RED AGAINST RED
Gedye, G. E. R.
Full Circle in Czechoslovakia Red Against Red By G. E. R. Gedye Vienna WELL-MEANING but wooly-minded liberals, who cling credulously to the hope that there is "another side" to the story of...
...For three years they even succeeded in doing so under Russian domination, while some of the forms of democracy were still being maintained...
...Thousands were rounded up nightly without any suggestion of political offenses and drafted without trial to forced labor...
...milk and butter practically disappeared...
...There will be disappearances like that of Clementis, show trials like that of the once-mighty Communist leader, Rajk, in Hungary...
...At the same time food imports were cut to increase imports of raw materials to supply Russia's demands, but the promised deliveries of foodstuffs from the East continued to drop...
...those who had wormed their way into the Communist movement to change its objectives would be rooted out...
...Gottwald himself has never been really trusted by Moscow...
...Soon the most casual social contact with foreigners involved arrest on a treason charge...
...Tea and coffee, where available, had long been out of reach of all but the plutocracy of Communism...
...Peasant women are now to be drafted in masses into industry...
...This time the terror in Czechoslovakia will doubtless arouse more interest than horror abroad...
...Meat became scarce and dear...
...20, came a surrender of the trade union group and the "national" Communists to the Stalinists and the reprieve—temporarily, at least—of Zapotocky and the dissidents...
...In November, 1949, the terror was extended to the farmers...
...It was common knowledge in Prague that three of the Cabinet ministers who had risen to power via the Communist trade unions, and had therefore still some contact with the masses—Zapotocky, Eozen Er-ban, and Augustin Kliment—had been trying to get Moscow to see that the Czech workers were at the end of their endurance...
...The disillusionment soon brought increasing passive resistance...
...I found out that the organization had been under attack from some patriotic organizations, and I relayed the information through others, stating it somewhat this way: " 'This is an organization of controversial nature, subject to attack by some patriotic groups who have charged it is subversive and Communistic...
...The story of the disappearance of Vladimir Clementis has doubtless been fully reported in the American press, but less well known may be the fact that a more important person vanished for a time from the public stage—Premier Zapotocky himself...
...And he can neither improve food supplies nor lower prices...
...Still Moscow was dissatisfied...
...The gravity of the situation was shown in Rude Pravo of Jan, 31, which announced non-fulfillment of the 1950 Plan in coal, steel tubes, cast iron, large boilers, bridges, cranes, and turbines...
...Having completed his surrender, Zapotocky was allowed to appear at the festive meeting of the Cabinet on Feb...
...Toward the end of 1950 the evidence of increased food shortages, rising prices, and failure to fulfill the production Plan in many important branches began to accumulate...
...Here they could listen to the hair-raising tales of the Viennese doctors, actors, and the vague and vaporizing professors of religion who a few years ago were blindly giving the cover of their distinguished names to the work of the "Friends of the Soviet Union" and to a whole gamut of bogus "Peace Committees," and have now been cured in the incipient stages of political pink-eye...
...On a charge of being "exploiters of labor," thousands of them were arrested and sent to labor camps...
...Many heads in the Communist Party whose names are little known abroad are likely to fall...
...The isolation of foreign diplomatic missions was completed...
...On the contrary, he has introduced bread cards...
...The whole sordid story of how the Communists fastened their iron grip in Czechoslovakia is well enough known now...
...Jones gave Watsonville papers a statement containing the following: " 'Information was sought of this office as to the nature of the organization, and whether or not its standing was such as to make one of its meetings an acceptable place for a public servant in conformity with the loyalty oath...
...Conspiracies" would be smashed...
...As a result, the heavy hand of Moscow is again descending on Czechoslovakia...
...There is no reason to assume it is, but as long as we are public servants we might prefer to avoid it.' " The Open Forum, official organ of the Southern California branch of the American Civil Liberties Union...
...Authenticated accounts of sabotage in key factories grew in volume, and the Communist press was filled with denunciations...
...Watsonville, Calif., seems to have a teacher, or two, who takes his loyalty oath seriously...
...On Feb...
...II By such admitted—and doubtless by many more unpublicized—surrenders, Zapotocky seems for the moment to have saved his neck...
...Instead of increased supplies, there is to be a fresh witch-hunt...
...many thousands more disappeared without trial into forced labor camps...
...Full Circle in Czechoslovakia Red Against Red By G. E. R. Gedye Vienna WELL-MEANING but wooly-minded liberals, who cling credulously to the hope that there is "another side" to the story of Communism in action, would benefit greatly from a brief stay in Vienna...
...25 to celebrate the third anniversary of the 1948 Putsch...
...They were opposed by the more ruthless of the trusted Stalinists...
...At least Superintendent of Schools L. L. Jones used purported inquiries as an excuse to check with his assemblyman and the district attorney's office and then to warn his teachers that they 'might prefer not to attend' a luncheon meeting of the United World Federalists...
...He was expelled from that city by Adolf Hitler when the Nazis annexed Austria and fled a Gestapo warrant in Prague when Hitler marched into Czechoslovakia more than a decade ago...
...and for seven years under the Nazis...
...others just disappeared...
...In an effort to justify his zeal to preserve the orthodoxy of thinking of his teachers Mr...
...Scores, if not hundreds, of death sentences were passed, and mostly carried out...
...Now came the elimination of shopkeepers and small professional members of the Middle Classes...
...The atmosphere of the Putsch of 1949 and of the peak terror of that year are back in Prague...
...Then, on Feb...
...It will be a clash of Communist against Communist...
...The peasants, forced into thousands of collectives, put up all the resistance they dared to government food collectors...
...The resulting terror reached its peak in 1949...
...The number of 14-year-old children employed in mines and foundries, it is announced, is "to be much higher than last year...
...G. E. R. GEDYE ranges over Central and Southeastern Europe for the London Observer and Tribune, from his post in Vienna...
...The shamelessly faked elections, the ruthless purging of those who were suspected of any kind of deviation, and the imprisonment and beating of political opponents—all these paved the way for the great Red objective —gearing Czechoslovak industry to the Russian war machine...
...The last gap in the spiritual iron curtain was thus closed, while the physical iron curtain of barbed wire belts and mine fields was being erected along the Austrian frontier...
...4 of this year Kliment, the Minister of Heavy Industry, publicly proclaimed that "many concerns are in arrears with their Plan fulfillment...
...None of the leaders of Czechoslovak Communism escaped reprimands for the growing anti-Stalinist spirit, which their severest methods failed to eradicate...
...Along with this steady deterioration of the national economy came the purges of malcontents who were labeled "Titoists," and the persecution of the Church...
...He blamed not only the workers in general, but accused the Communist factory committees, especially in the heavy machinery section, of lack of energy and enthusiasm for Communism...
...Here, too, the credulous would be only 30 miles from the frontier of Czechoslovakia, which is today providing the best object-lesson of where "fellow-travelism" and ideological Communism land their supporters...
...Now political prisoners began to be drafted to the mines...
...sugar ran short...
...The new premier Antonin Za-potocky (who has recently himself been under a cloud that has not yet fully lifted), began to prescribe high production quotas for the workers...
...Today the wheel has turned a full circle...
...One after another, all independent foreign journalists were expelled...
...When President Gottwald is forced to denounce publicly the vanished Communist Party Secretary Maria Svermova, widow of his close friend Sverma, in whose honor factories, a town, and postage stamps have been named, no one is safe...
...But in Vienna the Russians confiscated a newspaper which announced this fact under the headline "Hunger in Czechoslovakia...
...Who of the many Communist leaders distrusted by Moscow will fall victims to the new purge which either Zorin or Beria, the dreaded Russian N.K.V.D...
...When their disillusionment became evident in the summer of 1947, Moscow prepared the Putsch which six months later clamped down on all that remained of liberty in Czechoslovakia...
...Within a year the latter were responding with absenteeism and passive resistance...
...His books include "The Revolver Republic," "Heirs to the Hapsburgs," and "Fallen Bastion," published in the United States as "Betrayal in Central Europe...
...It was widely assumed that Zapotocky had been removed from office...
...A Cabinet meeting unanimously accepted Moscow's demands for the 1951 Plan, whose quotas were increased substantially above the unfulfilled quotas of 1950...
...Such essential consumer goods as toothbrushes and razor blades became almost unobtainable...
...He spoke in words designed as much to restore Moscow's confidence in himself as to spread jitters among his colleagues...
...One remedy now being tried is the universal introduction of third shifts in the factories, made possible by giving individual workers more machines to supervise and by drafting more women into industry...
...No one knows better than he, who himself springs from the stubborn Czech workers, that unless the rigid living conditions are vastly improved, they will not even attempt to satisfy the paper promises to Moscow...
...The secret police, the armed militia, will once again pounce on nervously sleeping citizens in the small hours...
...chief, are believed to be carrying through...
...Only this time it is a Putsch of Communists against Communists which is •-impending...
...Zapotocky opened the campaign by denouncing the "incorrigible offenders" whose absenteeism in the mines had reached 37...
...and the fruit and vegetable markets, once a riot of color and plenty, became rows of drab and almost empty stalls...
...Then it became evident that hostility to Stalinist absolutism was growing among a large proportion of the 38% who had voted Communist in the 1946 elections...
...Leading Communists are now disappearing from their usual places of business...
...Thousands went to prison with heavy sentences...
...For four centuries the Czechs preserved their individualism under the Hapsburgs...
...A terror in which national Communists are the victims of Stalinists is in progress...
Vol. 15 • April 1951 • No. 4
