Prague Upsets the Balance

...But the hard-liners are not without strong arguments...

...Soviet divisions were being moved around in ostentatious fashion...

...Czechoslovakia has been seriously straitjacketed by its dependence on the Soviet Union for oil, wheat and major raw materials, as well as by the obligation to sell its products on captive, soft currency markets...

...Yet the days of the old Comin-form, when Yugoslavia could be condemned and excommunicated for choosing a different road to Socialism, are long since past...

...is expected to return from exile soon...

...The answer seems to lie with Dub-cek, Premier Oldrich Cernik and the new breed of Czech leaders currently feeling their way carefully toward greater sovereignty...

...These would be sweeping measures for a Communist country and they are being looked upon with dismay by Czechoslovakia's allies...

...Whoever accedes to this request, giving advantageous terms, can be sure of earning political capital with the gesture...

...In East Berlin, Walter Ulbricht is frightened that improved relations between Prague and Bonn —which are a very real possibility —would further weaken his position and contaminate 17 million East Germans with similar ideas...

...By far the most complicated program will be the legal rehabilitation of some 30,000 people—victims of purges and pogroms during the worst Stalinist period—a process that could take up to 10 years...

...More has been written about Czechoslovakia in the past six months than in the previous 10 years...

...Having been more or less thrown into the top Party slot by force of circumstance, he has so far proved himself a pragmatist, taking an inordinately circumspect approach to pressing domestic problems and demonstrating a determination not to create a situation comparable to Poland and Hungary in 1956...

...Czechoslovakia is choosing its own model, different from both the Soviet and Yugoslav, and has not been excommunicated...

...An even earlier blow to the hardliners came last December, when Moscow's attempt to intervene and prevent the Czech revolution ended dismally...

...And by maintaining their clamor, they have made the continuing period of unrest less quiet than it might otherwise be...

...The Czechs then suggested that Hager would do well to read Pravda and get his facts straight...

...As Rousseau was the first to point out, "Sovereignty is an absolute power...

...For years the Czechs have watched with envy the Rumanians' increasing independence from Moscow...

...As a Czech commented at the time: "It is curious that whenever the Russians call a meeting to strengthen Communist unity, one more party opts out...

...Prodded by the Russians, East German ideologist Kurt Hager launched a trial balloon at Dresden by openly attacking the course of events in Czechoslovakia...

...Ranged against them are those resigned to the present trend of decentralization, a group which includes Premier Aleksei Kosygin...

...It depends equally, of course, on his skill at warding off the blandishments or attempted pressures from Moscow...

...Shortly after taking over as Party chief, he issued a clear warning against the dangers of overhasty action: "We cannot reach our targets merely by personnel changes, and radical change is impossible to> achieve at the rate of acceleration and improvisation which has distinguished the past weeks...

...Together with its most reliable allies—Poland, East Germany, and Bulgaria—the Soviet Union could still secure the all-important strategic line between Moscow and Magdeburg, replacing the old "iron triangle" by an "iron straight line...

...Anticipating a new religious tolerance, Frantisek Tom-asek, Deputy Archbishop of Prague and acting Primate, has said: "We consider the situation favorable for providing a settlement between State and Church...

...Dubcek is not a charismatic leader...

...Meeting informally with the students, Cisar persuaded them to accept the new President...

...Dubcek's present task is to allow the economists, planners, technocrats and trade experts who dominate this new government and the Party leadership sufficient independence to replace the mammoth "talk-in" of recent months with some tangible results...

...At the same time, Dubcek is a good Communist, Soviet trained yet realistic enough—perhaps because of this training—to recognize that a Soviet-type command economic and political system, evolved for a primitive peasant state, is not suited to a Central European society once as sophisticated and prosperous as Switzerland...

...The Communist trading organization does not suit the trade pattern or the economic needs of a relatively modem industrial society...

...Czechoslovakia's relations with its neighbors were further aggravated by Polish student demonstrations for more liberty along the Prague line...

...Although the wave of anti-Novot-nyism is moderate compared with past witch hunts, if it is permitted to gain momentum Czechoslovakia could sink back into a morass of recrimination instead of action...

...His continued success depends on an ability to institute unpopular measures which will cause rising prices, a redirection of labor, and probably some unemployment...

...Cardinal Jozef Beran, the Primate, together with the four bishops who were released from jail and banished to Rome in 1963...

...Czechs outside the country were told by friends and relatives to stay away...

...by a general discontent with the government's posture toward Israel during the Six Day War last June...

...Apart from a radical speed-up of economic reforms, Dubcek's Action Program promises to reshape the National Front "as it existed in the period of 1945-48...

...In the light of this trouble with dissidents among its former allies—Yugoslavia, Cuba, North Korea, North Vietnam, Rumania, and Czechoslovakia—the Kosygin group may now urge retrenchment in the form of a strong four-power alliance in Europe...

...Cestmir Cisar, the Central Committee secretary for cultural affairs: "We want Svoboda [freedom], but also Cisar [translated as emperor or kaiser] in the Hradcany Castle...

...Brave words, but indicative of Prague's present thinking...

...Tomasek has also predicted a new freedom for religious education and the Catholic press...

...They have already discovered that dealing with developing areas is strictly a one-way business...

...Suslov, the diehard ideologist with commendable powers of survival, was permitted to go ahead with the Budapest meeting, his own pet brain child, although it was considered probable in advance that the conference would merely expose Communist disarray...

...This incipient counterdemonstra-tion typifies the "revolution by installments" that has been going on in Czechoslovakia, sparked initially Kenneth Ames, a veteran correspondent, covers Central and East Europe for the London Economist...

...A new press law which would guarantee freedom of expression is to be worked out in consultation with journalists...

...Annoyed at being prevented from using their comecon surplus for trading elsewhere, the new leaders are determined to reorient Czech trade further toward Western countries...

...Besides the burning issue of personal liberty, a major driving force behind Prague's "quiet revolution" has been its great dissatisfaction with the cumbersome comecon machinery...

...Foreign travel has been promised as a right, not the privilege it has been until now...

...The tension was palpable at last month's meeting of the Warsaw Pact nations in Dresden when Dubcek, despite official disclaimers, was called upon to explain his plans...

...It was Antonin Novot-ny's fatal flaw that he—more Stalinist than the new men of Moscow since 1956—long resisted desperately needed economic changes and then accepted them only half-heartedly...

...it cannot be divided and remain sovereign...

...Gomulka immediately took repressive measures, causing Czech students to issue a manifesto of solidarity...

...In the process he has also given Czechs a new sense of confidence...

...Dubcek, whom some view as only a temporary compromise man, has made enormous political and popular gains...

...Leonid Brezhnev, it will be recalled, was sent packing with OLDRICH CERNIK what amounted to a snub from the anti-Novotny faction...

...Nevertheless, it is clear that throughout the Communist bloc a very real fear exists that the current Czech disease will be wildly contagious...

...To prevent this, he has sealed the East German-Czech frontier, banned newspapers from Czechoslovakia and subjected travellers to thorough searching...

...But there is certainly no question of the Czechs opting out of the Communist camp, either in one dramatic move or by slow stages...

...But the impact that the changes in Prague are likely to have on Czechoslovakia's role in Central Europe and on the rest of the Communist Woe has been less thoroughly explored...

...It is time we began thinking along the same lines...

...The make-up of the new Czech leadership—a group of young, liberal technocrats—has been analyzed in great detail in these pages and elsewhere (see "How Novotny Fell" by Pavel Tigrid, NL, January 29, and "Revising the Communist Establishment" by Zvi Gitelman, NL, March 25...

...Thus when Ludvik Svo-boda (whose name means "freedom") was named President, the students kept up a chant for their favorite, 47-year-old Dr...

...Nevertheless, to the consternation of the security police, there was a slight scuffle on the balcony of the Castle as the new head of state was presented with a bouquet bought by voluntary subscription among the students...

...There was nervous talk that tanks from East Germany could be in Prague within 24 hours...

...Can Moscow afford to sit back and watch devia-tionism erode its Western outposts...

...The tumultuous Writers' Union Congress last summer, student demonstrations, and widespread economic difficulties turned discontent into effective opposition...

...Nobody," said one Czech writer, "has yet found the mean position between the intolerance of Communism and the laissez-faire confusion of Western parliamentary democracy...

...Prague immediately lashed back, borrowing a leaf from the Rumanian book in an official note that protested "interference in the internal affairs of other states...

...Any citizen living in compliance with the State also needs full freedom for religious life...

...There is talk, for example, of attempting to raise a $400 million loan from the International Monetary Fund or other international financial sources to prime the pump...

...One clue to this was provided by Alexander Dubcek himself, at 46 a new-generation Communist leader...

...Aside from what this would do to the economic organization, Moscow has traditionally seen Prague as a vital strategic bulwark against West Germany...

...Hard-liners like Mikhail Suslov continue to advocate strong central control by Moscow over other Communist states...

...To date, the emphasis has been on the relatively easy task of blaming the previous regime for its iniquities, and devising various methods of ridding the nation of old war horses—by suicide, pensions, banishment to obscure factory posts...

...The old Social Democratic and Catholic parties, long proscribed, are already putting their heads gingerly above the parapet...

...Perhaps we shall set a precedent...

...Can the Czech Communist party seriously contemplate abdication of its own supreme position by opening the floodgates of political opposition...

...At the moment there are definite signs of divided opinion within the Soviet Party Presidium about the best way to handle the Czech liberalization...

...Sensing the Czech wrath, the Soviets promptly disowned Hager in a Pravda article...

...A few weeks later, the official Rumanian Party newspaper, Scinteia, was praising "the effervescent political activity that is a sustained process in the direction of democratic and progressive development...

...The Soviet reaction has been more restrained: After a long-postponed Central Committee meeting finally convened to discuss events in East Europe, a directive was issued that called for "internal Party discipline" and warned "against disruptive radical and Western capitalist influences" among its own people...

...Their more modest goal is a degree of independence from Soviet economic and political dictation and the development of a form of controlled democratic Socialism, while maintaining good relations with their large neighbor...

...That he has succeeded in avoiding the comparison is in large part due to the natural phlegmatism and discipline of the Czechs, who have shied away from bloody revolution since the days of Jan Hus...

...Following the Rumanian walkout at last February's World Communist Consultative Meeting in Budapest (which the Czechs renamed "Insultative Meeting"), one Czech official told me: "They are well out of tt...

...Both within the Communist orbit as a whole and within one country, Rousseau's truism shows the concept of "domestic Communism" to be an illusion...

...The question is whether Moscow will countenance a complete Czech withdrawal either from comecon or the Warsaw Pact...