No chance for the Czechs

Peter Kemp

Prague After the train from Vienna to Prague leaves the Austrian frontier station at Gmund it crosses a small iron bridge to the Czech town of Cesky Velenice. Looking through the carriage window the traveller is left in no doubt that he is entering a different world. The thick, high barbedevire fence with its watchtowers and the meticulously cleared open space of the killing ground in front of it, planted with mines and covered by machine-guns, announce his arrival in a People's Democracy. The frontier control officers come aboard, to make sure he is carrying no 'subversive' literature and no Czech currency — the official rate Inside the country is eighteen crowns for £1, but it can be exchanged in Vienna for about fPrlY-eight — and then, after this sharp brush with socialist reality, he is free to enjoy the beauty of southern Bonemia's gently rolling hills and quiet woods. P. rague, 'the Golden City', with its myriad Spires and superb baroque architecture, Must be the most lovely of Central EuroPean capitals, as well as the only one untouched by the ravages of modern war, an d— except on the outskirts — the equally disfiguring intrusions of modern development; we can be thankful that 'Progress' came late to Prague. Nevertheless it has a somewhat dowdy appearance these days. The splendid palaces and churches are Poorly maintained, with grimy walls and Peeling plaster; this is, to be fair, partly the result of atmospheric pollution, for there is Co Clean Air Act nor could one be applied. The churches are usually empty and scarcely lit within, although one or two are allbwed to hold services on Sunday. I attended one, in St Jacob's church in the 43, lel City, which was packed to capacity; but .1 had to remember that the congregation had come from all over Prague (there was hardly anywhere else open for worship) and many of them had come to hear the music — a Haydn mass superbly sung— rather than to Pray.

In economic terms at least the Czech government, unpopular as it is, can claim so me measure of success. There was a steep rise in living standards, especially in consumer goods, between 1970 and 1975, and Czechoslovakia now enjoys, along with Hungary and East Germany, the highest standard of living in Eastern Europe. This sounds a modest enough claim in all truth, but a visitor is impressed by the large number of private cars on the streets — they Make the streets quite a hazard to cross — and the shops are well stocked, without long queues even in food stores; food is not expensive because it is subsidised — this includes coffee, which, regarded as a necessity, not a luxury, is cheaper than in Britain. Pivnicy (beer cellars) and restaurants are full, though there is little conviviality among the patrons — indeed, I scarcely saw a smile in Prague. Many Prague citizens own chatas — country cottages — where they drive off at weekends in their Skodas and Ladas.

The Husak regime, which is well aware of its unpopularity, has concentrated on economic achievement to distract the minds of its subjects from their total lack of civil liberties. But from frequent conversations with Czechs it struck me that this prosperity is more apparent than real. A car and a chata, they told me, are status symbols for which people will make extraordinary sacrifices in other, more essential, directions; even so, it is only the most privileged groups of this society — those in good standing with the Party — who can afford either one, and even then the chata may be no more than a dilapidated shack.

The average monthly wage is between 2,000 and 2,500 crowns for skilled workers, although favoured groups like miners earn as much as 4,000 (agricultural workers receive less than 2,000, though they have compensations in cheaper housing and in kind). A new car costs 50,000 crowns, and a reasonable second hand car about 30,000. The hardest hit seem to be young professional workers recently qualified, especially those with families. I talked to one young couple, an engineer from the High Tatra and his pretty wife, who told me life in Prague was a perpetual struggle to make ends meet. His salary was 1,400 crowns a month, and the monthly rent for one room in a flat was 600 crowns, but his job was in Prague, and so, 'what else can we do but live here?'

A major worry for the government is how to maintain the standard of living, such as it is. Czech industry is ageing and unable any longer to produce many goods up to Western standards, especially in the field of technology. Yet the Czechs must sell to the West in order to obtain hard currency. In the first place they need to buy Western technology; secondly they will soon need to buy oil — and from outside Comecon. Russian production of oil is reaching its peak, and in the 1980s there won't be enough of it to meet the demands of Eastern Europe; Czechoslovakia, like the other satellites, will have to buy ft-on? OPEC — in hard currency. This is a real problem.

Moreover, their inability to sell to the West obliges the Czechs to rely increasingly for their markets on the USSR. But the more they depend on the Soviet Union for a market, the slower will their technical stan dards rise. This vicious circle can have political as well as economic consequences. Like all Eastern European countries, the Czechs would like, if not independence from the Soviet Union —they know this is impossible, given the supine condition of the West — at least greater manoeuvrability within the Russian sphere. Their only chance of achieving it lies in selling to the West. The economy must be revitalised, and this is where political difficulties intrude. In the first place there is a clear need to cut subsidies, which means raising prices and so increasing discontent. More important, if there is to be economic reform — less cen tralization and a relaxing of bureaucratic control — there must also be some political reform, for the one will not succeed without the other. Thus the wheel is turning full circle, and the country is moving again towards the 'pre-Dubcek' situation of 1967 and the last days of Novotny — a development intensely worrying to the government, who well know the Russians will never tolerate another 'Prague Spring'.

The Husak regime is extraordinarily sensitive to the wishes of the Russians, and Czech foreign policy, for example, is virtually a carbon copy of the Soviet Union's. But the government is deeply concerned to regain some of the international respectability lost when Husak was installed by Russian tanks in place of Dubcek. There is a sustained effort, therefore, to establish contacts with all countries. But the regime knows its standing in the West will not improve as long as it continues to persecute dissidents. And so there is a continual exchange of visits with countries of the Third World — many of whom treat their own dissidents no better than the Czechs.

In line with Russian requirements, internal policy is one of extreme caution and the avoidance of any risk of a repetition of 1968. This means, of course, the suppression of all those civil rights, such as free speech, which we take for granted in the West. It also means a strict censorship, the manipulation of news, and even the rewriting of history. During this year's celebrations of the sixtieth anniversary of the foundation of the Czech Republic the only references allowed to Thomas Masaryk. its founder, were one or two officially inspired editorials criticising him for being 'unduly influenced by the West', even the old Masaryk railway station has been renamed the Central Station. No mention is permitted of the Czech — or the Polish — pilots who helped to win the Battle of Britain, but for which Czechoslovakia could still be a Nazi protectorate; only Soviet airmen and Soviet troops may be praised.

After the Russian invasion of 1968 there was no bloodbath, like the sequel to the Hungarian revolution of 1956, and for this restraint some people — though Charter 77 supporters ridicule the idea — give the credit to Husak himself, who suffered imprisonment in the Slansky trials of the 1950s. President and Party First Secretary, Husak lives, isolated and unloved, in the fine Hradcany palace on the citadel overlooking Prague. His prime minister is an old hardliner, Lubomir Strougal, but the most sinister member of this governing trio is Vasil Bilak, Secretary of the eleven-member Presidium of the Party Central Commiteee — in effect the decision-making organ of the Party. Bilak, of Ukrainian not Czechoslovak extraction, was a member of the Presidium at the time of the Russian invasion, and is generally believed to have collaborated with the Kremlin in its planning and execution.

After 1968 about a third of the Party lost their membership, and all those actively concerned in the Prague Spring' were dismissed from their posts — some went to prison, though not with the savage sentences imposed on Soviet dissidents. But even today in Prague you may well find your taxi driver is a former professor of Greek literature, or your waiter a doctor of law. Dubcek himself has a menial job in the transport section of the Forestry Department near Bratislava. However, there has been some rehabilitation since 1970 of his less important followers; and on 4 January this year Rude Pravo published a short signed article suggesting that people should not be condemned forever for 'past political sins'.

The regime's treatment of those who oppose or disagree with it is a denial of every human rights declaration Czechoslovakia — and the Soviet Union — has signed, from San Francisco to Helsinki; though it is fair to say it has not imposed any death penalty or long prison sentence. The charges usually allege 'incitement', 'subversion' or the distribution of 'hostile literature; sentences may vary from fourteen months (suspended) to three and a half years— as they did in the October 1977 trial of the playwright Vaclav Havel and three other signatories of Charter 77.

Charter 77 was conceived as a protest against the total failure of the Husak regime to honour its international obligations on human rights. The first manifesto appeared on 1 January 1977, but did not reach the West until six days later. It had one hundred signatories and now has over a thousand. It poses a difficulty for the Czech authorities, for after Helsinki even they cannot declare it illegal; secondly, they are unwilling to give it and its supporters too much publicity. Hence the indictments for 'subversion' or 'incitement'. Because the trials are closed, the charges cannot be challenged in court.

Although treatment of Charter 77 supporters is comparatively mild by Russian — but not by civilised — standards, they suffer, even when not in prison, continual harassment by the authorities and the police. One of them, Dr Zdenek Mlynar, handed me in Vienna a copy of a document dismissing him from his employment in the entomology section of the National Museum because: 'You joined the slanderous• and seditious campaign known as Charter 77, which is aimed against the principles of the Constitution and against the social and state order of the Republic . „ The public indignation at this act of yours is of such a nature that your further stay would disrupt the creative atmosphere of the working collective'. This document is dated 7 January 1977.

Dr Zelenkova, a skilled surgeon and anaesthetist, has been forbidden to practise since she signed the Charter last year — although her skills are sorely needed in Czechoslovakia. The authorities apply the meanest forms of blackmail to Charter signatories, expelling their children from school and from university. Sometimes the charges contain more than a touch of force. Dr Ladislavlis, a former senior Party official who signed the human rights manifesto, lost his post and became a forester; he kept a few sheep and goats, which grazed on the land beside the railway. Although he had permission for them to graze there, he was arrested last July and charged with 'theft of Socialist property'.

Charter 77 signatories are under constant surveillance by the police, who often prevent their friends from visiting them. Violence is not uncommon, Last May four dissidents trying to visit Ladislav Hejdanek, one of the three spokesmen for Charter 77, were set upon by plain clothes police, dragged away, blindfolded, seriously beaten up and turned loose in a forest near Prague. In October Czech and Polish police combined to break up a meeting on the frontier between Charter 77 and KOR (the Polish 'Public Self-Defence Committee'). Among the Czechs arrested was Dr Jaroslav Sabata, another of the spokesmen for Charter 77. He was brutally beaten by the police, and was seen being led away with a bloody face. He has been held in custody ever since, and is to be tried within the next fortnight for 'assaulting the police'.

To some of the signatories of Charter 77 — and not necessarily the least troublesome — the authorities have offered a choice; 'It is emigration or prison for you,' police told the writer Vilem Hejl, 'take your choice'. This is the consequence of the Austrian Chancellor Kreisky's initiative in January 1977, when he offered asylum to all who had signed Charter 77. In fact the Czech authorities have only applied the emigration option to a few of them; they have given no such choice to other would-be exiles.

There was an extensive round-up of dissidents just before Brezhnev's visit to Czechoslovakia last May; as he left, the Charter 77 movement published a manifesto criticising official persecution of human rights activists as 'almost an everyday event'. There was an even larger round-up in the period leading up to the tenth anniversary of the Russian invasion, when Charter 77 published a protest at the continuing occupation of the country by Soviet troops. In each case the prisoners were released at the end of the period of crisis, but continued to be harassed by the police in their homes. According to Czech emigres the Kremlin is increasingly worried by the growing contacts between East European dissidents, as well as their activities within the various countries. 'It is difficult to talk of a "human rights inter national" ', commented Dr Mlynar. 'but the trend is already there'. On the other hand, within Czechoslovakia there is considerable scepticism about the value of Charter 77 despite the widespread sympathy it enjoys'As long as people don't believe that the international balance of power will allow Czechoslovakia to develop independently , said Dr Mlynar, 'they see no reason to struggle against the regime'. It was depre ssing, though hardly surprising, to note the low esteem in which the Czechs hold the West. Apart from any memories of Munich, we have failed, in their eyes, to make a stand for freedom on at least three occasions: In 1948, when the Communist coup, backed by the Russians, imposed Stalinism on the country; in 1956, when we made no atternPt to prevent the massacre of the Hungarians; and in 1968, when we acquiesced the Russian invasion.

Dr Mlynar was Secretary of the PartY Central Commiteee under Dubcek; with other Czech leaders he was transported, forcibly and in handcuffs, to Moscow after the Soviet invasion. There, he told nrie, Brezhnev said to them: 'What do you think anyone is going to do to help you? I have assurances from President Johnson that the United States will do nothing to help the Czechs to resist Russian troops. As for the Euro-Communists', Brezhnev added temptuously, 'they are of no importance ni the next fifty years'. Britain's own standing was certainly not improved by that dis credited clown Harold Wilson, when, as leader of the Opposition, he went to Prague in 1973, and told the Czechs, 'It is time to turn our backs on the events of 1968'.

With the Russian hand so heavy nfiall them, the Czechs regard their present gov ernment with weary resignation and muted discontent. It has to be muted because the StB (secret police) are vigorous in suP pressing any demonstration of dissent, and they make liberal use of informers. Bat after the high hopes raised in 1968 nothing now remains but bitterness and disillusion Except for the few courageous activists — all under close police surveillance — people are unwilling even to discuss political matters. In Slovakia there is less reticence, for the Slovaks are a more ebullient race than the taciturn Bohemians, and more outspokea. On the other hand, they find less to criticise, because under the present constitution they have their own regional government, and more repersentation in the Federal government than they had under Masaryk. It 15 significant that, so far as I am aware, there are no Slovak signatories to Charter 77 In that collection of unpopular governments which is Eastern Europe, the Czechoslovak regime must be the least loved by its subjects. But real hatred in that country — and this is true of Czechs, Moravians and Slovaks alike — is directed at the Russians.