TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/120489/12048900.047

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 13KB | 241 lines

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"Our Time Has Come"


Czechoslovaks oust a hard-line regime, giving the superpowers
another reason to put Communist upheavals atop the Malta summit
agenda

By William R. Doerner


    "Dubcek! Dubcek!" Who ever expected to see the day when
Alexander Dubcek, the man who first tried to give East European
Communism a "human face," would return to Prague so
triumphantly, or be welcomed so deliriously? Yet day after day,
as the leaden skies of late autumn began turning to dusk, the
crowds beneath the statue of St. Wenceslas in downtown Prague
kept growing, in size and in confidence. By late last week they
had swelled into the largest protests in Czechoslovakia's
history: a half million chanting, shouting, horn-honking people,
all bent on ousting the repressive rule of Communist Party
leader Milos Jakes. They achieved their primary objective in
just eight days.

    On Friday, Jakes and all 13 other members of the ruling
Politburo resigned en masse, admitting that they had taken
insufficient measures to bring about democratic reform in the
country. Within hours Jakes was replaced by Karel Urbanek, 48,
party leader of the Czech republic. Urbanek played no role
whatsoever in the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in
1968, the principal condition set by opposition forces for the
choice of a new party leader. But his views on reform are far
from clear, and some observers saw him as a transition figure.
Jubilation over Jakes' departure was further tempered by the
reappointment of several hard-liners to a new nine-member
Politburo and by the resignation of Prime Minister Ladislav
Adamec, widely regarded as a moderate.

    Political maneuvering will clearly go on for some time. A
number of opposition leaders are already demanding the return
of Adamec, whom they view as the key to bringing Czechoslovakia
such reforms as interim power sharing with the opposition,
creation of a multiparty system and curbs on police powers. By
week's end Dubcek was calling for still more change. Addressing
a vast throng on Saturday in Letna Plain, a parade area
overlooking Prague, he said the Politburo shuffle alone "did not
meet the demands of the people." The government, he added, is
"telling us that the street is not the place for things to be
solved, but I say the street was and is the place. The voice of
the street must be heard."

    Czechoslovakia now joins the astonishing avalanche of
change that is overtaking Eastern Europe. Poland was the first
to move, electing a non-Communist government in August. In the
past six weeks, upheavals have taken place in the Hungarian,
East German and Bulgarian Communist parties. Nor were events in
Prague the only remarkable developments that took place last
week.

    In East Germany new party leader Egon Krenz mounted a
campaign to live down his long association with his discredited
predecessor, Erich Honecker, who is under investigation for
suspected abuses of power. Struggling to hang on to his job as
the party prepares for a seminal congress on Dec. 15, Krenz
announced that he favored rescinding the country's
constitutional guarantee of a "leading role" for the Communist
Party, opening the possibility of multiparty rule.

    In Moscow Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who touched
off the wave of change with his two-pronged program of glasnost
and perestroika, greeted Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz
Mazowiecki, the first non-Communist East European leader to take
power since World War II. Only six months ago, Mazowiecki, who
was imprisoned for a year following the declaration of martial
law in 1981, was denied a visa to visit the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev seemed to realize the ironies involved when Mazowiecki
was ushered into the Soviet President's Kremlin study. "It may
appear strange to some that I wish you success," Gorbachev said.
"But we are interested that the governments and people who are
close to us also have success."

    One East bloc leader stood out, however, for his refusal to
get in step with reform: Rumania's Nicolae Ceausescu. At an
old-fashioned Stalinist party congress, he gave no sign that he
was willing to open Rumania to even a zephyr of change, much
less a full-blown wind. In his opening speech, Ceausescu said
the Communist Party "cannot surrender its historical mission to
another political force."

    The tumult in Czechoslovakia was more than two decades in
the making, a very belated -- but all the more heartfelt --
reaction to the brutal suppression of Prague's experiment with
democracy in the spring of 1968. Two weeks ago, club-wielding
police reminded Czechoslovaks of that bitter crackdown when they
waded into a demonstration of 15,000 young antiregime marchers
near Wenceslas Square, injuring hundreds. Popular anger at being
victimized once again by calculated police violence quickly
spread.

    On Sunday fledgling opposition groups banded together under
the name Civic Forum to call for a mass protest. Night after
night, huge crowds turned out -- blue-jeaned students, matrons
in furs and young couples pushing baby carriages, waving
red-white-and-blue Czechoslovak flags, carrying banners and
shouting "Svobodu (Freedom)!" Many of the chants that went up
from the throng were unabashedly direct: "Jakes for the
garbage!"

    As the week progressed, bulletins indicating a mounting
ground swell of support flowed into the Forum's makeshift press
center. First came announcements of a nationwide university
strike and a shutdown of entertainment. Then plans were laid for
a two-hour general strike to show that the country's
traditionally phlegmatic workers were siding with the
opposition.

    The spirit proved contagious. The staff of the Socialist
party daily Svobodne Slovo (Free Word), which has been a mockery
of its own name since 1968, announced that it would no longer
spout the official line and would become an independent journal.
Workers at the state television network threatened to close down
operations unless coverage of the demonstrations was both
prominent and fair. Sure enough, while still hardly objective,
nightly broadcasts began carrying film clips from Wenceslas
Square and shots of Catholic Primate Frantisek Cardinal Tomasek
meeting with Prague's party boss.

    The nightly demonstrations went on unhindered as hundreds
of plainclothes police, easily identifiable in their trademark
polyester raincoats, watched but did not interfere. And while
the possibility remained alive that the cornered regime might
still try to quell the mounting protest movement with violence,
the crowds grew noticeably more self-confident as the week
progressed. Said a Czech journalist who had reported on the
Prague Spring: "In 1968 it was a slim hope for change battling
against overwhelming odds. Today this is the voice of the whole
people when their time has come."

    Nothing dramatized the wonder of that turnaround more than
the public reappearance of Alexander Dubcek, the architect of
the Prague Spring who was yanked from power in the wake of the
Warsaw Pact invasion and has spent the years since then as a
virtual nonperson. Now 68 and living in the city of Bratislava,
Dubcek first sent a personal message to the crowds in Wenceslas
Square expressing support for "all the demands of the Civic
Forum, especially the resignation of all officials linked to the
Soviet invasion." Then, even as a bitterly divided Central
Committee was meeting to defuse the crisis on Friday, Dubcek
turned up in person. From a balcony overlooking Wenceslas
Square, he addressed the enormous crowd, recalling the rallying
cry of his reform movement more than two decades ago. "The ideal
of socialism with a human face," said Dubcek, "lives on in a new
generation."

    The Forum's principal demand was for the resignation of the
half a dozen Politburo members who served as quislings in the
wake of the 1968 invasion. Jakes was on the list for having
presided over the purge of some 500,000 reformist members within
the Communist Party during the following year. Also targeted:
President Gustav Husak, who succeeded Dubcek as party leader in
1969. In addition, the Forum's manifesto calls for the
resignation of Prague party leader Miroslav Stepan and Interior
Minister Frantisek Kincl as the two officials most responsible
for the police violence two weeks ago, and for a full
investigation into the incident.

    Ironically, one of the principal causes of Jakes' downfall
was Moscow, his longtime backer. With the rest of Eastern
Europe finally pursuing perestroika-style reforms, Gorbachev had
no desire to set off for Malta with Czechoslovakia in turmoil
-- or in the throes of a new crackdown. The Soviet leadership
made its position plain in tense meetings with Czech leaders.
Moscow's message: resolve the situation, and do it before the
Malta meeting.

    Gorbachev may also have come to regard the official Soviet
defense of the 1968 invasion as an important "blank spot" in
his country's history and feel increasingly obliged to denounce
it. Had he done so while Jakes and his cronies were still in
power, Gorbachev might have undermined their sole claim to
legitimacy. There seems ample reason to believe the Soviet
leader was preparing to do precisely that, not because he was
hankering to interfere in Czech affairs but because he saw such
a denunciation as a necessary measure to set the history books
straight.

    Referring to Moscow's evident relief at the dramatic turn
in Prague, playwright Vaclav Havel, leader of Czechoslovakia's
human rights movement, said wryly, "We cannot rule out the
situation that all occupiers of this country will have renounced
the occupation, and only the occupied will still stand behind
it." Added Havel, who is known for his absurdist dramas: "It is
like something out of my own plays."

    Czechoslovakia's seething frustrations were rooted partly
in a faltering economy. By East bloc standards, the country is
relatively prosperous, with ample supplies of basic foodstuffs
and fewer housing woes than its neighbors. But Czechoslovakia
50 years ago boasted one of Europe's strongest economies, and
many residents compare their living standards not with those of
East bloc neighbors but with those of the West. By that
measure, Czechoslovaks concluded that their economy was
backward.

    Far more important than economic dissatisfaction, however,
was political anger. Czechoslovakia has Eastern Europe's
strongest democratic tradition, and its modern supporters argued
that the country was being left behind by new experiments in
Poland, Hungary and even East Germany. But if tradition served
as a goad to some, it was lack of a historical memory that
helped spur on others. The generation of Czechoslovaks now
coming of age did not experience the trauma of the invasion --
and the fear of provoking a new crackdown. Said Martin Mejstrik,
a leader of the university strike: "Our parents are still
frightened. We are also frightened sometimes, but we have less
to lose."

    Czechoslovakia also had men like Havel, who has waged a
long and frustrating battle against the Communist regime,
serving more than four years in jail for his pains. If anyone
had suggested two weeks ago that a mass movement to overthrow
Jakes would be led by him and his artistic and literary
confreres, Havel would have been the first to laugh. But as the
most prominent figure in Prague's rapidly coalescing opposition,
Havel has rocketed to near cult status. "I am a writer and human
rights activist, not a politician," insisted Havel. But as a
Western diplomat in Prague put it, "Unlikely but true, he's the
Lech Walesa of Prague."

    Havel and his fellow intellectuals led Czechoslovakia's
peaceful revolution in part because no one else was prepared
to. Purges following the 1968 invasion wiped out all potential
reformers within the party, and a continued hard line kept any
progressive new party figures from emerging. The government
also used Czechoslovakia's relative prosperity to buy off the
workers, who proved reluctant, if not downright timid, about
demanding change. Last week the workers listened to men like
Havel and agreed to join in. Said a truck driver: "They showed
us not to be afraid." That coalition of intellectuals, students
and workers turned out to be an unstoppable force.