European Document/Prague Springs Back

...The older generation of former (or current) Communists reminds them only of the stereotype of the compliant Czech...

...Thus Czechoslovakia remains one of the most orthodox East European countries...

...The official response has been predictable: Instead of seeking some compromise, the authorities claim that those who initiated the petition campaign purposely lie about the religious policies of the government,,which infact, goes the line, has excellent relations with the Church...

...In the tradition of Charter 77, its editors publish their names (and addresses, in case the police lost them), and in fact they seek to publish openly, but without censorship...

...To avoid expected police road blocks, these younger demonstrators even arranged their vacations well ahead of time to get to Prague several days before...

...For three years, Tomasek has met with the group of three Charter spokesmen named each year...

...Those active in Charter 77, which loosely unites the opposition, are constantly surveilled and followed...

...Yet within their history is a long tradition of resistance, dating back to the religious reformation led by Jan Hus,and many valiant efforts to retain the rich and complex culture of both peoples...

...They may be too late in any case, despite opposition among some secular Charter members to the positions of the Church...

...today's younger activists see the need for something more substantive...

...With the twentieth anniversary of the Soviet invasion upon us, the Communist party continues to maintain its power, privilege, and conservatism, and shows no sign of any reconsideration of 1968...

...The younger generation is also behind many of Czechoslovakia's new underground publications, continuing a heroic tradition of samizdat begun in the 1970s by outcast intellectual stokers and manual laborers...

...indeed, they expected no more than a few thousand signatures...

...it was up to "you, the laymen" to act...

...The sons and daughters of the 1968 generation of Communists have taken the road of opposition as well, and without the political blinders of their parents...

...In Urban's view, "Too many people think that it is our job to come up with solutions for all of Czechoslovakia's growing problems...

...It is still unclear what may arise from this revived spirit of opposition...

...Next to them were the more common government invocations: Onward march toward the fulfillment of socialism...

...and believers must be allowed full freedom to worship without recrimination (for example, teachers are fired if it is found out that their children have been baptized...

...I always say that it is our job to make problems and not to solve them...

...the government must cease its rejection of priests seeking registration (a large majority of priests are now in fact ordained underground or secretly in Poland or at the Vatican...

...But as one disparaging activist told me, "Since Gorbachev, they all took their diplomatic suits out of the closet and are waiting by the phone to be called to service...

...Tomasek himself has presented the signatures to the government...

...A group of former party members, organized under the banner of the Democratic Alternative, issued a statement describing February 1948 as a legitimate revolution, with laudatory socialist aims, supported by a majority of the people...

...Among the demands: seminaries must be allowed to function freely (only one currently exists, and admissions are controlled by the minister of culture...

...Which is not surprising: Jakes himself was in charge of the party purges and the routing of Czech and Slovak intellectuals in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion in August 1968 that put down the Prague Spring...

...Instead, the petition has been signed by over 500,000, mostly Catholics but also Protestants and non-believers...

...More troublesome for the Czechoslovak authorities is the current movement for Catholic revival...

...In this, the Charter's eclectic character is seen by the younger, more militant generation of activists as an impediment...

...The debate is a real one, with serious strategic consequences...

...The Censorship Office has informed its editor-inchief, Jiri Ruml, that it too would like a new publications law, but that such a law may be difficult to enact in the next few years...

...And predictably, the response has been more than verbal: On April 25, a silent demonstration in Bratislava was brutally attacked by police, leaving many wounded...

...In addition, before a mass for the Blessed Anezka, called by Tomasek to initiate a ten-year period of spiritual renewal, more than forty Charter 77 members were detained for 48-hour periods, because the authorities fear an alliance between the Charter and the Church...

...One such is Jan Urban, a young bricklayer-intellectual, who in a stroke of bravado attended the Moscow conference on human rights organized by the Glasnost Club of Lev Temoveyev...

...O ne sign of this revivified resistance was a demonstration held in Prague's Old Square on December 10 last year, International Human Rights Day...

...On every national monument, in the stores, in the newspapers, and on the walls, remarkably creative and colorful posters marked "February 1948" or "Forty Years of Socialism...

...The consequences for any opposition are severe...

...Yet many Charter 77 and Catholic activists sense a new opening to be found in the government's contradictory policies toward Gorbachev, fueled by an impending breakdown in the East Bloc's economies...

...Navratil, who already has been imprisoned in psychiatric hospitals on three occasions, was arrested and charged with "inciting disorder" and "insulting a policeman...

...Such are the degrees of tolerance...

...Begun by members of the rock band "Plastic People of the Universe," Vokno publishes reviews, poetry, censored rock lyrics, art, and historical essays of young artists and intellectuals despite continued harassment of its editors...

...Eternal friendship with the Soviet Union...

...imprisonment,internal exile, job dismissal, and all the other repressive mechanisms at the government's disposal are fairly routine...

...This last refers to 1945 and Eric Chenoweth is technical assistant in the International Affairs Department of the American Federation of Teachers...

...Eternal thanks to the Red Army...

...Indeed, one could say some Soviet government spokesmen have shown a greater willingness to discuss the issue than has the Czech government, which insists on reiterating the full justification for the "intervention against counterrevolution...

...Several of those arrested have been 36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1988 sentenced, one man on a charge of "promoting fascism," in this case for allegedly raising the Nazi salute while unfurling a banner...

...The question is how to take advantage of these openings and unite around a common program of opposition...

...On the anniversary in February, the Czechoslovak Communist party reminded the populace that whatever new winds may be blowing from the East, Czechs shall remain snug within the full Communist legacy of 1948...

...An example of the strong political disagreements within Charter 77 was its inability to forge a common statement to mark the February 25, 1948 coup...

...Over two thousand people gathered, the largest such manifestation since 1969, when Husak put down the last remnants of opposition to the Soviet invasion...

...While the official propaganda now speaks of "democratization" and all the other buzzwords of perestroika, Miklos Jakes, Gustav Husak's successor as general secretary of the party, has made clear he will follow Husak's path...

...Cowardice and fear do not befit the true Christian...

...The Czechs and Slovaks have had to endure a contradictory history...

...To be fair, their reformed Communism is much more radical than anything Gorbachev has yet proposed...

...Since then, he has been detained four times for 48-hour periods—a sign, he says, of the police's confusion in this new period, since he wasn't formally charged and was thus let go...

...Eyewitnesses said the salute was a mocking gesture to police who were taking him away, but the authorities failed to get the joke...

...Not surprisingly, those in the Democratic Alternative see reform at the top as the most effective strategy, and thus view Gorbachev as reforming Communism...

...Individual action has been taken against the petition's initiators...

...Although police detained forty people before the march and arrested a number of others for displaying banners calling for democracy and the release of political prisoners, no force was used to disperse the crowd...

...Another cultural review, Revolver Revue, a quarterly of 300-350 pages, seeks to meet the needs of the younger generation for cultural activities and writings the government doesn't allow...

...In February, the point was made easily enough by the banners hung in celebration of the 1948 coup of Klement Gottwald, which installed the Communist party in full power after three years of a postwar coalition government...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 37...

...Navratil and other colleagues could not have foreseen the reaction...

...In contrast, two Charter spokesmen, Stanislav Devaty and Bohumir Janat, wrote that those who looked to the "arches of Victorious February" should "spare a thought" for the "vanquished of February .. . for the forcibly collectivized farmers, for the shopkeepers and craftsmen [who] . . . had their businesses expropriated, for the innumerable non-Marxist intellectuals relegated to a menial place in society, for the persecuted Christians, and for the innocent multitudes who were jailed and—God forgive—executed...

...The children of opposition activists are not spared either, and are even denied admittance to secondary trade schools (not that official education is anything to cherish...

...Within the Charter are many former party members who continue to believe in 1968's dream of "Communism with a human face...

...In December a lay Catholic activist, Augustin Navratil, a member of Charter 77, proposed with several colleagues a 31-point petition of demands for religious freedom, addressing the long list of believer grievances...

...Catholics make up 40 percent of Czechoslovakia's population...

...One, Vokno (Window), is both a cultural journal and a countercultural journal—aimed at young and old alike...

...Most of the participants were young, and many came from outside Prague...

...One result, published in cooperation with the generation of journalists from 1968, is Lidove Noviny ("People's News"), which, with 1,000 copies distributed, is the largest of the underground papers...

...Cardinal Tomasek gave his blessing to the petition, stating that his many requests had gone unanswered by the government...

...Tomasek, moreover, is courting "clerico-fascists...

...Caught in the religious and ideological battles of European history, a small country between the great powers of the last five centuries, Czechoslovakia is often seen as a pliant country, and observers cite as evidence the population's unwillingness to take arms against the insuperable Hitler, Stalin, and Brezhnev...

...The name is taken from Czechoslovakia's liberal and democratic past, and the paper tries to reclaim the old paper's spirit as well...

...the government must allow the naming of new bishops (seven seats are vacant, and the three remaining bishops are all over 75 years old...

...after this year's audience, the Charter issued a statement supporting the petition campaign, repeating its demands for the religious freedom of believers...

...He had, for example, given Church sanction to publication of the pro-government encyclical, Pacem in Terris, which is no longer sanctioned by the Vatican...

...It is in this spirit that a new generation of opposition is emerging, forty years after the February putsch and twenty years after the Soviet invasion...

...With this affirmation, the petition was openly circulated in parishes by priests and laymen, sparking the long pent-up feelings of Czechoslovakia's Catholics...

...After forty years, during which the Communist government rivaled any other in Eastern Europe in its repression of the Church, Frantisek Cardinal Tomasek has joined a growing legion of lay Catholic activists in demanding greater religious freedom...

...For them the demand for human rights is sufficient...

...With this spirit, there is hope still...

...not 1968, but the message is clear enough...

...One wouldn't have expected the 88-year-old Cardinal Tomasek to take any strong public stand, what with his many years of appeasing the Ministryof Culture, which oversees Church affairs...

...It is a very important duty of our conscience to make your voice heard to the government," Tomasek said...

...the Church must be allowed to provide religious instruction to children (which is only done within the state schools and with the greatest of difficulty...

...It is the new generation of secular and religious activists, some professing social-democratic politics and others professing free-market views, who want to press for real change from below...