CZECH SOCIALISTS FIND THEIR WAY
Kohák, Erazim
The conference of exiled Czechoslovak democratic socialists at the Swiss Trade Union Center in Rotschuo this past September is yet another straw in the wind, serving notice that an easing of...
...To the participants it seemed like a minor miracle that the conference met at all, and that, when it did, it did not break up in its very first hours...
...20 COMMENTS AND OPINIONS...
...That is where the segments of Czechoslovak opposition presently in exile become important —as a domestic opposition beyond the reach of the domestic police...
...This second illusion suited the new strategic needs of the West...
...such conferences also demonstrate that Central and East European opposition movements are capable of functioning with some effectiveness under the new international conditions...
...The opposition in Czechoslovakia showed itself as a principled opposition whose goal was not only "democratization" but democracy...
...Under present conditions, there is little hope for an opportunity to speak out and think in Czechoslovakia...
...The Czechoslovak Spring of 1968 made it clear that both views were illusory...
...It is doubly significant that this was a conference of the Social Democratic party...
...The task of the exile is precisely to articulate the vague consensus of the domestic opposition and make it available as a clear alternative...
...None of the people who today make up the social democratic opposition abroad has such ambitions...
...Change in Czechoslovakia will come from within, and the men and women who will bring it about will come from within...
...It was the hope of the Czechoslovak Spring to make socialism COMMENTS AND OPINIONS 19 genuinely democratic...
...The early years of the Cold War gave rise to an illusion—that the experience with gunpoint Communism had totally discredited anything even vaguely connected with socialism...
...Czechoslovak democratic socialists in exile —precisely because they are domestically oriented, neutrally based, and dependent solely on their own resources—are helping make such clear conceptions available...
...At the same time, this opposition proved to be socialist rather than "anti-Communist...
...It is significant that the conference met in Switzerland...
...As the conference progressed, participants began to communicate...
...Democratic socialism rather than "the West" represents today the viable alternative in Central and Eastern Europe...
...They contend with innumerable obstacles, from a Henry Kissinger determined to purchase international stability by sanctioning domestic repression to finding money for postage stamps...
...Sharp edges wore off and were replaced by mutual appreciation...
...In the years of the Cold War, exiled social democrats found themselves out of place in the West...
...Only if these conditions bring about a temporary weakening of Soviet power or vigilance, or if they create a temporary Soviet willingness to compromise, can there be change...
...Holding a conference of exiles in Switzerland thus represents a political shift from the ideology of the West to that of domestic Czechoslovak opposition...
...With the easing of international pressures, the Soviet-sponsored regimes in Central Europe have both the possibility and need to institute tighter ideological controls...
...The conference was strictly a self-help operation whose first act was to pass the hat and impose dues upon its members...
...Thus a viable alternative to Soviet repression in Central and Eastern Europe today cannot build on the ideologies of cold war or detentism—it must respect the clear preference of the people for socialism and democracy...
...Men and women living and thinking under rigorous censorship, in virtual isolation from each other, inevitably develop highly idiosyncratic versions of even a common ideal...
...They can function as a catalyst, expressing and discussing what may be universally thought but cannot be openly said at home...
...That party had been liquidated after the Communist coup of '48, its officials imprisoned and its membership transferred en masse into the CP...
...But change depends no less on the ability of Central European nations to take advantage of such temporary slackening in the determinism of history...
...But this opposition is forging patterns of resistance to oppression without the benefit of foreign sponsors or the hope of major conflict, and it has the strength of an idea whose time, in the opinion of a vast majority of Czechs and Slovaks, has come...
...Change in Central Europe is, of course, contingent on international conditions...
...Traditionally, European opposition movements, suppressed at home, have sought haven in neutral countries: in Switzerland, Sweden, or Holland...
...The conference was a microcosm: it made the point that, given the chance to speak freely and think together, the people of Czechoslovakia would quickly transform the vague consensus into a clear alternative program of socialism and democracy...
...The rebirth of Czechoslovak Social Democracy as a distinct political organization might serve to provide such a platform...
...The conference included members of the exile of the '50s and the exile of the early '60s—but also just as many participants of the revival of Social Democracy during the Czechoslovak Spring of 1968, divided in turn between those who sought to reconstitute the social democratic movement as an explicitly political party and those who hoped to create a broad pressure base in the form of democratic socialist discussion clubs...
...It is, however, a long step from a covert popular consensus to a clear, articulate program...
...But it also represents a basic strength: the exiled social democrats are no one's agents...
...Czechs and Slovaks abroad today support three publishing houses, which offer some 30 titles annually, support several journals and quarterlies that maintain a consistently high level of political and cultural debate and provide a forum for major Czech and Slovak thinkers and writers...
...The shift to Switzerland signals a return to the traditional role of an exiled opposition: to represent domestic opposition rather than a foreign, external opponent...
...Suiting Western strategy, this illusion became one of the truisms of the 'SOs...
...The Cold War fostered an identification of opposition to Communism with unqualified support of American capitalism, vintage 1953...
...It would be foolish to read this in cold-war terms, and see the conference as the seed of an alternative regime that will somehow emerge abroad and displace the domestic one...
...In the United States, the first illusion is the illusion of cold warriors, the second the illusion of incautious detentenicks...
...The conference of exiled Czechoslovak democratic socialists at the Swiss Trade Union Center in Rotschuo this past September is yet another straw in the wind, serving notice that an easing of tensions between Washington and Moscow does not resolve the internal problems of Soviet-sponsored regimes in Central and Eastern Europe any more than the French subsidies to Imperial Russia reconciled Lenin to the Czar...
...they are free persons, part of a domestic opposition...
...In the cold-war atmosphere, however, exile groups came to function as shadow governments, much like the governments-in-exile in World War IIthat had been sponsored by a major power, say in London, and waiting for the day when a disputed territory would pass into their control...
...This approach has its drawbacks, such as the delay of crucial mailings until the money for postage can be found...
...But that is not all...
...This, in fact, is what they are doing...
...That it did not is a testimony to the efficacy of discussion...
...The divergence of views in the early sessions of the Czechoslovak conference of democratic socialists showed clearly how brittle such consensus is...
...In addition, it included participants who owed no allegiance to any of the past social democratic organizations, but only to the idea of democratic socialism...
...Sociological research, which for a short time became possible during the Czechoslovak Spring, made it clear that the regime cannot hope for support from more than 8 percent of the population, and even that is being eroded by the clear identification of the regime with a foreign occupation power...
...While the Central Executive Committee of Czechoslovak Social Democracy continued to function in exile, the tone and content of opposition activities abroad were set by others in the community of Czechoslovak exiles who had fewer scruples about identifying with the rhetoric of John Foster Dulles...
...The fall of Dubcek and the subsequent collapse of the Czechoslovak CP—which survives, much purged, only as an instrument of Soviet policy in occupied Czechoslovakia—created a need for an alternative organizational platform...
...The gradual relaxation of the '60s created the need for an opposite illusion, that after 20 years the peoples of Central Europe had grown accustomed to autocratic rule and had lost all desire for democracy, and that all they asked was slightly better treatment from their rulers...
...That rebirth is significant for Czechoslovak opposition in exile as well...
...So, in the last analysis, will come the ideas, though in a roundabout way...
...Since that time, democratic socialists tended to look to a democratic transformation of the CP as the optimal course for the future...
Vol. 21 • January 1974 • No. 1
