The Terror in Czechoslovakia
The pathetic illusion that anyone who doubts or qialifies the absolute dominance and rectitude of Russian policy can now survive unmolested in the East European satellite countries dies hard. The revelation that the former Foreign Minister. Clementis. .who disappeared a month ago. is under arrest charged with spying and sabotage, is one more proof that it also dies horribly. The spate of abuse loosed upon him by his denouncer, the chair- man of the Slovak Communist Party ; the simultaneous charges made against other prominent Slovak and Czech Communists who have also been under a cloud in the past few months ; the ominous announcements of the results of the purge of the party's ranks, which is still in progress ; and the coincidence of all these events with a reduction of the bread ration—all go to confirm that there is no easy way out of the Russian Communist camp. But neither is there any respite for those who remain, however great their efforts to prove that they are completely broken to subservience. After all, Clementis himself went through the regradation of self-accusation before the Communist authorities, only to be told that his atonement was worthless and finally reduced to his present plight. The rumours that many of the surviving Czech leaders, including President Gottwald himself, are under suspicion all come from doubtful sources, but they are all perfectly convenient to the Russian purpose of killing all resistance by terror. Nobody is safe. And to all these tortures must be added the realisation that it was partly weakness of policy which prepared the way for the Communist coup of February, 1948, and partly the persistence of the illusion after that date that somehow the Russians could be outwitted and life under Communist rule made tolerable that put Czechoslovakia into a position from which there seems no escape short of the collapse of communism in Russia itself.
