World: CZECHOSLOVAKIA’S TENSE ANNIVERSARY

SINCE the party cannot change the people,” Alexander Dubček once said, “it must itself change.” One year ago this week, Dubček’s historic attempt to guide Czechoslovakia’s Communist Party in the direction of that change was suddenly and brutally undone. On a quiet August night, some 200,000 Soviet troops, with token support from East German, Polish, Hungarian and Bulgarian forces, crossed into Czechoslovakia. Whatever Dubček’s miscalculations in conducting the most democratic experiment in Communism’s history, he was undoubtedly right about the desires of the people. They have not changed. As the nation moved tensely toward the anniversary, both the Soviet Union and Prague’s “normalized” leadership nervously prepared for outbreaks of defiance.

Absorbing Maneuver. In some ways, their preparations were eerie reminders of the buildup to last summer’s invasion. The two top leaders, Party Boss Gustav Husák and President Ludvik Svoboda, returned last week from an eight-day meeting with Soviet officials in the Crimea. They were probably exposed to some of the same demands tor strict party control that awaited Dubček last year at the showdown sessions in Cierna and Bratislava. More ominously, Soviet troops were reported to be conducting large scale maneuvers in Poland and East Germany along their frontiers with Czechoslovakia. Within the country, where the occupation forces have recently swelled to at least 100,000 Russian troops, armored units were said to be on the move in Moravia and Bohemia.

In Prague, the government stepped up its campaign to warn that it will deal harshly with disturbances. In thousands of leaflets, leaders of the liberal underground have called on Czechoslovaks to make the anniversary a national “day of shame” by boycotting state services; more than 200 people were detained for printing and distributing the leaflets. Determined to avert all demonstrations and minimize even passive resistance, the government urged all citizens to “watch out for disruptive elements,” placed the army, police and people’s militia on full alert and warned that anyone who failed to report to work would have to give a personal accounting. The nation’s schools have become incubators of anti-Soviet feeling, even down to the elementary level (see color). Fortunately for Prague’s rulers, the schools will be closed for the summer vacation until next month.

Fret Aloud. At Moscow’s behest, the government is attempting to justify the invasion by “documenting” the existence of an anti-socialist conspiracy last year. The party daily Rudé Právo, for example, last week quoted one speaker at a meeting of regional Communist district chiefs held in May 1968 as warning: “Right-wing opposition forces with varying degrees of anti-Communist and anti-socialist orientation are beginning to emerge on the political scene.” The newspaper said that the speaker, who also noted that the Russians were justifiably worried about this trend, was none other than Alexander Dubček. Later in the week, the newspaper acknowledged that “one of the officials” it had quoted—probably Dubček—had protested that his remarks had been used in an untruthful manner.

In fact, Dubček, demoted last April to the figurehead post of president of the National Assembly, had occasionally fretted aloud at the speed and enthusiasm with which his reform movement took hold in Czechoslovakia. But he did not dwell on anti-socialist dangers. On the night of the invasion, two conservative members of the Presidium presented a memorandum stating that the party was losing control of Czechoslovakia to reactionaries. Dubček and his majority on the Presidium quickly rejected it. As Dubček evidently concluded, the perils of “anti-socialism” were distinctly preferable to the economic stagnation and moral despair that have now settled on Czechoslovakia. That conclusion is unacceptable to the Soviets. It is all too obvious, however, to the 40,000 Czechoslovaks who have already chosen exile from their homeland —and, more painfully so, to those who stayed behind.