Winter returns to Prague
Just fifteen months have passed since the removal of Mr Novotny from the first secre- taryship of the Czechoslovak communist party marked the opening of eastern Europe's finest spring since 1948. With the appoint-. went of Mr Husak to the same post last weekend winter has returned once more.
Mr Husak is a man of iron nerve and great determination. if he had it in mind to resist the Russian occupiers of his country he could be a far more dangerous enemy to them than Mr Dubcek. But he all too plainly has no such intention. To imagine that because he was imprisoned for many years by Stalin and his puppets he must be antipathetic to the demands of -their suc- cessor on his fellow-countrymen shows a woeful ignorance of the communist men- tality. He is a bigoted, narrow-minded, old- style communist with no knowledge of, and a profound distrust for, the West. He may be a Slovak nationalist: but this only means that he regards the Czech liberals as traitors to the Slav leaders in Moscow.
The best that can be said of the new regime is that at least the Czechs and Slovaks will know where they stand. The false dawn is over. The press and the trade unions must now return to dumb obedience. Soon, no doubt, the last western journalists, the only remaining channel of conimunica- tion to the outside world, will be ordered to withdraw. What the Russians like to call `normal conditions' will return.
Yet the experience of six months of free- dom has not been in vain. The Russians and their puppet rulers in eastern Europe have been served notice that the spirit of indi- vidual liberty and national identity cannot be destroyed by twenty years of alien tyranny. One day the people will rise again. The empire of Joseph Stalin is doomed as much as that of Franz Joseph was doomed at the turn of the century. Its end is not in doubt.
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