Foreign News: The Wheels Grind

On election eve, Czechoslovakia’s slightly right-of-center National Socialist Party edified voters with a great protagonist of Western culture, Mickey Mouse; they screened Disney pictures in front of their party building. On the other side of Prague’s Wenceslaus Square, the Communists showed newsreels of murder and torture in German concentration camps. Mickey lost.

At the polls next day, the Communists, who had accurately gauged the country’s mood, got almost twice as many votes as any other party, won 115 out of 300 Assembly seats.

Remember Munich. Would Czechoslovakia stick to prewar democratic ways, or would she become just another Soviet satellite? That was the campaign’s chief issue. The horror pictures were part of the Communist argument that Russia alone was near enough to offer protection, that the West was weak and treacherous (Munich was not forgotten). Many Czech voters agreed; but though they voted Red they would not be willing to go along with a totalitarian state on the Soviet model. The Communist electoral victory was still impressive. In the Assembly they can wield a slim majority (152 seats over 148) through their close alliance with Prime Minister Zdenek Fierlinger’s Social Democrats.

President Eduard Benes’ National Socialists (who favor, beyond Mickey Mouse, limited nationalization and limited Western orientation) have 54 seats. The People’s Party (for capitalism and a strong Western-minded foreign policy) have 48. While Bohemia and Moravia turned left, Catholic Slovakia swung sharply to the right: the province managed to elect 48 Conservative assemblymen.

Remember Bratislava. Slovakia’s deviation from the national pattern was the first concern of the Communists and their veteran boss, Vice Premier Klement Gottwald (who was a good bet to be Czechoslovakia’s next Premier). Pipe-puffing Comrade Gottwald started out by fighting Russia as an Austro-Hungarian sergeant major in World War I, has been fighting for Communism ever since. Like Yugoslavia’s Tito he is a former metalworker, and like France’s Thorez he sat out the war in Moscow. Like both, he knows how to deal with overly independent elements.

At Bratislava last week, Slovak independence provided a test of his technique. During a soccer game between the Czech-Moravian team and the Slovak eleven, Slovak spectators took offense at two sudden Czech goals, injured several Czech players. The rioters were finally subdued with a fire hose.

Gottwald’s Communists set the crushing wheels of their party machine in motion. Bratislava’s workers paralyzed the whole city in a general strike, noisily demanded that Conservative election gains in Slovakia be scratched. Slovaks were beginning to learn that Communists, even if defeated at the polls, have ways of continuing the fight.

Communist leaders quickly followed through with another lesson. After five hours, they stopped the rioting strikers, only to order them to the railway station for a big welcome of Red Army troops who were “passing through.”