Prague Notebook
By CYRIL RAY
ONDON in 1948,' was how a local expert here, Lowho knows both countries, summed up the economic- situation in Prague. Some of the country's best products in the way of consumer goods are still for export only; there are some shortages of quite ordinary things, though they arc much less frequent than they were, but still sometimes happening suddenly and unexpectedly.. And hard times are still freshly enough remem- bered for people to fuss a little about them— queueing and even hoarding before they need to and making matters worse. Only a day or so ago my wife and I, having admired shop after greengrocer's shop, with their windows heaped in a green and scarlet glory of peppers and tomatoes, crisp baby cucumbers, onions and celeriac and radishes and young carrots—some of them polythene-wrapped, too, in the self- service stores which are springing up here, along with espresso bars—turned a corner to find a long queue waiting patiently for potatoes.
Silly little Shortages of this kind, in what is essentially and obviously a prosperous country, seem to be due often to the way the regime goes on niggling at the farmer over quotas and 'norms.' In his c:tiky Czech way, the farmer then decides to go by the hook instead of 'adapting himself to the whims of the market, and somebody in turn has to cat even more dumplings than usual and go without his boiled potatoes. The niggling is unnecessary : the land isn't badly looked after or unproductive—between the Austrian frontier and Prague the diesel train passes pretty villages where the cottages are newly painted and gay with window-boxes, and the sheaves stand fat in the fields. Nor does Czechoslovakia aim to be able to feed itself from its own farms—with her heavy machinery and finished goods she can buy more food than she can eat from Bulgaria, Hun- gary and the Soviet Union: she is the Belgium of the Soviet bloc.
But the functionaries feel that farmers must toe the line alon.g with miners and factory workers --functionaries everywhere being the sort of folk who don't understand that although' you can always build another factory, you can't create fields out of nothing. And the tension between functionary and farmer may be why there are always rumours of unrest in Slovakia which, although rapidly being semi-industrialised, is still a country of bumpkins, according to the Czechs, ' ho arc regarded, in their turn, as city slickers.
Stories of unrest in Czechoslovakia are always worth a grain of salt. These aren't Poles or Hun-! garians, but a people who have always pros- pered by comparison, by knowing which side their bread is buttered, by playing safe. (The Government preaches atheism, as good Com- munists must, but lamps burn before shrines in the middle of Prague, and shop windows offer devotional pictures, crucifixes and rosaries: if you hear a Czech talking to himself, he is prob- ably saying, 'Well, you never know.')
And Western onlookers here have been scoffing at the recent American news: agency story from Vienna about a- strike in Slovakia put down with bloodshed—Vienna being a hot- bed of stories that originate in tall stories from emigres or, in this case, the Western students of Czechoslovak newspapers have been telling me, probably from an eager journalist's misreading of a Slovak newspaper feature article about the bad old days when the bloody bourgeoisie of Dr. Benes sent its gendarmes to butcher the miners— as though any such event today would ever get reported. What gave some show of plausibility to the story at first was that Western diplomatists swanning in Slovakia found some ad hoc and unofficial restrictions on their movements—roads closed, hotels full—which have now been lifted and which the diplomatists themselves put down to army exercises.
You hear another echo from the Britain of ten years ago when told that although many a skilled worker or prosperous farmer can afford a small car, there's a two-year wait, even if the would-be buyer is pushed up the priority list by his trade union or his farmers' co-operative. At the tourist rate of exchange—twice as favourable
to sterling as the official rate, but a rough-; ready, guide to values—the. small Fiats Renaults which the Government, rather sun ingly, imports cost about £500 apiece, and Skoda, rather bigger, about £700. Some &is] fellows fancy the new two-seater sports St at over £1,000. All told, 22,000 cars were last year, to Ministries and private buyers, 13 Of them from Czech factories. The biggest si import—bigger than that of the Soviet Pohi' and Moskwiches—was of the German Borg" By Western standards there is still very I private motoring, but there is one motor-bic or scooter to every thirteen inhabitants of Cze slovakia : even allowing for those used by army and the police, still a good deal more I one to every thirteen young . men—which have something to do with the 695 deaths on Czech roads in the first six Months of this ) Compared with the plump and, perf( pedestrian Muscovite girls, the neat young won who flash gaily by on the pillions, pant:dot' or in backless summer frocks, remarkably noel proportioned on the Czech diet of boiled he' dumplings and beer, look as though they hard need the shop that is promised for Septent 17, with a floodlit' mountain in the window experts inside to advise, so the news!), Svobodne Sim.° has been promising, on latest styles and the most becoming colours, wonder some of the grognards of the Soviet guard mumble that the Czechs have always it too easy; never had to start from scratch fight for it, like some, but simply and soli took over a going concern; that—not to putt' fine a point on it—they're nothing but a bull of bloody bourgeois themselves.
Certainly, it is hard to believe, as you the busy streets and window-gaze; lean over' Charles Bridge and see the youngsters splash' in the river or flirting in punts; drink Moray' Riesling or Pilsener beer in wine-bar or t c, cellar; that this isn't as jolly a place as any. S"' that dominating this loveliest and least spoil' of European capitals, from a bluff high abil the river, is a gigantic figure of Stalin; and you mention the Masaryks to a Czech he sn politely and turns the conversation.
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