Prague Balance Sheet

...Formal censorship was not contemplated, only the use of the Party controls within the media...

...Prague tv, for instance, suggested that the Soviet occupation newspaper, Zpravy, should be investigated by the Prosecutor General because it was not officially registered...

...Some officials here believe that the Tvflynar-Husak campaign is another Soviet miscalculation...

...The next step was to have been elections...

...THE OCCUPATION Prague Balance Sheet By Donald R. Shanor Prague Any doubt that Moscow, or anyone else, may have had about the continuing reaction to the Soviet presence here was erased October 28, the 50th anniversary of the Czechoslovak Republic...

...Shopgirls weep suddenly when discussing the freedom of the first half of the year and the slim hope for the future...

...His supporters have also succeeded in using the censored press to argue the necessity of carrying out Sik's program...

...Both men have taken a centrist line in assessing the political developments of the spring and summer, and in presenting their views on the course the Party should take in the future...

...But neither has any control over how their statements are puffed up or ignored in the bloc newspapers, and both have repeatedly criticized the intervention...

...Another favorite technique is to remind the Soviet and other Communist commentators that they are not observing their side of the Moscow agreement when they engage in polemics...

...Husak wants more power for the Slovak state...

...Under Soviet pressure, Dubcek dismissed the liberal directors of Prague radio and television...

...Even the Soviets, though, say they do not want the Stalinists to return...

...Since the invasion, of course, censorship has been reimposed, but it is hard to tell this from reading the papers or watching the evening news on television...

...Unwilling to establish an outright military government and unable to set up a collaborationist regime in the first days of the intervention, the Kremlin has so far had to accept Dubcek and his team...

...Mlynar, for example, said in a nationwide television speech that there was danger from "anti-Socialist tendencies which could imperil the reforms, and from sectarianism, conservatism, and attempts to revert to the pre-January situation...

...foreign affairs, defense, and internal security will be federal concerns...

...Still, if anyone at the Soviet Embassy or in its Central Committee building on the Moldau is keeping a record on the liberalization, he must have an uneven and perhaps contradictory balance sheet...

...Under the Federation plan approved last week, Czechs and Slovaks will gain autonomy with respect to education, justice, agriculture, and municipal development...

...The Kremlin appears to have gone from one miscalculation to another in its attempt to translate the success of its overwhelming military strength into political obedience...

...Parliament President Josef Smrkovsky and Moravian Communist leader Josef Spacek almost appear to be on the campaign trail...

...No doubt this is because a centrist approach appears to be the reformers' best chance of satisfying Moscow at present...

...Yet the remarkable aspect of the current situation is that so many of the reforms Alexander Dubcek and his colleagues promised have not been abandoned...

...Now this role has been assumed by the liaison officers, advisers, and forces of the Warsaw Pact...

...Ota Sik's hopes of replacing central planning with a market-oriented economy seem to depend on the persuasive powers of his successors...

...yet they have been pursuing the same centrist line as Husak and Mlynar...

...The victims of the Stalinist trials are still being rehabilitated, but the procedure has been stripped of its anti-Soviet aspects...

...The Soviets have sought to undermine Dubcek's standing by promoting other Party leaders...

...By denouncing the Stalinists, it offers the nation assurance that there will be no return to the pre-January conditions...

...Thus Dr...

...These, however, are minor slips compared to the central fact of political life in Prague: that the liberal leadership around Dubcek is largely intact and enjoys the overwhelming support of the people...

...One does not encounter attacks on the Russians, yet the Czech and Slovak journalists manage to get the message across...

...Opposed to Slovakia's "bourgeois nationalism" for years, Moscow at the present time apparently prefers to deal with two small states and parties rather than one of medium size...

...Mlynar is hoping for advancement within the Party...

...The two top Soviets on the scene, Ambassador Stepan Chervonenko and Deputy Foreign Minister Vassily Kuznetsov (who is serving as a sort of high commissioner) are trying a variety of methods to break the unity in the Czech Party Presidium and separate the leadership from the people...

...How long they will be deemed tolerable is another question...

...It concentrates on the mistakes of the past, when journalists were given too much freedom, and so avoids the need to single out today's anti-Socialist forces...

...Their experience with Indra must have reinforced this view...

...apparently no one has bothered to check the cafes since then...

...It is hard to predict how long this uneasy state of affairs can last...

...During the summer, revision of the show trials was often accompanied by sensational disclosures of Soviet participation...

...The mood in Prague is somber, to be sure, despite last week's strong displays of defiance...

...Although economic reformer Ota Sik had to be sacrificed to Soviet charges of putting Czechoslovakia on the road to capitalism, the book Donald R. Shanor, a previous contributor, reports on East European affairs for the Chicago Daily News...

...Now jobs and pensions are being restored with little publicity...

...Had the 14th Party Congress been held as scheduled last September, one official told me, the issue of stronger Party discipline in newspapers and broadcasting would have been discussed and action would have been taken...

...Zdenek Mlynar, Presidium member of the national Party, have been given extensive coverage in the Soviet and bloc press, while stories about Dubcek receive a few perfunctory paragraphs...

...The two men are so close to Dubcek that even to suspect them of collaborationist tendencies would be absurd...

...Judging from the continuing campaign in the occupying powers' press, this was not enough...

...Finally, the line is acceptable to everyone in the Czechoslovak leadership, although not, of course, to the journalists and and broadcasters who pushed the reforms beyond what the leaders wanted...

...Tens of thousands of people poured into the streets to participate in celebrations that soon turned into demonstrations against the occupying troops...

...Whatever Moscow's intentions, Dubcek is delegating an increasing amount of speech-making and explaining to his lieutenants...

...Gustav Husak, First Secretary of the Slovak Party, and Dr...

...The brief period when Western papers were sold freely ended with the August 21 invasion...

...It is no secret that efforts to oust the Prague liberals have been under way for some time...

...Officials speak of salvage and delay rather than victory...

...If this happened, familiar faces, voices, and by-lines would disappear suddenly, and public confidence might be shaken, so the Dubcek forces are putting it off as long as they can...

...Whether the changes in leadership are permanent remains uncertain...

...Although the Western press has been accused of importing counterrevolution, old ladies and students still read the Paris Herald-Tribune and Frankfurter Rundschau every morning in the gilt and marble cafe of the Smetana Concert Hall...

...But Husak and Mlynar have consistently been making unpleasant remarks about the new repressive measures, and this helps to enhance Dubcek's image...

...At the same time, it discourages men like Alois Indra, the Party Secretary who tried to collaborate with the Russians during the Moscow negotiations and spent a month in the hospital recuperating from the physical shock of his failure...

...Husak and Mlynar are ambitious...

...They can argue that Hungary has begun equally basic reforms...

...Among the last acts of the reform leadership before the occupation was the abolition of the Party's Eighth Department, which guided the affairs of the Defense and Interior ministries...

...This becomes clear from a brief rundown of the reforms...

...he wrote on the new economic system is still a best seller...

...they want the commentators, broadcasters and writers who ran the illegal stations and newspapers in August fired...

...Although weighted to keep the Communists in power, voters were to be offered more than one approved candidate...

...The reorganization of the country on a two-nation federal basis, meanwhile, seems close to achievement...

...They have already pointed out that the private sector in Poland and East Germany is much larger than in Czechoslovakia and might be worthy of study, but the irony is probably missed...

...The two moves would have affected the Party's leading role in the political affairs of the nation...

...On the question of the press, there is evidence that even without the invasion some sort of restrictions would exist by now...

...The Soviets, these officials point out, are trying to undermine Dubcek by forcing him to take unpopular measures, and by putting forward alternatives to his leadership...