Happiness in Czechoslovakia

...The fact that Frantisek Kriegel, chairman of the Czechoslovak National Front and the only Jew on the Czechoslovak side, failed to sign the "Agreement" was one straw in the wind...

...According to Tass, the Soviet Politburo and the Czechoslovak delegation, following discussions "in an open atmosphere of comradliness and friendship," had signed a paper called the "Moscow Agreement...

...It's not an easy thing to make a revolution," I say...

...He too, he says, had worked as a stoker...

...During the months that followed, as things took their inevitable turn (a stepped-up offensive by Moscow in tandem with its Czech and Slovak allies, successive capitulations by Dubcek, ending with his ouster in April 1969), I cast about for a suitable candidate, finally finding not one but two: Jiri Dienstbier, Prague Radio's man in Washington, and Radomir Selucky, a colleague of the Czech economist Ota Sik, who had left his native country a few months earlier...

...I ask Dienstbier whether the new government can count on support from the workers...

...Not at all...

...Their yields are on the average three to four times higher than before the war, and the peasants retain a vivid memory of prewar poverty...

...On December 31, after another telephone conversation with Dienstbier, we went to the apartment of Rita Klimova, a high-spirited and wise woman in her late fifties, a long-time activist in Charter 77 and later in the Civic Forum...

...He plans to divide his time between Carlton University, where he has been teaching for the past eighteen years, and Charles University...

...And thus the last remarkable week in the remarkable year that was...

...It was signed by "Jan Provazhnik," identified as "the pseudonym of a well-known Czech writer and former member of the Czechoslovak Communist Party," who "has personally participated in some of the events described in his article...

...The agreement affirmed both governments' commitment to the "support, consolidation and defense of socialism and the implacable struggle with counterrevolutionary forces...

...When some of the huge inefficient and pollutionbreeding plants as well as some of the coal mines are closed—as they are bound to be—the thousands of unemployed will have to be retrained for new jobs, and care will have to be taken to avoid the emergence of right-wing Slovak (which is to say anti-Czech) nationalism, still a potent force in that area...

...The official rate is nine kronen per dollar, and the unofficial (obtained everywhere) is thirty-five...

...My wife and I spent the last two days in December watching Havel's formal election as president of the republic—solemn, elegant, and welcomed by hundreds of thousands of happy citizens who had massed in front of the presidential Hrad (castle)—and later in the magnificent Old Town Square, rubbing shoulders with beaming Czechs, Slovaks, and foreign tourists...

...Czechoslovakia's situation is incomparably better than Poland's: its industrial potential, despite the obsolete equipment, lack of spare parts, and dearth of even old generation computers, is still in working order...

...Groups of people gather to gaze at television sets in front of shops and office buildings...

...In fact, he says that his country can "learn from the mistakes of other East European countries, say Poland" —a clear reference to Balcerowicz's headlong plunge into unrestrained laissez-faire...

...My father and I," says the young Lustig, "are here for Life magazine...

...he shouts, glass in hand...

...Similarly with clothing, especially footwear: boots, boots...

...It was different in early December, I learn, when Dubcek was, next to Havel, the most revered symbol of resistance to Moscow and its local henchmen...

...Luckily, because even though as I discovered later I can understand Dubcek's speech delivered in Slovak and most of Havel's Czech address, I find it almost impossible to follow spoken conversation in Czech...

...I recall," I told him after we embraced in the empty palace that houses the Foreign Ministry, "that you seemed undecided, until you stepped on the plane, whether you were doing the right thing to return to Czechoslovakia...

...They produce enough food even for export...

...Like Reinmann, he is worried about possible workers' discontent and the power of the nomenklatura —especially since in Czechoslovakia "the Communist Party had a genuine base in the working class...

...My wife told her that if she doesn't have time to shop in Europe, she will take her on an all-day shopping spree in Washington...

...I remember asking them whether they thought it safe to see me and whether the secret police wasn't monitoring our encounters...

...I learned then, and in later issues of Pravda, that I was a known "agent," a tool of world imperialism and international Zionism, and a "long-time operative of the Israeli secret service...

...Furthermore, with living standards relatively low (high in comparison with, say, Poland but low in comparison with Austria or Germany) Czechoslovakia may lose thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of workers to the West...

...I knew both men and was very fond of them...

...And I was too drunk to think straight about anything...

...The article, called "The Politics of Retrenchment," appeared in the July–August Problems of Communism as part of a series titled "Czechoslovakia: Agony of a Nation...

...Instead, his former military associates sit in judgment over the two miserable creatures, firing questions at them...

...They shrugged off my question with a laugh: One of them, I think it was Antonin Liehm, SPRING • 1990 213 Czechoslovakia Demonstrators in Prague at the end of November 1989...

...Galuska provides me with startling information about Czech agriculture: it is totally collectivized, it works, and the peasants are not SPRING • 1990 • 217 Machos'maids in the least interested in a return to private farming...

...But the SPRING • 1990 • 215 trAthoslovalda "Prague Spring" was becoming increasingly irrelevant...

...Like Reinmann, he thinks the new government is counting too much on the long-range impact of the current euphoria...

...There is one amusing moment, however...

...There were only a few people in Klimova's apartment, among them the elderly Jiri Hajek, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, and a towering figure in the Charter 77 movement...

...The stores are packed, but with virtually no queues...

...As I sat in my car, I did not have to know precisely what had transpired in Moscow, later to be so chillingly depicted in Zdenek Mlynar's Nigh&ost in Prague...

...She had just received word from Dienstbier that she was appointed Czechoslovak Ambassador to the United States...

...Every other man who approaches me on Va clavike namesti with an offer to buy dollars speaks Italian...

...Jezek, it occurs to me, is the Czech equivalent of a "wet Tory...

...I wish him luck and proceed to find Dienstbier's friend...

...A tall man, he retained his striking good looks and his faintly Schweikian sense of humor...

...In addition, rather than owing money to the Soviet Union, the latter is in debt to Czechoslovakia to the tune of 6 billion roubles...

...Czech workers, too, will find themselves without work, but whereas in Bohemia and 216 • DISSENT Czechoslovakia Moravia the traditions of industriousness have flourished for more than a century, the Slovak workers, many of them barely out of their peasant huts, will find it more difficult to adjust to the new conditions...

...Henrik Saxgren/IMPACT VISUALS 214 • DISSENT Czachos'ovoids blithely assured me that "those policemen are sitting in their barracks, guzzling beer and playing checkers...

...If there was no way to submit him to a more or less decent judicial proceeding, then he and his wife (whom, in peasant fashion, he orders to keep silent whenever she tries to say something), should have been shot on the spot...

...December 28: Dienstbier introduces me to two friends —Michal ("Misha") Reinmann, a one-time member of the Czech CP and for the past twenty years a professor at Berlin's Free University, and his Russian-born wife...

...its enterprises ("which of course will have to be cut from the sway of the central ministries") are productive...

...Once reunified, Germany, with its economic preeminence, will flood the Czech markets with cheap goods that the Czech economy will not be able to compete with...

...When the interrogation is over, the "court" meets for a brief time, and then orders the culprits into the courtyard to be executed...

...December 27: A brief telephone conversation with Dienstbier...

...I had been aware during those two decades of Jiri's role in the Charter 77 movement, of his many arrests, and of his work—literally until the day he reported to the Ministry—as a stoker in a Prague apartment building...

...I buy a pair, for the black-market equivalent of $12...

...I leave Ludove noviny a bit tipsy, bolstered in my conviction that Czechoslovakia will make it...

...The atmosphere is peaceful, in turn somber and cheerful, but unfailingly good-natured...

...In addition, there is the danger of German industrial might...

...With them were Aleksander Dubcek and other leaders of the "Prague Spring," abducted and flown to the Soviet capital a few hours after Warsaw Pact troops occupied Czechoslovakia on August 20-21...

...For reasons professional and personal, I was swept up by the events rocking the communist bloc at that time—the emergence of a dissident movement in the Soviet Union, the student unrest followed by the foul anti-Semitic campaign in Poland, the Prague Spring...

...It was full of the standard cant about "proletarian internationalism" and promised that all would be well once "normalization" had been achieved...

...At midnight, we all raised our glasses to the future of Czechoslovakia and of all the countries in Eastern Europe...

...Palos gives me various names and addresses and says with a sigh: "You can't imagine what a crazy life I lead...

...I am absolutely exhausted...

...Bring me before the Romanian workers," says Ceausescu with icy contempt, "and you will hear them cheering after I have explained everything...

...In the crowded anteroom there I run into the son of the writer Arnost Lustig...

...I am for the complete dismantlement of all government planning," he says, "but of course there are many economists who have different views on what a market economy should be like...

...Not a professional economist, Galuska is nevertheless well informed on the state of the country's economy and is dead set against immediate deregulation of prices and letting the market alone dictate production and distribution...

...He asks me to come to the Ministry the following day, and in the meantime to look up Marlin Palos, a spokesman of the Civic Forum and a good friend of his...

...You are not sufficiently aware," he says to Dienstbier, "of the enormous difficulties that lie ahead...

...Back in my hotel that evening, I watch Ceausescu's "trial" on television, with a voiceover in Czech...

...When I ask him what was his party's definition of "socialism," he replies with a mock-anguished smile: "Perhaps you can suggest one...

...Our conservation leads nowhere, probably because his English and German are as bad as my Czech...

...its rate of inflation hovers at most between 6 and 8 percent, wages have not been rising more than 3 to 4 percent annually, and its foreign debt stands at $6 billion (compared with Poland's $40...

...I remember starting out in high spirits: there was not a cloud in the sky, and I was looking forward to sun and ocean...

...In addition, the Tass communiqué referred to the Czech diehards by their old titles, even though they had been shorn of them a few days earlier...

...From My Diary December 26, 1989: Prague is redolent with the "Spring of Nations," wintry breezes notwithstanding...

...Unemployment and increased social differentiation will eventually replace today's euphoria...

...The atmosphere was intoxicating...

...It passed over in silence the party's Extraordinary Party Congress, held right after the invasion, which had repudiated the occupation and elected a new reformist Central Committee...

...Tempting cuts of beef, all sorts of sausages, cheeses, canned goods, fruits, vegetables...

...And the food, the food...

...I am doubtful about the latter (and even more doubtful two weeks later, after a visit to Berlin), what with the problems West Germany will face in absorbing the East German economy...

...Halfway, I switched on the radio for the news...

...We walk—or rather run—to a university student and faculty meeting several blocks away, to discuss the expansion of academic exchanges with Western countries...

...But we can manage," says Dienstbier, "the nation is behind us...

...More than a year later, on the first anniversary of the Warsaw Pact invasion, I went to Moscow...

...Go to the Slovak mines and steel towns, he says, and you will see that the workers have "very little enthusiasm for Havel and what he stands for...

...whom I first met in June 1968, and who has been teaching at the American University in Washington...

...Is Italian the lingua franca of the country's second economy...

...This is mad, mad...

...But all this was to come later...

...Every inch of wall space seems covered by placards, slogans, bulletins, proclamations, some stenciled, some typewritten, some in print...

...It expressed the Kremlin's approval of the Czechoslovak government's policies and promised that the Warsaw troops would not interfere in Czechoslovakia's internal affairs...

...Being a stoker was a choice job among those held by dissidents: it merely involved looking after the building's heating system, and it allowed plenty of time for reading, writing, and conspiring...

...Michal Reinmann is less sanguine...

...Luckily the meeting, attended by about two dozen serious-looking men and women of different ages, is soon over...

...Lunch with Miroslav Galuska, a man in his late sixties, an old (now ex-) CP member, who had held an impressive number of posts both in the diplomatic service and in the party apparatus...

...We chat about the outlook for the future...

...A quiet but delightful evening...

...Half a century later, Dubcek et al.'s arrival at the Prague airport was another...

...Like so many East European economists and politicians these days, Jezek believes in the "liberal" theories of Friedrich von Hayek...

...He smiled...

...Somehow, it was all too good to be true...

...Good politicians, these former Marxists...

...But Reinmann's cautionary attitude makes perfectly good sense...

...There are events that in a flash illuminate the passing of one era and the birth of a new one...

...The document ignored the April Plenum of the Czechoslovak party's Central Committee, which adopted the "Action Program," the most important document of the "Prague Spring...

...But his commitment to a market economy, I note, is hedged with more qualifications than that of his Polish colleague, Leszek Balcerowicz...

...On that fateful day in August 1968, I decided that I must ask somebody with inside knowledge of the Czech and Soviet apparatus to write an article on the "Moscow Agreement" and its aftermath...

...218 • DISSENT...

...Among the unemployed will be hundreds of thousands of members of the "working intelligentsia," formerly employed in party establishments, who will become a serious source of discontent...

...A hideous spectacle...

...She was fussing about the lack of any long dresses and total ignorance of diplomatic protocol...

...After all, their role had been in question until they laid down their tools on November 27, in solidarity with the intellectuals and students...

...We climbed to the third floor of a palace overlooking the temporary stage and watched dances performed by a string of folkdance groups—Gypsies, Slovaks...

...The two bodies tumble onto the ground...

...In June I had spent two weeks in the Czechoslovak capital, talking to numerous people and wondering whether their dream of "socialism with a human face" would ever come about...

...Let a horde of Soviet and Polish tourists loose and there would be mayhem...

...In 1968 I was editor of the journal Problems of Communism...

...Moravians, Hungarians, Bohemians...

...Some programs highlight the violent goings-on in Romania...

...I can almost see his smile as he says, "Well, Abe, so you are here...

...I reflect on how lucky the Czechs are with their "velvet revolution": no sign of vindictiveness, no body counts, and a good chance to endow "normalization" with its normal meaning...

...December 30: A loud, joyous, feverish party in the offices of Ludove noviny, until recently a samizdat publication, now on the way to becoming a weekly and, perhaps eventually, a daily...

...He beams, and when we see each other several hours later, he repeats the phrase...

...It was grim: a Czechoslovak delegation, led by President Ludvik Svoboda and including the Soviet flunkeys Vasil Bilak and Milos Jakes had just returned from Moscow...

...Later that day, I meet with Tomas Jezek, an economist working at the Institute of Forecasting of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, and just about to join his colleague Vaclav Klaus, recently appointed Minister of Finance, as his right-hand man...

...The young men and women working at the offices of the Obeauske Forum (Civic Forum), while visibly overworked, are polite and helpful...

...Twenty years after "Jan Provazhnik's" piece, on Christmas 1989, I returned to Prague to meet my old friend Jiri Dienstbier, now Czechoslovakia's Foreign Minister...

...Jiri had grown older—who hadn't...

...But more...

...And so at one of those interminable Washington parties, I sprung the question and obtained an instantaneous response:"Yes, happily...

...others report preparations for Havel's inauguration...

...We compare ourselves to Austria," says Jezek —a statement that would sound bizarre if uttered by any other East European official...

...Havel is everywhere, but I find only one picture of Dubcek...

...So I knew the jig was up...

...Palos turns out to be an amiable man in his early thirties, formerly a philosophy student, with an excellent command of English...

...We had a crazy party that day, remember...

...December 29: A brief meeting with an official of the National Socialist party—no relation to the German namesake—whose most famous member had been Edvard Benes...

...On that day, Pravda's lead article, reprinted from the Czech party paper, Rude pravo, detailed all my movements in June 1968 and fingered me, with two or three others, as one of the main instigators of the 1968 "counterrevolution...

...It was an audacious idea: to get an article, written pseudonymously by two Czech participants in the "Prague Spring," one of whom — Dienstbier — was contemplating returning to his native country (he did, and I took him to the airport in November 1969), and to publish the piece in what the Soviet press referred to as "a leading organ of anti-Sovietism...

...I meet the other half of "Jan Prohaznik": Radek Selucky, in his native country for the first time since 1968...

...Dienstbier is quietly optimistic: the only problems that might arise, he says, would be among the workers in the industrial towns of Ostrova and coal mines of Slovakia...

...Sic transit gloria Conducatorul and Romania's "greatest woman scientist...

...He mentions a few names, but I doubt whether I'll be able to see them—time is short...

...A bit of a delay," I say, "twenty years to be exact...

...The sight of Neville Chamberlain waving a piece of paper that carried "Herr Hitler's" guarantee of "peace in our times" was one such event...