A People Dissolved

In the wake of East Berlin's 1953 bread riots, the Communist regime scolded the people for having forfeited the government's confidence and demanded that they work twice as hard to atone. Marxist Dramatist Bertolt Brecht offered a classic rejoinder. Instead of trying to rehabilitate such people, asked Brecht sarcastically, "wouldn't it be simpler for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?" It remained for Czechoslovakia, nearly two decades later, to take Brecht at his word.

Addressing 1,200 delegates at the 14th Congress of the Czechoslovak Communist Party last week in Prague's vast Congress Hall, First Secretary Gustav Husak announced that his two-year policy of normalization and consolidation had successfully annulled the "dangerous" reforms of the Alexander Dubcek era. Much of the session was a Te Deum to the Soviet Union, which still maintains 80,000 troops on Czechoslovak soil three years after invading the country and crushing Dubc's Prague Spring.

Illogical Decision. On hand to receive this plaudit was Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev, the man who in 1968 ordered troops from Russia and four other Warsaw Pact nations to invade Czechoslovakia. Confronted then by a popular, heavily publicized deviation from the socialist norm in Czechoslovakia, the Russians misjudged it. They let the Prague Spring reach full blossom, then felt compelled to crush it. Now, three years afterward, outside criticism of Soviet ham-handedness has largely faded. Thus last week's congress turned into a Brezhnev victory: he responded beamingly to Husak's "sincere thanks" for the 1968 intervention.

There was little to cheer about when the congress turned to another item of business: plotting a five-year economic plan. Husak denounced the principle of "market economy" toward which such other East bloc nations as Poland and Hungary are slowly but steadily moving. Czechoslovakia will instead adhere to "economic management by a single national plan." Thus the Czechoslovak leader committed his country to the same sort of stifling centralization that almost ruined its economy in pre-Dubc days and has plagued the Soviet Union's economy with ruinous inefficiencies. The illogic of such a decision was hardly surprising in a nation where invaders are hailed as liberators, popular leaders have become the publicly disgraced, and history is rewritten. The only hopeful sign is that Husak so far has successfully avoided the demands of hard-liners for show trials and complete rehabilitation of the old Stalinist leadership.

Party Purge. As it is, Czechoslovak institutions have been thoroughly altered since the reformist days of 1968. Within the party, screening commissions and intimidation have weeded out 500,000 errant Communists who backed Dubc's 1968 reforms, reducing membership to 1,200,000. Hoping to save their own skins, friends secretly denounced one another before the commission inquiring into activities under Dubc that are now considered questionable. Loss of party cards has meant loss of livelihood as well. Teachers have had to become taxi drivers; diplomats, hotel clerks; and intellectuals, gas-station attendants. Even the still popular Dubc is now a minor bureaucrat in the Slovak Ministry of Forests.

Czechoslovak culture has been all but smothered by normalization. Dozens of controversial magazines and newspapers are banned. The only books that can be published are those "helpful to socialism." Even the Czechoslovak Union of Gymnasts has had to pledge to "intensify the political education of all members." It is no wonder that, as TIME Correspondent Burton Pines cabled after a visit to Prague: "The population has become lifeless beyond cynicism."

Subtle Protest. To ease the pains of political reaction, the government has tried to hold down prices and make more consumer goods available, but shortages persist. Two-thirds of Czechoslovak shoe production is exported to the Soviet Union to help pay for the Soviet occupation, for instance, and even Husak in a recent party speech was forced to take note of the situation. "To put it plainly," he said, to get a proper fit "one must have either an excessively small or excessively large foot, or one has to cut one's own foot down or let it grow."

Absenteeism regularly affects about 5% of the work force, or 230,000 people, and consumption of alcoholic beverages has increased noticeably. One subtle indication of resentment is the array of vigil candles and fresh flowers regularly placed around the Prague grave of Jan Palach, the student who publicly immolated himself in 1969 to protest the Russian occupation.

Husak's defenders insist that he is compelled to pursue a tough course because of pressure from Moscow and is only waiting until after the 14th Congress to institute improvements. That may well be wishful thinking. Last month, at the Slovak Communist Party's Congress in Bratislava, he said: "Various reformers entertain the hope that there will be a more liberal period after the Party Congress. If they mean freedom for bourgeois tendencies, for laying the foundations for a new disruption, they should not entertain any illusions." He has also denounced Communist "radishes," meaning party members who are red outside but white--or uncommitted--on the inside. Apparently the Prague regime, having dissolved the people, may not elect a new one for a long, long time.

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