Why Moscow Fears the Czechs

...For they offer proof once again that freedom is a basic motive in history, that the more a society advances, the more imperative the need for freedom becomes...

...It is virtually surrounded by hostile governments which, in the name of socialism, fear any form of revitalization based on popular expression and assent...

...Every likely pretext for intervention—including clumsy and obvious attempts at provocation—has certainly been sought...

...If the Czechoslovak experiment should succeed—and its success depends on whether it will be realized without compromise and half-solutions—we shall be confronted with practical proof that the system of general manipulation may be overcome in its own main contemporary forms: bureaucratic Stalinism and capitalist democracy...

...These principles have surfaced spontaneously in Czechoslovakia since last January, but naturally they will not suffice in themselves...

...he conceived of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a temporary institution, lasting only until socialism had been established...

...Thus the search for a new social pattern has not sprung from national aspirations or hatred of the Russians, but from a desire to combine socialism with the older Czechoslovak humanitarian, democratic heritage...

...If widespread participation and support continues, the Czechoslovak experiment may provide a solution to crises that have plagued the social systems of both East and West...

...In the past decade, however, a new political consciousness has been awakening among the younger generations, who have begun to reject the system that raised and indoctrinated them...

...We are on the side of the enslaved, of the suffering, of the unhappy...

...by July this figure had increased to 51 per cent, with 89 per cent supporting the policies of the government...

...Both of Lenin's views are now major heresies in Soviet thinking...

...Their fear is also understandable, since these events call into question the very viability of the Soviet political system...

...The distance that separates the first government equipe of the Soviet Union, composed of such brilliant intellectuals as Bukharin, Zinoviev and Lunacharski, from the Brezhnev-Kosygin team is a measure of the extent to which the Soviet ruling class has been transformed into a mediocre and self-perpetuating bureaucracy, imprisoned in its own rigid ideological armor...

...The kind of political stagnation that took place in France under the party rule of the Fourth Republic might no longer be possible...

...We are with those who, as we, have not renounced the struggle, have not given up the hope that our life could be better...

...That is why their first concern, after they eliminated the most powerful Stalinist elements in the highest echelons, was to establish the freedoms of speech and assembly as law...

...That the Russians have been incapable of grasping its real nature is understandable, since recent events in Czechoslovakia represent the antithesis of the evolution of Soviet society...

...The revolutionary rumblings in Hungary and Poland following Stalin's death were efforts to broaden the bases of these regimes by eliminating Stalinist methods and practices...

...The Czechs are probably the first modern society to transform a totalitarian state into one where the citizens actively and effectively participate in the res publico...

...I would say that it is a concern of all of us, of the hundreds of thousands, I would even say, millions of people in our country...

...So long as the present Soviet leadership is in power, Russian opposition to the New Course in Czechoslovakia is not likely to soften...

...Except for East Germany, Czechoslovakia is the only country in Eastern Europe with an old artisan and industrial—as opposed to a rural—tradition...

...Jan Prochazka, author...

...It is predicated on the belief that modern socialism can move forward only on the basis of the freedoms (the bourgeois freedoms, as Marx called them) wrung from the ruling classes in the course of centuries of struggle—out of which emerged the great principles of modern democracy that invest sovereignty in the people...

...He also envisaged restrictions on freedom of the press as temporary...

...In a revolution of the type which we are now experiencing—a revolution of the word, a revolution of ideas and not of barbaric, violent acts—the solution cannot be simply that the old caste system give way to new privileges, in order solely that new groups take over the power positions and others again appropriate the monopoly of ideas, the implementation of justice, and the education of our children...

...The road traveled from the "Polish October" of 1956, with its affirmation of free speech, to the anti-Semitic, fascistic campaign waged by the Polish regime in repressing the students during the Warsaw riots of 1968, is ample proof that to survive principles must be transformed into legislation...

...The repression of dissent, started with the sentencing of writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, has continued in a succession of other trials and condemnations designed to bring recalcitrant intellectuals into line...

...Formalized, primitive Marxism continues to be accepted unquestioningly, as well as credited with the great technological advances made by the Russians...

...According to a public opinion survey published in Rude Pravo on July 13, in January only 17 percent of the population had confidence in the ability of the Party to lead the state...

...The following excerpts are from a special edition of the Czechoslovak newspaper, Tribuna Otevrenosti: "What is happening here is not a movement whose aim is the restoration of the old order, but a movement which is meant to carry the socialist revolution to a higher, more perfect stage of development, closer to its aims...

...But in both cases the primary motivating factor was nationalist sentiment in defiance of Russian domination...

...Pour quoi faire...

...In the effort to explain their position to the Russians, the present Czech leaders have portrayed the New Course as a revival rather than a betrayal of socialism?a revolution aimed at transforming an authoritarian, pseudo-socialist society into a humanitarian "socialist democracy...

...We are with those who reject the curse of racism, the humiliation of anti-Semitism, persecution and chauvinism, and the conceit of narrow nationalism...

...The common denominator of the Hungarian Freedom Fighters and the Polish reformists was that they were anti-Russian, and to the extent that they identified the Russians with socialism, also anti-socialist...

...became alienated from public life, concerned only with his personal economic and political survival...

...Should it be repressed by Soviet intimidation or armed intervention, the repercussions could cause a serious regression in international relations...

...The historical and social premises of the Czech revolution are entirely different, as have been its results...

...The average citizen Victor A. Velen, political analyst and reporter, recently returned from a visit to Prague...

...Polemicizing against the Czech philosopher Vaclav Hencl, who affirmed that socialism can be divided into authoritarian and democratic models, Pravda stated flatly: "There can be only one kind of socialism and that is Soviet socialism, which is the supreme form of democracy...

...One of the basic interests, and hence one of the necessities of a country having the cultural and industrial level of Czechoslovakia should be to open its borders to the entire world...

...Nor is there much chance of a similar evolution taking place in the Soviet Union in the near future, for it would be contrary to the almost exclusively autocratic Russian historical tradition...

...Indeed, the more a society relies on scientific solutions, the more "partitocracy" (to use the Italian expression for party rule) comes to resemble authoritarian rule, though still retaining its democratic image in the minds of the people...

...Czech philosophers have worked for the past eight years to break through this totalitarian vise, and the Prague spring owes much to their conclusions...

...The Czechs fully recognize this...

...The elevation of Marxist theory into a state religion—an empty conglomerate of hollow phrases and formulae?has precluded the objective analysis of real problems and consequently any attempt to solve them...

...And the fumes of self adulation have not begun to clear the altars...

...Socialism, if it wants to succeed, if it wants to be an attraction center for the world, cannot be built on hatred, suspicion, lies and violence, but, on the contrary, should offer man more freedom than any other system, because otherwise its creation would have been useless...

...Humanistic socialism, for whose existence or non-existence the struggle is taking place now in Czechoslovakia, is a revolutionary and liberating alternative...

...The Soviet Union is far less concerned about the independent course taken by Rumania, for instance, because the authoritarian, bureaucratic structure of the state has so far not been challenged there...

...I believe that to enclose oneself within a Chinese wall is an expression of weakness...

...Writing in the Italian Communist weekly Rinascita last June, Karel Kosik went to the heart of the matter: "The Czechoslovak events do not constitute one of the usual political crises, one of the usual economic crises, but rather a crisis in the underlying premises of contemporary ideas on reality as a system of general manipulation...

...He has written articles for life, Foreign Affairs, and Saturday Review...

...1 would like to express my conviction that either we will live in this country in freedom, or we will not live at all...

...Jiri Hanzelka, engineer...

...At no time since the Russian Revolution (with the exception of the resistance movements in World War II), has a European Communist party known such an abrupt increase in popular support...

...In contrast to Czechoslovakia, the protests of a few intellectuals and students have been lost among the believing mass...

...The period of Stalinist terror, and the years of uninspiring collective rule, narrowed down this base of power to an ossified governmental bureaucracy and a sterile Party apparatus...

...Since World War I, for example, it has become increasingly evident that Western parliamentary rule is an inadequate instrument of modern government...

...They are asking us whom we side with in this world...

...Despite the short period of reform and thaw under Khrushchev, the present Russian leadership not only identifies increasingly with the Stalinist past but is also reverting to Stalinist practices...

...As the war of nerves continues, the world is witnessing new and unequivocal proof of the fundamental differences between libertarian socialism and the authoritarianism of the Soviet stamp...

...This remolding of the political organs of state, based on the direct participation of all strata of the population, is a modernized version of the principles set forth by the early humanitarian socialists and anarchists: Saint-Simon, Fourier, Proudhon and Kropotkin...

...In place of Lenin's simplistic equation, "socialism plus electrification equals communism," the Czechs have devised a more advanced and at the same time more ancient equation, which could be rendered: "Human rights guaranteed in a democratic state, plus scientific progress, plus socialism might at some future date become communism...

...From January 1968 on, the Czechoslovak public has become aware of the beginnings of "participatory democracy": Political and special interest groups have mushroomed, the organizational and ideological activities of the Communist party have included a greater percentage of its membership...

...They have come to recognize that "man does not live by bread alone": A comparatively secure job and an advanced social security system has not been able to replace their yearning for certain fundamental political ideals...

...Eduard Goldstucker, President of the Writers Union...

...That is why, incidentally, Czechoslovakia was one of the few countries in Eastern Europe to have a prewar Communist party—the third strongest in the country—represented in Parliament...

...The possibility of direct Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia now appears to depend largely on Russia's judgment of its feasibility...

...Nevertheless, while the Czechoslovak experiment may not guarantee the jobs of the party bosses, if allowed to survive, it may well guarantee the future of socialism...

...We are with those who, gathered around the declaration of human rights, want our time to be friendlier than Hell...

...Conceivably, the replacement of parties by autonomous political and economic interest groups, intellectual clubs, youth circles, trade unions, agricultural cooperatives, etc., would constitute a permanent forum for national policy and planning much more responsive to the will of the people than the congresses and parliaments of the West...

...Lenin's mummy is still the most revered ikon of the Russian cathedral...

...Translated into the terms of East European politics, totalitarianism has meant the uncontested rule of an oligarchy—neither elected nor revocable—which claims not only to rule in the name of the proletariat but also to be its supreme expression...

...Immediately after World War II, power in these countries was held by a relatively large number of disciplined, idealistic Communists backed by the mass of the working class and the intellectuals...

...The solution is that today and tomorrow the entire nation should partake in these duties and responsibilities...

...All speculation is idle, of course, so long as Czechoslovakia remains in an almost impossible political situation...

...Although Lenin can in no sense be considered a democrat (when Spanish Socialist leader Urrutia de los Rios asked him about freedom in the Soviet state, he answered, "La liberie...

...This combination is basically nothing more than a return to pre-Marxian socialism, usually regarded by Communists as petit bourgeois and Utopian...

...Throughout their 20-year history, a chronic ailment of the so-called "peoples' democracies" has been a steadily diminishing national consensus...

...In fact, this oligarchy has no connection with the proletariat and maintains its power monopoly for the sake of power alone...

...Should it succeed, this union of democracy and socialism could become a political model for other countries to follow, in the West as well as in the East...

...It shared in the general Western European Enlightenment, and has had experience in the formation of democratic ideas and institutions...

...The sociological conditions needed to foster a widespread demand for democratization of the Soviet system are not as yet present...

...They must be anchored in institutions so that no change in line can sweep them away administratively, as has happened in Poland, for example...

...Today the matter of democratization is no longer only an affair of the [mythical] seven courageous men...