Fear in the Prague Air
Fear in the Prague Air In 1968, twelve years after the failed revolt in Hungary, Soviet troops crushed the "Prague Spring" government of Alexander Dubcek. Today, Czechoslovakia presents the visitor...
...I have no hope any more," said a physicist, and an engineering student ran after us to leave us with a final thought: "Tell your friends in America that we hope the law will return here some day...
...On the other hand, one hears of many instances of petty harassment directed at those who give the state or the party trouble: a sick person who is declared well and taken off medical care, an individual who is denied housing or has the telephone cut off...
...But in December of that year, 240 Czechs—including members of the clergy, workers, the nation's best known playwright, and many prominent figures in the arts and literature—signed Charter '77, which called on the government to honor its own law...
...The opposition is held on a short leash, but it is not extinct...
...Czechoslovakia once ranked tenth among the industrial nations of the world...
...Obviously, it no longer does...
...A headwaiter complained that Czech television "stinks...
...In 1976, the government ratified the International Convention on Human Rights and published it as Public Law 120...
...We have to be to survive...
...Printed copies of Law 120 were in high demand...
...There are few political prisoners today...
...Gustav Husak, whom the Soviets installed in Dubcek's place, conducted no blood purges...
...Since bread, milk, meat, transportation, and other basic needs are state-subsidized, the $270 goes much farther than it would in our country...
...He has put aside $600 for a bribe to leave the country, but he is afraid to take the chance because he knows of too many instances when the bribe was taken but the exit papers never materialized...
...Many of these people lost their jobs, had their homes searched, had telephone service cut off, and suffered other harassments...
...Today, Czechoslovakia presents the visitor with a visage that is far more grim than Hungary's...
...All insisted that conditions were bad...
...At the trade union offices I was given literature but denied interviews on grounds that "we're only equipped to speak with delegations...
...we cannot talk with private individuals...
...We are all gangsters," a taxi driver told me...
...Czechs were elated to learn they had rights that had apparently been held in cold storage...
...The buildings, including some of the most beautiful in the world, are black with soot...
...A former soccer hero said, "I just told you how to get to the Intercontinental Hotel...
...Workers are apathetic—even a communist admitted that it is a good week when the government gets thirty-two hours of actual work for forty-two hours' pay...
...If you were a Russian I would have directed you two kilometers in the opposite direction...
...Workers average 2,700 crowns a month ($270 at the official rate, half of that on the black market), and pay about a tenth of that sum to rent a three-room flat...
...Lech Walesa could be elected president of Czechoslovakia right now," one Czech told me...
...Playwright Vaclav Havel and eight others are behind bars, and ten others— including a former Dubcek cabinet member, Jiri Hajek—have been charged but not detained...
...A journalist's visa is difficult to obtain, but a journalist traveling as a tourist is likely to be denied interviews—"It is impossible unless you have a journalist's visa...
...The Czech communists clearly feel beleaguered, convinced that they must increase production and maintain repression to prevent an inner revolt that would lead Czechoslovakia out of the Soviet camp...
...Subsequently, we learned that a tip, preferably in dollars, would have made a difference...
...The economy is in fair shape—better than anywhere else in Eastern Europe, except perhaps for Hungary or East Germany...
...He earns 2,000 crowns a month driving the cab, he said, but at least another 1,500 in tips, black market currency deals ("I pay twenty crowns for a dollar and sell it to a Czech for twenty-four"), and other activities he refused to specify...
...On six occasions we were turned away from restaurants on the claim they were full, when they were obviously half-empty...
...The government is driven by fear—fear that its own people won't let it do what it is certain must be done, fear of the West, fear of popular initiative- -S.L...
...Such opponents as economist Ota Sik and writer Antonin Liehm were allowed to emigrate, and Dubcek was assigned to a minor post in a remote forestry office...
...The streets of Prague are dirty and dull...
...Subsequently, a total of 1,000 appended their signatures to the charter...
...But about half a million Czechs were ousted from the Communist Party, and an undetermined number were imprisoned...
...Still, there is much public unhappi-ness, and a pervasive feeling of tension...
...Perhaps my sample was poor, but in dozens of conversations I found no one had a good word to say for the regime...
...A visitor can obtain only limited contact with government officials, and it is not wise (for their sake) to approach known dissidents...
Vol. 45 • November 1981 • No. 11
