milwaukee Journal and the Alicia Patterson Fund.
