A MESSAGE IN FIRE

Newly and/or unexpectedly imposed tyranny can make people commit suicide.

SO wrote Tomas G. Masaryk, founder and first President of the Czechoslovak Republic, who, as a young man, published a scholarly book on suicide. Last week his words seemed tragically prophetic. Hitherto Czechoslovakia's resistance to last summer's Soviet invasion had ranged from almost comic escapades in sabotage, to reasoned defense of its reform measures in the press, to mass demonstrations of anger and resentment. Almost never was there desperation to be seen, not even among the most militant fatigue-jacketed students of Prague's Charles University.

Then, by a single desperate act, Czechoslovaks were more stunned and stirred than at any time since the invasion. In the main square of downtown Prague, a student had protested his country's loss of freedom by setting himself afire.

The suicide was 21-year-old Ian Palach, a quiet, bookish philosophy major at Charles University. Entering Wenceslas Square in the bustle of mid-afternoon traffic, Palach carefully removed his overcoat, poured a small can of gasoline over himself and struck a match. Instantly, to the horror of several dozen passersby, he turned into a human torch. Despite a bus dispatcher's frantic effort to smother the flames with his overcoat, Palach's body was ravaged. He died three days later.

Appalled Reaction. The purpose of Palach's self-immolation was contained in a note found in his overcoat pocket. To rescue Czechoslovakia from the "edge of hopelessness," he had written, a group of volunteers had decided to burn themselves, one by one, as a protest. Palach made two demands of the government: an end to censorship and the prohibition of the Soviets' occupation newspaper, Zpravy. Considering the finality of his act, they were remarkably modest requests. The note was signed, "Torch No. 1."

Suicide for political reasons is hardly a novel idea in Czechoslovakia. At least a score of Stalinist Party Boss Antonin Novotny's lieutenants took their own lives, usually by hanging, in the early days of Alexander Dubcek's regime. Shortly after the Stalinist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948, the Communists announced that Wartime Leader Jan Masaryk, son of Tomas, had jumped out of a window--a claim that seemed credible to many Czechoslovaks despite evidence that he was pushed. Many of Palach's mourners compared him to Jan Hus, the 15th century martyr who chose death at the stake rather than recant his religious views.

Still, there is no precedent in Czechoslovakia for Palach's attempt to provoke unrest by the deliberate, fiery kind of self-destruction that Buddhists used in South Viet Nam, and the first appalled reaction was to dismiss his act as the product of a deranged mind.

Duplicate Martyrdom. What caused that view to change was a feeling, even in the government, that Palach's death had to be taken as a serious political protest. While President Ludvik Svoboda pleaded against the repetition of "this horrible deed," he declared sympathetically on television that, "as a soldier, I am able to assess the self-denial and the personal courage of Jan Palach." Student and some union leaders quickly moved to channel the nation's horror and sympathy for Palach into full-scale political protest. First in Prague and then in other cities, they staged memorial marches, vowed to go on hunger strikes and sought meetings with government officials to take up Palach's two demands. Some 20,000 persons marched in a candlelight parade through Prague to the dead youth's university building and took up positions in the square fronting it; ironically, it was named Red Army Square. One group climbed up signposts and covered them over with new plaques reading "Jan Palach Square."

Palach reportedly made a deathbed plea to "let no one else do it." His companions in the protest death pact apparently thought better of their vow--or at least about the method. In Prague, a pretty 18-year-old coed named Blanka Nachazelova died with her head in a gas oven. She left behind a note saying that she should have been Torch No. 2 but had chosen to use gas out of fear of the pain. The Czechoslovak Interior Ministry insisted that she had been forced to kill herself by unspecified other parties.

In a bizarre and frightful contagion, no fewer than ten other young men, six inside Czechoslovakia and four elsewhere in Europe, set themselves ablaze in eight days following Palach's suicide. They included a 23-year-old Brno locksmith who burned himself in front of a memorial to Palach; a 24-year-old Czechoslovak serving time for robbery; and a 35-year-old Austrian dairy worker who had just been dismissed from his job. None apparently acted from political motives, and several had previous records of suicide attempts. Local authorities could only speculate that they thought they could somehow achieve Palach's martyrdom by duplicating his death.

Honor Guard. Thousands of mourners waited up to three hours to pass Palach's body as he lay in state at Charles University under a blanket of flowers. Seven university deans and rectors, dressed in their medieval robes, formed an honor guard around the coffin, and sympathizers throughout Prague pinned crape-trimmed miniature flags on their clothes.

At week's end half a million Czechoslovaks filled the streets of Prague as a huge funeral procession followed Palach's grey oak coffin from a statue of Jan Hus in a courtyard of the university. It was accompanied by four truckloads of flowers; a band sent the mournful strains of funeral dirges across the city, fearing violence at what had turned into a national hero's funeral, the government stage-managed most of the arrangements and issued a volley of pleas for calm. They proved unnecessary; partly out of respect, and partly perhaps because the nation was emotionally drained by Palach's deed, the throngs of mourners watched and listened in eerie silence, and quickly left for home when the ceremony ended. But in their numbers and reverence, they demonstrated that the anguish that drove Palach to his death still can stir his countrymen.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.