Ivan the lost
CZECHOSLOVAKIA DAVID BRYSON
David Bryson is a computer systems analyst employed by Shellmex and BP; he was visiting Czechoslovakia when the Warsaw Pact troops invaded.
I would have slept through the invasion of Prague if someone had not wakened me. The transport planes bringing the troops in were not jets, and heavy sleepers among the people of Prague must have wakened on Wednesday morning to find the occupation an accomplished fact. Altogether it was clear that the Russians attached some importance to the elements of surprise and anonymity. The tanks and troop carriers which were present in large numbers by 6 a.m. carried no national markings that I noticed, and the bulk of the armed personnel were in plain battledress. Indeed, for all we could tell before we heard any wireless bulletins, 'these might have been Czech troops going out to make a fight of it, and perhaps this was what -natives as well as visitors were meant to think. Certainly the nervous-looking acned youths who were pointing guns at passers-by with a careful 'air of menace were not the sort of troops one readily associates with a determined exercise-in oppression. This was the first sign of schizo- phrenia and uncertainty about the whole affair. There were others.
From the press reports I' have seen since my return, I .would not have recognised the precise mood, as it seemed to me, of the people of Prague. It was not really anger, as I.have been reading. Certainly there was no fear. It was partly disgust, but above all it was contempt. The Czechs are as level-headed and adult a race as ever you will meet. And they have been used to situations like this for over a century. They are perfectly able to govern themselves, and well they know it. Moreover, they are nature's own socialists. Even before the invasion, one had only to be a few hours in Prague to see that Dubcek's popularity was running at a level that any western politician might envy. Private conversations, and later the posters and graffiti, revealed why. He is a genuine socialist, egali- tarian in temperament and behaviour as well as in doctrine. This was what they wanted, and here they were being told that they were threatening the socialist system. No wonder they looked on the neurotic morons with the tanks like something that crawled out from under a stone.
For all the guns and all the killing the Russians were a pathetic sight. The beginning of the operation was competent enough. They knew their way around Prague, and they were quick in encircling the party headquarters and the ministries, whatever that was supposed to achieve. Beyond that they did not seem to know what to do. It was fascinating, in a dreary way, to .guess what their orders were. In a given situation they were completely unpredictable. One tank opened fire on people who threw stones at it. Another tank commander was hit on the head with a half-brick and did nothing at all. Some apparently did not know what country they were in, and I saw one tank crew asking the citizenry what were the colours they were wear- ing on their lapels. They were the Czech national red-white-and-blue tricolour. It had been seen everywhere since the Wednesday morning, and this incident took place on Thursday afternoon.
Again, I was present at one demonstration in the Old Town Square where the troops had, for once, dismounted. They looked utterly embar- rassed. Round at least half the tanks there were crowds of Czechs arguing with the crews. Arguing with them, asking them why—not simply abusing them. Occasionally the crews argued back. More often they sat looking glum. A lot of them looked as if they had oolds, and nearly all seemed bored beyond words, making fussy mechanical checks on their equipment just to fill in the time. I wonder whether this ex- plains why the Russians never came near the train I travelled back on. On the Thursday Russian soldiers had marched into a hotel in Prague and threatened to shoot on sight anyone taking photographs. On Friday they let out a trainload of people loaded with film. On Thurs- day they had searched, we heard, from head to foot anyone crossing the border. On Friday we were not even asked to make a customs declara- tion. I can only assume they were too disillu- sioned to make the effort.
And well they might have been. On Wednes- day morning at the Canadian Embassy an agitated young man pushed bullets-into the hand of someone at the gate, saying that he had just seen his comrades shot in the head. At that time the invaders presumably thought that some- thing made this worth doing. After even twenty-four hours of seeing red stars drawn with swastikas inside them and pigs marked 'Lissa% of hearing whistles and booing in Prague streets; of learning from every factory that I saw between Prague and the German border exactly where the workers' hearts lay, they might well have felt like giving up.
Plenty of Czechs asked us to tell everyone at home what we had seen. It will not make much difference telling it in Britain, although one is glad to respect their wishes. Dare we hope that those bewildered Russian soldiers might start spreading the word where it really counts?
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