Anna's Agony

The humiliation of Czechoslovakia's Alexander Dubcek has been thoroughly documented from the days in August 1968 when he was held captive in Moscow to his firing as Prague's ambassador to Turkey and his expulsion from the Communist Party two weeks ago. Less well known but no less poignant has been the plight of Dubcek's attractive blonde wife Anna.

Just as Dubcek frequently found himself in the watchful company of the Soviet ambassador while in Turkey, so Anna was in the constant charge of the ambassador's wife. The wife of one Western ambassador recalls that when Anna paid her first official call, this uninvited "companion" sat, silent but attentive, through the visit. When the Western diplomat's wife repaid the call at the Czechoslovak embassy, she discovered the Soviet ambassador's wife sitting in a room within earshot of the main salon.

Anna Dubcek suffered other torments. Her three children were kept in Prague --presumably as hostages--throughout their parents' assignment to Ankara. When Dubcek was summoned home and fired, his wife was confined to the dreary Czechoslovak embassy compound. Prevented from leaving the embassy, Anna was unable to attend a wedding reception for the Chilean ambassador's daughter. Nonetheless, she sent a wedding gift, carefully enclosing both her and her husband's calling cards. A friend later telephoned to tell her that the gift had arrived without either one; another card had been substituted saying simply, "From the Embassy of Czechoslovakia." Anna broke down in tears.

Last week she was permitted to join her husband in Prague. Dubcek, who has been under treatment in Prague's Sanops Clinic for nervous depression, met her at the airport. Both looked strained, perhaps because their worries are not yet over. Ultra-conservatives are pressing their campaign to put Dubcek on trial for "crimes" committed during his leadership. Last week Radio Prague denounced him as a "renegade, traitor, revisionist and failure." For the time being, the Dubceks reportedly plan to return to Trencin, in their native Slovakia, where Alexander's 80-year-old mother has a house. There, the ex-leader of Czechoslovakia's Communist Party is expected to be assigned to a white-collar job in a factory.

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