Czechoslovakia: The Deepening Communist Schism
Hruska, Izak
IT WILL BE many weeks before details are leaked to the world press about the agreement between the Czechs and Russians in early August. No sensible person, remembering Hungary, will feel...
...So too will the price of student subscriptions...
...There could be a slow degeneration a la Poland...
...In any case, the Czechs will not give Brezhnev the pretext for intervention which leaving the Warsaw pact might entail...
...Why Brezhnev and Kosygin should react with fear and fury to the Czech events is dramatically underscored in the remarkable document of the Russian physicist Andrei Sakharov, A Slight Price Increase DISSENT has tried to hold the line on prices, but we now have to announce a small rise...
...At public gatherings in Prague, thousands of people show themselves understandably skeptical of their leaders' vague reassurances...
...Yet they know that unless they keep publicly pressing the Dubcek leadership, it is likely to consolidate itself as a more-or-less benevolent authoritarianism and thereby thwart the yearning for a popular democratic resurrection...
...This remains the real question of Czechoslovak democratization: What should be done, if anything, to assure the "leading role" of theCommunist Party...
...Even the "liberal" forces in Prague, those still within the CP and those grouped into amorphous political clubs, will agree that some concessions had to be made...
...Such sentiments are encouraged by what has been happening in Prague, and Communist leaders see both as a threat to their hegemony...
...The question is: -sihich concessions...
...The liberal Communists feelthat their leaders have an answer that Moscow would easily approve: Ban the opposition...
...THE EDITORS reprinted in the July 22 New York Times...
...Proletarian internationalism," runs a joke in Prague, "is the new name of Ivan the Terrible...
...There may even be an interval in which freedom of the press will be allowed, but not freedom of political action...
...IN THE LONG RUN, splintered into more and more divergent blocs and factions, unable to resolve its pervasive socio-economic difficulties, and haunted by the problem of how to relax totalitarian bonds without being engulfed by genuine democracy, the Communist world faces an ever-deepening crisis...
...Dubcek...
...Within the regime there will appear parallel divergences, though the exact alignment of forces and personnel it is too soon to anticipate...
...For the Russians, the concessions wrung out of them by the skill and unity of the Czechs— also because of the pressure of the West European Communist parties and the severe disagreements within the Russian leadership itself—can be tolerable only if Czechoslovakia remains within the Warsaw Pact and halts its development toward democracy...
...But the matter of Czechoslovakia's political future is in the long run beyond compromise...
...Beginning September 1, 1968, the cost of an annual subscription will be 16...
...For theliberal Communists who will not believe that democratization has really arrived until thereare true opposition parties, need not be toldthat the leadership will not permit such groups...
...In itself the idea of restraint may be appropriate...
...The price of individual copies will remain the same...
...This historic essay, which has been privately circulated in Russia, constitutes in effect a program for a democratic socialist alternative in Russia...
...They understand it would be folly to provoke a struggle to the point where Moscow would intervene or arrange a coup d'etat in Prague...
...Whatever else, that seems certain...
...the old apparatchiks, reconciled to Novotny's defeat but hoping for a Gomulkatype authoritarianism, will pressure Dubcek from the Right...
...But the liberals ask...
...What content or meaning can freedom of the press have—indeed, how can it survive—if men are not free to act politically on what they write and read...
...For our co-thinkers in Czechoslovakia the coming months will be difficult...
...Within Czechoslovakia the emerging political forces which rallied behind Dubcek to offset the Russians will now feel a little freer to express their views...
...how far did they go...
...one party still has a monopolyin political life, and at present, these exist noprocedures, such as are common in a democracy, to express the political will of the people...
...what is bad is the possible beginning of a new informal system of censorship...
...Right now it appears that the Dubcek regime has agreed to "the leading role of the Communist Party," the Russian euphemism for a one-party state...
...And Paul Hoffman, reporting from Bucharest in the August 5 New York Times, adds an ominous note: "The prevailing opinion here is that the Bratislava parley marked only the first round of what may be a long battle between Mr...
...Editors of Literami Listi and Student, leading "liberal" weeklies, have been called in by Dubcek's Central Committee and urged to abandon polemics against the East Germans and Russians...
...For the Party bureaucrats in Moscow the Czech events represent a profoundly serious threat— the threat of a gathering revolutionary-democratic force to remove the single-party dictatorship...
...Here we should underscore the words of Ivan Svitak [the Czech writer whose article in Student is reprinted on p. 442...
...No sensible person, remembering Hungary, will feel anything but relief at the thought that the threat of Russian intervention has been temporarily averted...
...Every socialist will feel the strongest solidarity for our comrades in Czechoslovakia who must face this dilemma, men whose names we do not even know but who share our humanist imperatives...
...The struggle will continue for a long time...
...Given the politicalmilitary realities, concessions were probably unavoidable...
...with the exception of the temporary lapseof censorship no structural changes have takenplace in the mechanism of the totalitarian dictatorship...
...can one talk of democracy if effective opposition is outlawed...
...We know that our readers will understand the reasons for this slight increase and will rally, as in the past, to the support of DISSENT...
...The "liberals," actually democratic socialists pledged to a multi-party regime, will pressure Dubcek from the Left...
...They are right...
...The first of these is probable: whatever economic advantages can accrue to Prague from dealings with West Germany may be manageable without formal political realignments...
...In an August 4 dispatch to the New York Times Henry Kamm goes to the heart of the matter: Liberal Communists fear that the Dubcek party leadership needs no Soviet reminder not tolet these organizations ["groups of non-Communist liberals"] grow out of hand...
...There could be a temporary stabilization, as in Yugoslavia, where some political discussion is possible as long as it does not threaten the control of the Titoist party-state...
...We may well be skeptical about Dubcek's claim that he made no major concession to the Russians...
...Within the Communist world, the Czechs also have support from Belgrade and Bucharest, neither of which shows any taste for democracy in their own countries but which share a mutual interest in clipping the paws of the Russian bear...
...This means new disagreements...
...Together with the good news, there are disquieting signs...
...In the short run, however, there can be improvisations and compromises, perhaps unavoidable in view of Czechoslovakia's geography...
...a biannual subscription 110...
...and hard-line Communists in the Soviet bloc...
Vol. 15 • September 1968 • No. 5
