World: A TIGHTER VISE ON CZECHOSLOVAKIA

As if in a nightmare, the dreadful events of last summer seemed to be recurring. Across the bridges of the Vltava River, 68 tanks rumbled noisily into Prague. The acrid smell of tear gas hung over Wenceslas Square, where troopers wielding submachine guns faced angry demonstrators. Even the cries of the crowd had a haunting familiarity. “We want Dubček!” shouted the demonstrators, paying tribute to the man whose attempt to give Communism a more human visage had brought Czechoslovakia a heady, hopeful “Springtime of Freedom.” But there was a tragic difference. Last August, the tanks and troopers were Soviet. Last week, on the first anniversary of the invasion, the Czechoslovaks served as their own warders.

Crimean Warning. They had little choice. Three weeks earlier, Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev had summoned the Czechoslovak leaders to the Crimea, where he delivered a grim warning: If the Czechoslovaks themselves did not suppress the protests, the Soviets would send in their tanks to crush the demonstrators. As the country marked its “Day of Shame,” the Soviets kept their 100,000 occupation troops well out of sight, though they were poised to strike in the event the demonstrations got out of control. There were even rumors that archconservative elements in the Czechoslovak party might provoke serious outbursts in order to provide the Soviets with a pretext for another intervention.

Conscious of their country’s dilemma, Czechoslovak passive-resistance leaders implored the people to engage only in nonviolent demonstrations and to refuse to be baited into fights with the police.

Party Leader Gustav Husák, who replaced Alexander Dubček in April, was also anxious to ensure calm—though his government’s threats against demonstrations only tended to increase the country’s nervousness.

Outraged Bystanders. Two days before the anniversary, crowds in Wenceslas Square clashed with police and troops, who seized on the mildest provocations—even catcalls or whistles—to beat demonstrators and hose them with water cannons. As the crowd around the equestrian statue of St. Wenceslas grew in size, ten armored personnel carriers inched slowly from side streets. “They can’t be ours?” a secretary asked incredulously as she emerged from a building. People tried to escape into shops and hotels. At the doorway of the House of Food, Prague’s leading delicatessen, a jittery cop shot a man in the foot. Bystanders were outraged. “If I could do as I wish,” cried a waitress to one of the policemen, “I would raise my skirt and show you my bottom. That is what I think of you.”

The following day, the crowds in the square were twice as large. As 10,000 Czechoslovaks, curious tourists and journalists milled about in the afternoon sunshine, the armored personnel carriers and water cannons appeared again. Without warning, the police suddenly began lobbing tear gas into the crowd. As people fled down side streets in panic, the cops pursued them, truncheons flailing. Before the streets finally emptied late that night, 320 people had been arrested and two killed.

The day of the anniversary itself began calmly. In peaceful protest, all but a few Czechoslovaks refused to ride the public transport, and boycotted shops and restaurants. In Prague, more than 300 bouquets were piled on the grave of Jan Palach, the 21-year-old student who last January burned himself to death in a protest against the continued Soviet occupation. At noon, to the cacophony of auto horns and factory whistles, traffic braked to a halt and many of the 50,000 people who jammed Wenceslas Square raised their fingers in the victory sign. In a show of defiance, Czechoslovakia stood still for 15 minutes.

Emboldened, the crowd in Wenceslas began shouting, “Husák is a traitor, Husák is a traitor!” In response, police lobbed tear-gas grenades. As people fled the square, the side streets were quickly blocked by troops. Bands of helmeted police waded into the fleeing demonstrators, indiscriminately clubbing young and old alike.

Tighter Controls. Upending newspaper kiosks and pulling down scaffolding from buildings, the demonstrators hastily erected barricades, but the police called in army tanks whose steel treads effortlessly crushed the barriers. Police with dogs moved in to seize the demonstrators; in Prague alone, 1,377 were arrested.

Elsewhere in Czechoslovakia, there were both peaceful protests and violent riots. The situation was relatively calm in Bratislava, the scene of severe fighting in 1968, because police allowed the inhabitants to place flowers on the spots where a young Slovak had been killed by the invading Soviet tanks. In Brno, however, two consecutive nights of skirmishes left three demonstrators dead and at least 30 gravely injured.

At week’s end, as an uneasy calm settled on Brno and the rest of Czechoslovakia, the government began to clamp tighter controls on the country. To justify the crackdown, Rude Prdvo, the Communist Party’s paper, said that the riots were evidence of “counterrevolutionary activity as was known in Hungary in 1956.” Many Czechoslovaks feared that the statement might presage mass political arrests and trials.

The party’s eleven-man Presidium did nothing to calm those fears. Meeting at its heavily guarded Prague headquarters last week, it announced a number of repressive new decrees. One prescribed jail sentences of up to three months for anyone who defames a Czechoslovak leader or fails to obey police orders. Another gives the government power to fire teachers who fail to instruct their pupils in accordance with the principles of Socialist society.

In part, the severity of the crackdown is a reflection of the intensity of a power struggle that pits Husák against Lubomir Strougal, 44, the deputy party leader, who has recently emerged as the No. 2 man in the country’s hierarchy. Though demonstrators scrawled the words HUSÁK-RUSÁK (Husák the Russian) on walls, the fact is that the Russians do not entirely trust Husák. He is in an unenviable position: rejected by the reformers because he replaced Dubček, disliked by the Czech majority because he is a Slovak and hated by the orthodox pro-Soviet elements (who imprisoned him for eight years) because he is a nationalist who believes in limited reforms.

Unless Husák can convince his Soviet overseers that he has the country under tight control, he may very well be shouldered aside by Strougal, who has no compunctions about a return to hard-line police tactics. Yet, in his anxiety to prevent Strougal from outflanking him, Husák is subjecting the country to an increasingly harsh rule. No matter who wins, it is clear that the people of Czechoslovakia, as they enter their second year of Soviet occupation, are bound to be the losers.