Dec. 1975 VOL. XXIV

By Jan F. Triska

I am forced to conclude that the present party line has been "successful" in the sense that social values have been successfully destroyed, but that none of the conflicts which led to the crisis in the party and society in the 1960's [before 1968] have been solved.

S

o wrote Alexander Dubcek,* the eclipsed architect of the Prague Spring, in a letter to the Czechoslovak Federal Assembly reportedly penned on October 28, 1974, the 56th anniversary of the birth of Czechoslovakia in 1918. Dubcek's long, critical statement was later smuggled out of Czechoslovakia, allegedly by members of the socialist opposition, and received worldwide press coverage in mid-April 1975.' The same week saw publication in the West of an open letter from the noted playwright Vaclav Havel to Gustav Husak, Secretary General of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSC) and now also President of the Republic, protesting against the pervasive system of "rule by fear" in the country. At the end of April, Ludvik Vaculik, a prominent novelist and writer, sent a letter to Western news agencies in Prague complaining of

* Owing to the unavailability of types with certain diacritical marks, these marks have been omitted from most names and foreign words in the present article-Eds.

Mr. Triska, Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, is the American Political Science Association's representative on the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. He has written extensively on politics in Eastern Europe and Soviet foreign policy. He was in Czechoslovakia during the Soviet invasion of 1968 and has visited the CSSR many times since.

| police harassment against himself and other wellknown individuals.' And at the end of May, Karel Kosik, the eminent Marxist philosopher, reported similar acts of harrowing intimidation in a letter to his French colleague, Jean-Paul Sartre.*

These messages are just a few links in a long chain of denunciatory letters, interviews, statements, declarations, and documents that have been sent out of present-day Czechoslovakia and published abroad. Despite the outwardly quiet, orderly, and even somewhat prosperous façade of the country seven years after the Warsaw Pact invasion, the outward flow of critical and often poignant commentary suggests the existence of deep tensions in Czechoslovak society. The fact that the complainants, who include many ordinary citizens as well as known figures, have been willing to risk further retaliation by allowing-and in some cases actively seeking-publication of their protests in the West is an indication of how serious they themselves view the situation to be. In the author's judgment, the protests that have surfaced are not simply the sentiments of an alienated minority but reflect a mood of disaffection that is widespread among the people of Czechoslovakia a judgment based on a close, continuous study of the Czechoslovak scene and on personal observations and conversations during

1 Western coverage included publication of the letter in part and with comments in The New York Times (New York), The Observer and The Times (London), The Guardian (Manchester), Frankfurter Rundschau and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Frankfurt), Die Weit and Der Spiegel (Hamburg), Le Monde (Paris), Arbeiter Zeitung (Vienna), Dagens Nyheter (Stockholm), and many other major papers. 2 Havel's letter was sent to foreign correspondents by registered mail, as reported by Reuters and the German Press Agency (Deutsche Presse-Agentur-DPA), which released the news item. See also The Times (London), April 23, 1975.

3 Published, inter alia, in II Populo (Rome), April 30, 1975. • Published in Der Spiegel, June 9, 1975.

able to us Communists," Lajolo defined his purpose

in publishing the account as follows:

A Voice from the Grave

Prior to the spate of protest letters publicized last spring (which will be discussed in greater detail below), perhaps the most dramatic and revealing statements to emerge from Czechoslovakia were several messages issued by Dubcek's former colleague, the late Josef Smrkovsky who-as a member of the KSC Presidium and Chairman of the National Assembly in 1968-was one of the four most prominent personalities of the Prague Spring (together with Dubcek, Premier Oldrich Cernik, and National Front Chairman Frantisek Kriegel). Smrkovsky's statements were made in the years 1971 through 1973, when he was engaged in a losing struggle with bone cancer, to which he finally succumbed on January 15, 1974. Possibly his illness increased his determination to speak out with candor about past and present events; certainly, in any case, he issued some extraordinary and eloquent appeals addressed to a solution of the ills brought on by the occupation of Czechoslovakia. Some of these messages will be examined in a later context; of particular interest at this juncture are two taped interviews which were sent to and eventually made public by Davide Lajolo, Editor-in-Chief of the Italian weekly, Giorni-Vie Nuove, and a member of the Central Committee of the Italian Communist Party. Since the more recent of these two interviews deals with events dating back to the preinvasion era, it seems useful to discuss it first.

According to the published account, the interview was conducted in a hospital during the late stages of Smrkovsky's illness. In initiating a serialization of the interview on February 20, 1975, Lajolo announced in a foreword that he had received the tape before Smrkovsky's death but had complied with the Czech leader's wish to delay publication for one year. Avowing that "freedom cannot be sep

5 The interview was serialized in Giorni-Vie Nuove (Rome), Feb. 20, 1975, and subsequent issues. Extensive excerpts were republished in The Sunday Times (London), Feb. 23; Le Monde, Feb. 22; and Der Spiegel, Feb. 24.

We have never accepted the position that one socialist country should have on its territory armed forces of other socialist countries to guard it or guarantee it. . . . This publication is meant as a service to the countries and parties of the Warsaw Pact... to examine the question of the occupation anew. We know that consultations on this subject have taken place already; we know also that internal resistance in Czechoslovakia is stronger than in the other countries of the Warsaw Pact. . . . Is it just that so many Communists should live like Dubcek? Is it just that Smrkovsky had to die without the card of a party he had served his whole life?"

The substance of the interview provides new information on the behind-the-scenes events of the short-lived Dubcek era, as well as on the dissensions and uncertainties that plagued the reform Communists from the start. The account covered the period from the October 1967 plenum of the KSC Central Committee, which initiated the fall of the late and unlamented party boss, Antonin Novotny, to the post-invasion meeting of the Soviet leadership with those of the Czechoslovak leaders who were forcibly flown to Moscow in the last days of August 1968.

According to Smrkovsky, discussions in the Presidium in December 1967-January 1968 produced less disagreement among the top party members about forcing Novotny out than about who should succeed him. Dubcek's name at first evoked little enthusiasm, and he was in fact reluctant to accept the job. But Dubcek, then the party chief in Slovakia, was the only person against whom there was no real opposition from either the Slovaks or the Czechs. Once assured of the general support of all factions, he acceded to pressure and assumed the leadership.

Smrkovsky furnished many hints of the new regime's troubles with Moscow as well with anti-reform elements in the Communist Party. For example, on

• Emphasis added. Dubcek's present circumstances will be dealt with later in this paper. Smrkovsky's political profile is worth a brief note: having gained early prominence in the party, he was jailed in the 1950's and rehabilitated in the 1960's. In 1969, he was relieved of all his posts. In 1970, he happened to read an article in Rude pravo (Prague), the KSC's official daily, which referred to him as a former party member; that, he relates, is how he found out that he had been expelled.

May 6, 1968, Dubcek, Smrkovsky, Cernik, and Vasil Bilak, the ultra-conservative Slovak First Party Secretary, met with Soviet leaders in the Kremlin to discuss the Czechoslovak economic situation. According to Smrkovsky, the Prague delegation spent the day listening to Leonid Brezhnev's blistering criticism of recent developments in Czechoslovakia. Brezhnev supported his detailed attack with voluminous clippings from Czechoslovak newspapers and with other materials and reports evidently furnished by anti-Dubcek forces, some never before seen by Dubcek and his friends. In the ensuing discussion Bilak took the Soviet side. Discouraged by the bitter Soviet reproofs and weakened by Bilak's behavior, Dubcek, Smrkovsky and Cernik did not fare well in their mission to obtain Soviet help. When they asked for a loan of one-half a billion rubles, Aleksei Kosygin and others reiterated a position which, in Smrkovsky's view, was designed to limit Czechoslovakia's independence from the Soviet Union. Arguing that no one in the West or East was interested in Czechoslovak consumer products but that the socialist camp wanted Czechoslovak capital goods, the Soviet leaders apparently insisted on the need to continue emphasizing heavy industry (the old position of the "iron-eaters"), a policy which had made Czechoslovakia dependent on the USSR for both raw materials and markets and rendered its economy inefficient in the past.

Smrkovsky revealed some heretofore unknown details about the crescendoing confrontation between Prague and Moscow. For example, in the meeting at Cierna-nad-Tisou on July 31, 1968, Soviet Politburo member Piotr Shelest confronted the Prague delegation with an accusation that leaflets printed in Czechoslovakia were being circulated in Ruthenia formerly part of Czechoslovakia but now in the Soviet Ukraine (UKSSR), for which Shelest was immediately responsible-asking the population to secede from the USSR and join Czechoslovakia. According to Smrkovsky, the Czechoslovak team considered the accusation so baseless and provocative that it declared further negotiations impossible and walked out.

The next morning, Brezhnev and Dubcek "agreed" to convene a meeting of Warsaw Pact leaders in Bratislava on August 3. There, said Smrkovsky, the Soviet leaders presented a list of demands: that Frantisek Kriegel (whom one of the Soviet delegates in Cierna had derogatorily called a "Galician Jew") and KSC Central Committee Secretary Cestmir Cisar be fired; that the Dubcek regime quash the

effort to reintroduce a Social Democratic party in Czechoslovakia; that KAN, the Club of Committed Non-Party People, and K-231, the club of former political prisoners, be banned; and that the mass media be "streamlined" to impose effective restraints on their output. In Smrkovsky's view, the invasion ultimately took place because the Czechoslovak leaders felt unable to accede to all these demands.

Smrkovsky related the following personal account of the Warsaw Pact invasion and its aftermath. Early on the morning of August 21, 1968, Soviet troops entered the KSC Central Committee building in Prague and arrested the Czechoslovak leaders who were there, including Dubcek and Smrkovsky. They were flown the same day in two groups to destinations in Poland and the Soviet Ukraine. Eventually, they were brought before Brezhnev, Kosygin, and Nikolai Podorgny in the Central Committee building of the CPSU in Moscow to become part of the official Czechoslovak delegation. In the meantime, others in the delegation, including President Ludvik Svoboda, had arrived in Moscow on their own. Thus, all the major Czechoslovak figures (including Kriegel, who was originally forcibly detained nearby) were present and participated in the ensuing negotiations with the Soviet leadership in the Kremlin.

The agreement which emerged-an unequal treaty if there ever was one, negotiated and signed under duress was resisted by some Czechoslovak leaders more than by others. Dubcek alternately argued and collapsed; Cernik argued and cried; Smrkovsky gritted his teeth. The account pictures | President Svoboda as the most subservient to the Soviets and haughty to his colleagues, while Frantisek Kriegel was the most resistive to the Kremlin leaders' demands. Svoboda, a general, treated Kriegel as if he were a lowly private; but Kriegel-alone among the Czechoslavak representatives-refused to sign the document of capitulation. In spite of the risk to himself, Kriegel in fact never stopped insisting that the "agreement" be taken to Prague for the approval of the KSC Central Committee and the National Assembly before he would add his signature. According to Smrkovsky, the Soviet answers to this and similar suggestions were blunt and threatening. Boris Ponomarev, Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, kept saying:

If you don't sign today, you will sign in a week; if not in a week, then in two weeks; if not in two weeks, then in a month. . . . But you will sign.

Was the agreement valid under international law? Should the Czechoslovak leaders have signed under threat of personal harm? Did they, by signing, in fact "commit treason" against their country? By asking these questions, Smrkovsky implied answers critical of the capitulators, including himself. Virtually on his deathbed, he wanted to leave as clear a statement on the tragic events of 1968 as an eyewitness and participant could make.'

Smrkovsky on the Occupation

The second and earlier interview of Smrkovsky in Giorni-Vie Nuove was published on September 22, 1971. At the time it was taped, Smrkovsky was already ill with "a serious leg disease" (but reportedly did not yet know it was cancer), had spent several months in the hospital, could walk only on crutches, and was restricted to his home. Nonetheless, the interview was a vigorous presentation of his astute and insightful views of the imprint of the 1968 invasion on Czechoslovak society some three years after the event. The publication of the interview again reflected the firm, negative stand toward the invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia on the part of Davide Lajolo and many of his colleagues in the Italian Communist Party.

At the start of the interview, Smrkovsky talked about the dilemma confronting himself, his friends, and other purged party members, government officials, intellectuals, and professionals who had resisted accepting the invasion of Czechoslovakia as an act of "fraternal assistance" on the part of concerned allies:

They [those purged] are told: agree to the occupation of your country or starve. Once you have been sufficiently starved and your children have nothing to eat, you will give in anyway and change your views! That is the "struggle based on principle". Those who have done so [given in] to protect their families have had to violate their consciences, to live

7 It is noteworthy that Smrkovsky, upon returning from Moscow in 1968, had the courage to state in a radio broadcast in Prague on August 29: "Our decision-making was not easy. . . . We were aware that the [Moscow] decision may be regarded, by people and history, as unacceptable and treasonous." See the Czech-language émigré journal Svedectvi (Paris), Vol. 13, No. 49, 1975, p. 13.

An English translation is available in J. Jacobson, Ed., "Repression and Resistance in Czechoslovakia," a Special Section of New Politics (New York), Winter 1972, pp. 83-90. For the official Czechoslovak rebuttal, see Rude pravo, Sept. 25, 1971.

The late Josef Smrkovsky (left), then Chairman of the Czechoslovak National Assembly, with Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin, head of a four-member delegation which arrived in Prague on October 16, 1968, to sign the treaty on the "temporary sojourn" of Soviet troops on Czechoslovak territory.

-J. Finda for CTK via Eastfoto.

in shame, in a state of moral crisis, hating those who humiliated them. Those who have not [given in] are not allowed to work in [their professional] fields. They work as laborers, mostly on roads. . . . Professors are now stokers; former ambassadors are doormen; physicians, truck drivers; journalists, chauffeurs; etc.

Smrkovsky did draw a distinction between conditions today and those of the past: he said he did not think in the 1970's tens of thousands of people could be arrested, put in jail, tortured to obtain confessions, and executed on the scale that characterized the 1950's-mainly because world opinion was more influential now than it had been 20 years ago, and because "the power, experience, and level