Failure in Czechoslovakia

Cecil Parrott

Since world attention has been focused on human rights, the favourite occupation of politicians and press in Czechoslovakia has been to point a finger at the West and accuse it of reactivating the cold war. They stress the importance of detente, but in language which is highly combative. The Party Secretary, Bilak, has called for a 'militant struggle' against all forms and expressions of bourgeois ideology (such as human rights?). His slogan seems to be: 'Detente — and no holds barred'.

But such language is after all just what one would expect from the spokesmen of the most Stalinist member of the Bloc. The regime is very much on the defensive in the .face of mounting criticism from all over the globe, including some Communist parties. They must feel particularly unhappy at the ' formation of the International Committee for the Support of Charter 77, whose members include such world-famous writers as Saul Bellow, Heinrich Boll, Friedrich Diirrenmatt, Max Frisch, Graham Greene, Iris Murdoch and Tom Stoppard. They dare not admit to their public at home that figures like these are united in condemning their abuse of human rights. The regime's ineptitude in trying to defend the indefensible was exposed for all to see in two Panorama features in June and July. A deputy foreign minister was shown at a press conference at Stockholm making a remarkable statement, with which few would quarrel: 'Czechoslovakia belongs to the countries where human rights are instituted in a way as nowhere in the world.' As the Stockholm press and public are not easily hoodwinked, the official spokesman was understandably ill at ease and had to fortify himself frequently with large sips of strong black coffee. He was of course speaking under the hawkish gaze of apparatchiks from his ministry. It is not only the Chartists who are under surveillance in Czechoslovakia. Big Brother is watching the bureaucrats too.

Even more lame was the reply of the Czechoslovak delegate at the Belgrade Conference, when asked by a BBC interviewer whether he thought the arrest of people connected with Charter 77 compatible with the Helsinki Agreements. 'It is not a good chance to comment just now. . . Please, we can have a talk, a profound talk on human rights, but it has to be a pro found talk, not just to exchange a few words'. Viewers were left wondering when that 'profound talk' would be likely to take place.

The most striking sequence was the close-up shot of the STB (Czechoslovak Security Police) closely tailing two distinguished signatories of the Charter, Jirl Hajek and Frantisek Kriegel. Now there can be no doubt whatsoever about the loyalty of these two men to the ideals of Communism. Kriegel, reputedly one of the 'general staff' behind the Communist take-over in 1948, was chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Assembly when I was in Prague. I well remember how at Prague airport he needled Reginald Maudling, who was then out of office and had just come back from .a visit to Bonn, about the 'revanchist' policies of the Federal Republic, and how he later grilled the Foreign Secretary himself, Michael Stewart, on sensitive points of British foreign policy. But when the abject treaty with the Soviet Union, which Dubcek negotiated under duress in Moscow, came up for ratification in the National Assembly, not only was he one of the very few deputies who had the courage to vote against it, but he is protesting against it still.

Jirf Hajek, the former Foreign Minister, only became a Communist when the Party sivallowed the Social Democrat Party in 1948. As a left Social Democrat he was always under close scrutiny from above, but I can testify that in his functions as Deputy Foreign Minister of Education he vigorously pursued the Communist line and was far more articulate and effective than the deputy foreign ministers of today. Indeed he was quite unchallengeable on the subject of the Munich Agreements, which were his speciality.

It was a pity that neither Kriegel nor Hajek spoke English when they were interviewed on Panorama. Kriegel speaks German but cannot speak English. Hajek on the other hand is fluent not only in English but in other languages as well. He speaks Norwegian, because during the war he was in a concentration camp together with members of the Home Front, and I am sure that this will not be forgotten in Scandinavia. Of the other signatories to the Charter who were interviewed, General Sacher, a Czech war hero who is now dis graced, spoke English with some difficulty, while an editress, who had been sacked, and her highly qualified daughter, who had been turned down three times for the university, spoke through an interpreter. Was it because they could not speak English or, simply that they preferred not to? No, their inability to speak was an eloquent tes timony to the way Human Rights have been neglected in Czechoslovakia over the last twenty-nine years, when pupils in schools have had Russian — a language they hate — forced down their throats as an obligatory subject, while English, which they all want to learn, has had to take second place. And of course it has been very difficult indeed for ordinary mortals to get permission to travel to England. I know countless Czechs who have never been able to do so since 1948, except possibly for the few months of freedom in 1968. Hajek probably preferred to speak his own language on this occasion to ensure that what he said could not be misrepresented. It is a risky game to be chief Spokesman of the Chartists.

The plight of the editress's daughter is, alas, quite a common one. More and more reports come in of Chartists being deprived of their jobs and their families being expelled from schools and universities. This is a particularly hateful form of blackmail, typical of the Communist regime. I remember in the early sixties offering a lift home in my car to the former Czechoslovak minister in Sweden, whom I had met at a concert. Dr. Kucera had once been secretary to T. G. Masaryk, and we had become friends in Stockholm during the war. 'Are you mad?' he asked. 'Do you want me to have my children ejected from school just now when after so many years of trying I have at last succeeded in getting them a place?' His wife had died of cancer at the end of the war without seeing her country again. This was the unhappy fate the Communists reserved for her children. The present Minister of Education should be asked if he has ever heard of Comenius and whether he is aware that the great Moravian educational reformer and patriot believed in education without distinction of race, creed or colour. And the Minister of the Interior might well be reminded of Cornenius's saying: Omnia sponte fluant absint violentia rebus (Let everything happen freely and without violence). But Masaryk IS outlawed today and, if Comenius is nominally remembered, his principles are disregarded.

But, even if the regime has a guilty conscience on the question of human rights, it has always boasted that it is ahead of the capitalistic world in the way it looks after the material needs of its citizens. The Soviet bloc, it has always insisted, is immune from the diseases of capitalistic society — inflation, rising prices, unemployment, balance of Payment problems and so forth. But today the so-called 'oasis of prosperity', known as the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, is fast becoming eroded. It is of course the West Which is being blamed for !his, because the world has become so interdependent that the infection spreads despite the sound prophylactic methods of the Communist system.

Prices of many ranges of consumer goods, especially foodstuffs, are kept low thanks to heavy subsidies. But when these goods have to be imported and price rises make them dearer, the process of cushioning the consumer becomes more and more of a burden or the balance of payments and the budget. It is estimated for instance that only to pay for the annual increase in the price of coffee, 150,000 more Skoda cars would have to be exported. There have already been some rises in the retail prices of certain goods and the public are always expecting more. On one recent weekend people queued for hours in front of the petrol pumps, because they were convinced that new price rises would be imposed.

One thing the regime will never admit is that it is the Soviet Union which is responsible for most of their economic troubles. Imports from that country are getting more and more costly. By lowering the value of the crown in 1968 from 10 to 18 crowns to a rouble the Russians have resumed the time-honoured role they played under Stalin of being exploiters of the Czechoslovak economy. Czechoslovakia is dependent on the Soviet Union for its basic raw materials and fuel. The Russians have raised the price of oil twice since 1974 and Czechoslovakia cannot afford to increase its unfavourable trade balance with the Soviet Union, which is said now to have reached enormous proportions. Consequently the regime is now desperately seeking ways of covering its shortage of fuel. The strictest economy in the use of existing supplies will be applied and, among other desperate remedies, plans are on foot to increase the exploitation of the remaining deposits of brown coal, a low grade fuel which is responsible for the grime of Prague, penetrating into every corner of the houses, especially the linen cupboards. Unfortunately the seams lie under cities and communication lines, so that their exploitation will prove to be an expensive form of economy.

But the root of the evil goes much deeper than this. By means of Comecon the Soviet Union is forcing the Czechoslovak economy into its own straitjacket. The Czechs, who command the highest skills in the bloc and who could and should earn hard currency on high quality exports to the West, especially in engineering and electronics, are forced instead to' concentrate on lowquality products to meet Soviet and Cornecon needs. They have even seen specialisations, which they do particularly well in, taken away from them and implanted in some other member state of the Bloc, where the skills are not available. This inevitably leads to a decline in traditionally high standards and loss of skills, arid when this is combined with the retention of outdated and inefficient equipment we witness the sorry spectacle of one of the most highly industrialised countries in Central Europe failing to kee up with modernisation trends prevailing in the world outside. A recent sorry example of this is the new Skoda Estelle, described by the AA as 'at least ten years out of date'.

This drive towards fuller integration within Comecon holds out another peril for Czechoslovakia. The enforced standardisation of machine parts and electrical components in everything from computers and coloured TV sets to the whole working of the Prague Metro will enable the Soviet Union at any time to cripple Czechoslovak production or even bring it to a halt by withholding or failing to deliver supplies. This growing economic dependence on the Soviet Union, forced on Czechoslovakia by Soviet aggression, makes it more and more difficult for the victim to preserve any vestige of political independence.

The domestic situation, is far from rosy. Investment projects last much too long and are far too costly. The construction of the Metro, which is proceeding under the Soviet aegis, is a slow and extremely expensive business. Meanwhile the centre of Prague is hideously deformed. It is incredible that in 1977 only just over half of the main Prague — Brno — Bratislava road has been turned into a proper motorway. There is considerable overproduction in goods which have long ago lost their market, excessive stock-piling and a vast and uncontrollable waste of home-produced and imported materials, especially fuel and energy. The quality of products deteriorates more and more. In the general scramble in the last quarter of the year to catch up on the fulfilment of the State plan, shoddy work is produced in great haste, which only increases the losses of the various enterprises.

If there are no overt strikes, there are hidden ones, which take the form of absenteeism, dodging of shifts, idling during working hours. All this is openly admitted. It is rumoured that in some plants the workers only do three hours a day. Indra, the President of the National Assembly, and a member of the Praesidium of the Party, has had to remind workers that socialist democracy does not mean 'freedom to slack or live at other people's expense'. There are complaints of high amounts spent on representation and gifts, the unauthorised use of enterprise motor vehicles and state funds being squandered on coffee for 'elevenses'.

After the very unfavourable weather conditions in 1975 and 1976, which necessitated increased purchases of grain abroad, the harvest this year would, it was hoped, do something to ameliorate the poor state of agriculture, but just as a bumper crop was about to be brought in, the skies opened and many of the fields were flooded. Farmers are now counting the cost. No doubt the Soviet Ambassador, a former Minister of Agriculture, will be able to offer expert advice.

Altogether the ninth anniversary of the Soviet invasion reveals a picture of steadily worsening political and economic conditions.