CZECHOSLOVAKIA SEVEN YEARS AFTER THE INVASION by TIBOR SERETI During the past year the Czechoslovak authorities have been unpleasantly surprised by the public appearance, several months apart, of two documents that they would have preferred to pass over in silence. Last February, the publication of the memoirs of Josef Smrkovsky, a member of the Political Bureau of the Czechoslovak Communist party under the Dubcek 'eadership, threw some harsh light on the decisive weeks that preceded the Soviet intervention of August 1968. Next, it was Dubcek himself who took the floor, as the Czechoslovak socialist opposition made public a letter he had addressed to the Czechoslovak parliament in October 1974, the publication of which provoked a vigorous counterattack by the bureaucrats. Content of the Dubcek letter "The major reason for which I am writing this letter, Dubcek began, "is that socialist democracy and legality are being trampled under foot, In violation of the Constitution and of Communist morality, the organs of the Ministry of Interior have ceaselessly restricted my free18 doms and that of my family.... Respect for the opinions of the majority has been virtually abolished; the utilization of a whole series of methods has left a free field for abuses of power by the army and, above all, by the organs of the Ministry of the Interior, which have risen above the rest of society thanks to the powers of their command." After affirming that even the judicial orgars are manipulated by the political police, Dubcek enumerated, in detail, the methods, functionaries, and even the vehicles used against him in the daily surveillance to which he is subjected, furnishing many examples of police activities and describing, often humorously, some of the informers he has spotted. Dubcek then spoke of the letters he had sent to various authorities, including Communist party Secretary Gustav Husak, receiving only ridiculous answers. He also mentioned the complaint he had finally filed against the public prosecutor. This complaint, of course, led to nothing. It only intensified the police measures, The first conclusions Dubcek drew concerning democracy within the party and society as a whole were as follows: "On the one hand, some sections of the security service use and abuse their powers to carry on the illegal activities I have mentioned above (the surveillance and intimidation - INPRECOR), and on the other hand, some forces within these units ore trying to take over exclusive control of all public and political life. ... That is why this security network has been woven around me, and that is also why informers of all varieties have been posted at all levels of society. This inhibits the activity and political education of the party, the principal Function of which has been replaced by coercion. ... In a party that is deprived of the possibilities of free discussion, a party that is not even capable of exercising regular control over its own most important bodies, it is inevitable that corruption will spread. The double game becomes gen-
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eralized: People act differently in public and in private, in meetings and with their friends. Instead of conducting themselves frankly in the party, the trade unions, among the youth, in the women's organizations, ... and in the press, the population becomes gripped with indifference, an indifference that drags in its wake an atmosphere of suspicion, fear, hypocrisy, and police informing. In such a situation, it is Impossible to obtain a democratic majority in the party." As against this method, Dubcek reaffirmed the democratic legitimacy of the line followed after January 1968 and asserted that even (and especially) after the invasion, his policy was the only realistic one for lifting the country out of the crisis into which it had been plunged by the invasion. He then described the process by which he and his team were removed from power in April 1969 and how the new leadership of the party wound up annulling the party resolution of November 1968 and challenging the whole policy carried out after January 1968, the date he toole power. He reaffirmed the differences of his line from that of the present leaders and stressed that what were involved were "two irreconcilable lines." Dubcek then refuted the various accusations that have been made against his policies: that they were leading to a return to capitalism, an abolition of the planned economy and of collective property in agriculture, an abandoning of the community of socialist countries, and, especially, a relaxation of links with the USSR. Said Dubcek: "Today, just as at the time the Action Program was published, I am convinced ... that the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic cannot base its policy on withdrawal from the community of socialist countries; on the contrary, it needs this cooperation vitally, especially with the Soviet Union. That was and will be the basis of Czechoslovak foreign policy." Then Dubcek brought up the present situation in the country, and especially the system by which professional competence is measured by the degree of ideological conformity, as defined by the party leadership. He affirmed that such a system has led to the "forced resignation of a great number of professionals in industrial and cultural life" and that this system causes irreparable damage to the country. He charged that the current leadership of the party had proven itself incapable of resolving any of the problems of society and warned that there was danger of an evolution similar to the one that led to the Polish workers uprising in December 1970. Quick and clumsy reactions Dubcek's letter provoked violent reactions, both in Czechoslovakia and abroad. But the most surprising thing was the clumsiness Husak turned out to be capable of (from the standpoint of his own interests). He appeared on television, defeated and foaming at the mouth, and threatened Dubcek and others of his ilk with arrest at worst and forced exile in Sweden at-best. Henceforth, Husak concluded, those who wage such campaigns and publish such letters will be considered "open traitors, avowed enemies of the Czechoslovak people and their social system. " The newspaper Smena (in its April 25, 1975, issue) went further, indicating that "all tolerance has its limits" and heavily insisting that of all those responsible "for the chaos of 1968 and 1969, " none of them, Dubcek included, had been condemned to death or deprived of the possibility of leading a "normal life." It must not be deduced from that, the author of the article continued, that those responsible will be allowed to take advantage of this leniency to sow chaos. Not even the trials of the summer of 1972 had given rise to such a spectacle and such a flowering of invective. The slanders at least had the merit of revealing the existence of the letter to the whole population and of confirming the identity of its author. Husak's televised tirade was a big help to the opposition, saving it several months, if not more, of propaganda work. Another consequence of Husak's sortie was the credit he granted the opposition, despite himself. Such violent attacks would be directed only against an important enemy that represents a real danger; thus, in making these attacks, Husak confessed that after several years of normalization and consolidation, the regime is so unstable that a simple letter is sufficient to threaten it. The official reactions did not stop there. A press campaign was launched against Dubcek, and also against Smrkovsky and his memoirs. It was like the good old days: The press campaign was accompanied by a campaign in the factories to have workers vote indignant resolutions. But this time, unlike in the good old days, this campaign did not at all achieve the success that had been hoped for, In the Aritma factory in Prague, for example, the workers had the insolence to ask to see the content of the Dubcek letter before voting on the resolution. This was refused, of course, but the resolution was consigned to oblivion. The security services had less difficulty. At the end of April they launched a series of searches in all the milieus considered oppositional, that is, the intelligentsia, the former collaborators of Dubcek and Smriovsky, former members of the party apparatus who resigned during the normalization, and, finally, former political prisoners freed after having served their sentences. The confiscation of books, documents, and various newspapers was followed by interrogation conducted in the offices of the security services. And although it seems that those arrested were held for only a few hours, the scope of the police operations was nonetheless confirmed by the newspaper Svobodne Slovo, which indicated that 522 suspects had been questioned. These police sweeps took place simultaneously in Prague, Brno, and Bratislava, which underlines the regime's nervousness and its desire to strike a heavy blow.
CZECHOSLOVAKIA An admission of weakness But what were they afraid of? One can only note that the Dubcek letter did not seem to bother the Soviet leaders for very long. They were even rather tranquil about the whole thing, for there is nothing in the letter that would really clash with the Soviets - from the constant reference to the November 1968 resolution, which was personally approved by Brezhnev, to the recognition, explicit once again, of the need for privileged relatiors with the Soviet Union. Dubcek was especially careful in the delicate chapter on "anti-Sovietism, " for he stressed the responsibility of the Husak leadership, whose "policy has deepened anti-Soviet sentiments among the population," and overlooked the responsibility of the Soviets themselves, whose tanks have something to do with this state of affairs. Obviously, this is a piece of deliberate forgetfulness, which was aimed at preventing Husak from calling for protection from "big brother" and at keeping the polemic restricted to the domestic terrain, where Husak is weakest. In fact, the Husak leadership is reaching the end of its rope, having achieved none of the objectives it had set itself. In reality, this is the major factor that moved Dubcek to break his silence, a silence he had maintained for several years, Dubcek knows that he holds an essential trump card: credibility, more than anyone else, he can draw on the confidence of the population, and in Czechoslovakia today that means a lot. Dubcek proposed to place this confidence of the service of the party in order to reunify the population, something that Husak is incapable of doing, as Dubcek himself stresses. This sort of language is aimed essentially at the cluster of middle-level cadres of the apparatus who are uneasy about their ever growing isolation. This type of language is more apt than any ideological discourse to atfract an important section of the apparatus strongly disturbed by the uncertain discussion that is now going on at the ruling heights of the party. Economic and political situation This discussion, the stakes of which are both political and economic, involves all the problems that Czechoslovakia has confronted since the invasion. The choices have never been more difficult. Neither tanks nor frials have been able to deal with the problems they were supposed to resolve. Above all, they have been unable to make the machines in the plants run properly. And, once again, it is here that the Husak leadership is being hit most painfully. In the first moments of its euphorio, the Husak leadership thought it could count on unreserved economic aid from the Soviet Union. And, in fact, two years after 1968, Czechoslovak store windows were the best stocked in East Europe, which stimulated an unprecedented wave of consumption in the country. It was forgotten that this consumption did not rest on a volume of production capable of satisfying demand. In fact, the armed intervention hod destroyed the necessary eco-
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Dubcek in Prague, 1975. nomic reforms that had been the main subject of discussion among leading circles during the 1960s. If was this discussion that had led to the replacement of Novotny by Dubcek on January 5, 1968, after a fierce facton fight. After August 1968, the normalizers, who understood the explosive character of the discussion on the economic reform, scurried to suspend any innovative economic measure and decided that it was urgent ... to wait. Thus, the some old problems persisted: poor quality of production, excessively high production costs, waste, and so on, Not to mention, of course, corruption, sometimes at the highest levels of the party leadership. (1) The political particularities of the moment did not at all help the situation. The nascent resistance of the working class, which replied to the invasion with slowdowrs, absenteism, and sometimes even sabotage, was rounded out by the lack of competent personnel in entire branches of production. The normalizers had removed thousands of cadres and technicians who were considered too favorable to the Dubcek regime; atomic scientists are sweeping streets, electrical engineers are doing manual labor or working in warehouses, During the great wave of purges in 1969 some 40 percent of technical personnel in the economic apparatus were given their walking papers and replaced by bureaucrats whose incompetence was equaled only by their servility toward the new regime. The same development occurred in the trade-union apparatus, nearly all the workers who had been elected by their comrades being removed. This process eventually reached broad layers of the intelligentsia who, prevented from working, were sent into production. In Prague, for example, the latest bridge built over the Vitava River is popularly known as "intelligentsia bridge, " so high was the number of
Former writers and journalists who participated in its construction. In a period of full-blown technological change, no country can afford the luxury of sending half of its techine by line unter a great at eno -slovakia did during the normalization. Under such conditions it is not surprising that the problem of competent personnel is a burning one that comes up constantly. The problem of reintegrating cadres removed for political reasons was brought up os long ago as the Central Committee plenum of October 1972, but no solution was proposed. Two years later, during the November 1974 Central Committee plenum, the question was placed on the agenda once again, for it had become still more serious because of the difficulties that were piling up. The discussion must have been quite sharp, for, contrary to the usual practice, Husak's speech was not published in the press, and no information worthy of interest was revealed to the public. The functionaries and party membership had to be content with a short Innocuous internal document; the public was served with some severe criticisms of Dubcek. But there is no doubt that this session of the Central Committee was devoted mainly to economic difficulfies, as is testified to by, among other things, a sentence in the internal document admitting that the Czechoslovak economy had suffered a loss of 20,000 million crowns following the increase in the price of Soviet oil. The price of oil, and more generally the prices of all raw materials and energy sources, is one of the great problems of the hour. The Soviets, who enjoy a virtual monopoly on these products in East Europe, decided to raise the prices. In doing this, they seem not to have taken account of the development plans of the "people's democracies, "which were worked out at the beginning of the 1970s and anticipated that prices would remain stable. A meeting of the Comecon countries in December 1974 led to an average increase of 54 percent in the price of oil and raw materials; moreover, it seems that the Soviets made no guarantees on deliveries(2), contrary to what was requested by their clients, who were uneasy about current plans and investments. These clients will thus have to turn to other exporters and pay the high prices of the capitalist market, prices that are higher than those offered by the Soviet Union, even after the Soviet increases. The oil problems are added to the problems posed by the world capitalist crisis. There is no question of claiming that this is a decisive factor for Czechoslovakia, but it is in any case not a negligible one. Generally speaking, the volume of exchange between East and West has steadily increased during the past decade and has even accelerated during the past several years. Czechoslovakia, which did not escape this trend, now finds itself in a situation in which imports from the capitalist world are much more expensive because of inflation, while exports are more difficult to sell because the capitalist crisis has worsened the competitive position of Czechoslovak products. (3)
Finally, and this is not intended to blacken the picture artificially, internal economic factors have some weight in the bad economic situation of the country. These are the traditional economic problems of the people's democracies, directly derived from the political choices of the bureaucracy, its social parisitism(4) and its political hegemony. Just to recall the situation, we could mention the low productivity of labor, the new investments that entail excessively high wholesale prices, anarchic economic choices that too often render production inadequate to the needs of the population, accumulated savings that people refuse to spend on products of poor quality. The incessant and nit-picking controls further weigh down an economic mechanism that, in Czechoslovakia, is already particularly heavy. New talk of economic reform In such a situation, some people think that it will inevitably be necessary to raise consumer prices in order to absorb the new charges. But to what extent will such increases (there is talk of 15 percent) be tolerated by consumers? In Prague, as in the other capitals of East Europe, the bureaucrats have strong memories of the Polish revolts in the Baltic ports following the sharp increase in retail prices in late 1970. That shot came too close for comfort for them to lightly plunge into a similar experiment. Thus, if appears more likely that the future measures will be gradual, less immediately felt, and oriented toward the long term. It is in this context that there is new talk of the economic reform and of the measures that were taken by Dubcek when he was in power. A few weeks after the November 1974 Central Committee, a member of the presidium of the Slovakian party had a significant orticle published dealing with economic questions. Some passages had a somewhat smoldering odor. For example: "The efforts to establish solid relations between producfion and trade are based on considerations of rational order. Such efforts should be our major concern today. The ideas of those difficult years (that is, the years of the Dubcek leadership - INPRECOR) were neither wholly reactionary nor irreconcilable with socialist society, It would be a big error to think so. After all, it was precisely the errors and faults, insufficiencies and weaknesses, that, ignored for long years, served as an objective basis for abuses when demagogy gave rise to hysteria or half truths. If these words have any meaning, it is no more or less than a recognition of the validity of the theses of Ota Sik, that is, the economic policy of Dubcek! And the concessions to the given circumstances ("demagogy, "hysteria," "half-truths") do not lessen the weight of the confession. For those who are familiar with the debates that went on and are still going on in the upper circles of the party, there is as much between the lines in this passage as there is in the lines themselves. Contrary to all official declarations, the author not only recognizes that the Dubcek economic policy was cor-
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CZECHOSLOVAKIA rect (even if it led to abuses), but also issues a discrete warning about the future, when it might become impossible to correct "errors and faults, insufficiencies and weaknesses. " To avoid this, the author proposes a better utilization of the market as an economic regulator, giving more flexibility to the planning system, allowing more room for initiative to the "middle-level" economic cadres, and so on. Ota Sik, exiled and regularly Insulted by the Prague press, could easily find his own ideas here. A long road has been traveled. Seven years after the military Invasion, an important member of the bureaucracy recognizes that this intervention has been so unable to settle anything that it is necessary to return to old recipes. You would think you were back in the 1960s, when the debate on the economic reform was at its height. From this standpoint, 1975 looks more and more like 1967, the difference being that Novotny is now named Husak; but the competitor is still Dubcek. A Dubcek with a martyr's halo to add to his scarcely tarnished glory. Meaning of the letter That is the context in which the Dubcek letter must be understood. He wrote it in reference to debates with which he could not have been unfamiliar. More quickly than Husak or the Soviet leaders, Dubcek understood the meaning and possibilities of these debates. Instead of having the policy of the reformers be applied by old Stalinists on the rebound, it would be better to give the policy a minimum chance of success by having it be applied by the reformers themselves. To be sure, the Czechoslovak leadership is not yet prepared - far from it - to accept such a solution. But some leading circles are already prepared to consider a rapprochement with some of the ousted personalities. As long ago as early 1975, exploratory discussions iook place between Husak's emissaries and representatives of the opposition. The point was to set the price for the political prisoners. In any case, there is no indication that the Dubcekist opposition was prepared to collaborate. The Dubcek letter would indicate rather the opposite, since it insisted strongly on the irreconcilability of the two political lines. Dubcek is putting himself forward as an alternative to the Husak regime rather than as an aide in resolving the current difficulties. It would of course be dangerous to consider such an attempt as won in advance, for the threats of expulsion from the country or of a frame-up trial are many. But against such threats there is a given objective situation and a constantly shrinking maneuvering room for Husak. If Dubcek were definitively prevented from speaking, the current he represents and the credit attached to his name would remain. And above an, there would remain a parlance 22 to which the middle-level bureaucrats have proven sensitive, so great is their fear of the future and so profound is their doubt about the possibilities of the Husak team. PRAGUE, AUGUST 1969: demonstration against "tank communism" marks first anniversary of the Soviet invasion. From the standpoint of Husak's interests, such doubt within the apparatus is far from healthy. It could suddenly lead to rivalries and clique battles, turning today's majorities into tomorrow's minorities. The history of the people's democracies still provides lessons in this: The fight around the party - that is what was really af stake in the Dubcek letter. That is what explains the incredible nervousness of a team that now feels its troops slipping away. And the battle is far from over. After beginning on the national terrain, it inevitably moved to the international arena. A long document drawing a balance-sheet of the six years of normalization is now circulating in Czechoslovakia. Written by Zdenek Mlynar, former secretary of the Central Committee and member of the Political Bureau of the Czechoslovak Communist party under Dubcek (fired in September 1969 and then expelled from the party), this document is said to propose a series of measures capable of erasing the effects of the intervention in Czechoslovakia, But all these measures have one precondition: the elimina-
tion of the present leadership team, In certain circles it is said that this document was written to be presented to the meeting of the European Communist parties, perhaps even under the aegis and responsibility of the Itallan CP. Husak's responses to this offensive have been remarkable for their precipitousness and clumsiness. We have already mentioned the press campaign. and the police actions. Another aspect of the disputes was the amnesty decree promulgated on May 8, 1975, on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the country's liberation from Nazi occupation. The milieus concerned, comforted by rumors coming from high places, expected broad amnesty measures. Buf the change in the p 'itical conjuncture considerably reduced the field of application of this decree, which turned out to affect only those who had committed merely "benign errors. " That is, it excluded all those who were sentenced for acts related to the events of 1968. This measure will make any reconciliation between Husak and the opposition still more difficult. It may already be impossible. The Husak leadership has never been so isolated and Impotent. The most characteristic sign of this impotence is that the leadership is constantly forced to reassert the legitimacy of its power and, concurrently, to burn all bridges to the groups with which some collaboration would be conceivable. This weakening of the Husak leadership may appear paradoxical, since Husak was relatively recently "elected" president of the republic. In reafity, however, this election was an additional admission of isolation. The replacement of Svoboda, former president of the republic, had in fact been on the agenda for more than a year, the time at which his impotence had become quasi-official. The most varied rumors were making the rounds about who his replacement would be, but in real life the choice finally settled on Husak, who is now president in addition to being secretary general of the Communist party. From the standpoint of the real Importance of the post of president, it may as well have been somebody else. But the same is not true of the symbols and memories involved. Every Czechoslovak citizen remembers Novotny's situation in 1968; he occupied both posts and was accused of holding exorbitant power and finally removed. Today Husak is rather in the position of a Novotny who happens to be Slovakian, an aggravating circumstance. A circumstance that will be utilized by a good part of the Czech population to fortify both its chauvinism and it opposition. It is highly significant that in spite of these inconveniences, if was judged that any other personality, even the most neutral and least compromised, would be a worse choice than Husak. It is as if there was no other choice. An oddifional subject of uneasiness for Husak is the strange reserve the Soviet leaders exhibited throughout the whole affair. Of course, at the end of April Pravda published an account of Husak's television speech; later, on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the victory over Nazism, Krilenko described Husak as a "loyal son of the working people, a patriot and internationalist, an important member of the international communist movement. "But Soviet support never went beyond that. Above all, no campaign was waged in the Moscow press to come to Prague's rescue. Dubcek's name was not even mentioned. One cannot assume from this that there has been an overturn in the intrabureaucratic alliances — not at all - but Husak certainly remembers the sudden and unexpected abandonment suffered by Novatny when the Soviet bureaucrats judged him less capable than Dubcek of controlling an uncertain situation. And he especially remembers 1973, when Piotr Shelest was removed from his functions in the Political Bureau of the Communist party of the Soviet Union. As is usual in such circumstances, there was no lack of rumors charging the fallen bureaucrat with all sorts of sins, among them having tricked the Soviet leadership into carrying out the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 196B. As if it was necessary to find a scapegoat for a sad misunderstanding that was going to be quickly put right. After all, it would not be the first time for such surprising turnabouts. Husak, who knows this better than anyone eise, has every reason to be uneasy. Seven years after the intervention, nothing is settled, and everything seems to be starting all over again. To the point that things are happening that seem like re-runs. In the autumn of 1967 the students of Prague demonstrated against electricity cuts in the university dormitories, chanting "Light! Light!" The police saw this as a subversive demonstration, and they repressed it savagely, which led to the process that culminated with the eviction of Novotny. This year, on the first day of spring, some students marched through the campus under a banner reading, "Long live spring! Grass, have you decided to grow?" A whole program. FOOTNOTES: 1. In its June 12, 1975, issue Le Monde reported that heavy sentences (ten to thirteen years in prison) had been handed down against three high functionaries of the Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Trade. They had pocketed 1 percent of all transactions with foreign contries arranged by their agency, which came to about $105,000. According to other sources, a disciplinary procedure was launched against two members of the Central Committee and one regional party secretary (From the Czech branch), also on charges of corruption. 2. The reason, very simple, was explained by the Warsaw weekly Polityka: "In 1974 the USSR obtained 1,000 million rubles from the Comecon countries for delivery of 50 million barrels. During the same year, the Soviet Union obtained more than 4, 000 million rubles for the 70 million barrels sold to the West." 3. On this subject, see the figures cited in Die Wochenbericht, January 23, 1975. 4. A small symbol: The special shops for bureaucrats, most of which hod disappeared during the 1960s in the countries of East Europe, have now been reopened, discretely, in Prague. Is that a sign of the crisis?
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THAILAND...
Thai students demonstrate in Bangkok in 1973 The legislative elections of January 1975 were unable to resolve the chronic crisis of the Thai regime that emerged from the sudden fall of the military dictatorship in October 1973. On the contrary, they reflected the deep political and social instability of the country. (See INPRECOR, No.21, March 13, 1975.) The first government, the minority government of Seni Pramoj, was succeeded by a more durable coalition of parties led by Kukrit Pramoj, brother of the previous prime minister. But above and beyond the parliamentary game, there has been a gradual recomposition of the mass movement on the one hand and the forces of the right on the other, a recomposition that has taken the form of a