In Czechoslovakia life is normal. This does not seem so surprising if you go from London to Prague by air, travelling more easily and more quickly, than from London to Edinburgh. It is incredible and bewildering if you come to Prague overland through the chaos and starvation of any of the surrounding countries.
There are plenty of scars; scars of material destruction, scars from the German Terror, scars from the Communist effervescence of the last twelve months which has only just died down. In fact, most Czechs of liberal mind are still rather dazed to discover that they, and liberty, have survived both conquest by the Germans and liberation by the Russians. For there can be no doubt that liberty has survived.
At any rate, there is not a scrap of Russian interference; there is nothing in the nature of a secret police; there are no restrictions on freedom of movement or of discussion. There is complete religious freedom, a freedom where both Protestant and Roman Catholic leaders take an active part in political life.
There is, too, complete academic freedom. The University of Prague is now the only academic institution of indisputably first rank east of the Rhine. Other English visitors have commented on the Czech desire for cultural contacts with Britain, and culture does not mean here simply literature and the arts. In Moscow, too, everyone listens to Shakespeare and reads Dickens. In Prague they want also our ╥political╙ culture.
The Czech people had, no doubt, a democratic tradition; but the man who preserved that tradition and restored liberty was Dr. Benes. He has obviously had a hard time standing up to the Russians and the Czech Communists; but he has stood up to them successfully. He is that rare thing ╤ a man of principle who is also adroit, even wily, in his tactics. His hand has, of course, been immensely strengthened by having the ideas of Masaryk behind him. In most European countries liberalism was pulled down by laissez-faire and finally degenerated into ╥collaborationism.╙ Now the competing political philosophies are both totalitarian; they look to the Vatican or the Kremlin. In Czechoslovakia alone it is possible to be a Socialist without being a Marxist; a liberal without believing in capitalism; and religious without being a Roman Catholic.
There is also a more mundane explanation of Czech democracy. Tolerance and liberty flourish with economic prosperity, and the Czech lands never ceased to be prosperous. The Germans murdered over a quarter of a million people in a deliberate campaign to destroy the Czech nation. Therefore they murdered selectively, killing exclusively intellectuals ╤ teachers, administrators, trade union officials, lawyers, writers. The Czech workers had good wages and steady employment; the peasants had high prices and secure markets. Czech industry was little damaged except in the very last weeks of the war, and most of the damage, even the damage to railways and bridges, has been restored. The Republic took over from the Germans a going concern.
The political freedom has, of course, clear limits. It is freedom within the programme drawn up at Kosice before the liberation, freedom on the agreed principles of a nation-State and the nationalisation of industry. In the Czech lands (Bohemia and Moravia) only four parties are allowed to run candidates and to publish newspapers. All four parties are represented in the Coalition Government, and this gives to the proceedings of Parliament a certain artificiality, or at least dullness. The real debates are within the Council of Ministers (which, having twenty-six members, is itself a debating assembly) and in the party meetings. Parliament records formal decisions and applauds agreements already made. It will face its real test if the Coalition breaks up.
Mr. Gottwald, the Communist Prime Minister, told me that democracy is secure ╥so long as the other parties remain progressive,╙ by which he meant so long as they were willing to cooperate with the Communists. The other parties are likely to remain progressive so long as the Communists remain democratic. The parties will not differ on the principle of the nation-State. All Czechs dislike the expulsion of the Germans; but all know that it is inevitable. The alternative would be worse; it would be the compulsory turning of Germans into Czechs, a policy only possible (if then) by Nazi methods. All the same, it is a strange historic moment which ends for ever the seven centuries of Czech-German conflict and cooperation in Bohemia.
Nor will the parties differ on the nationalisation of industry. For all practical purposes the controversy between capitalism and Socialism was settled by the Germans. They took over most important industries and ran them for their own purposes. Now it is impossible to ╥unscramble╙ what the Germans have done. Instead the Czechoslovak people have become the residuary legatees of the German oppressors. Socialism has come, as in Great Britain, by legal means though the German occupation was no doubt a very unpleasant way of accelerating it. In Czechoslovakia, as nowhere else east of the Rhine, there is at present both Socialism and democracy. Many Czechs ask, ╥Can we have nationalisation without totalitarian rule?╙ The answer depends partly on the willingness of the Communists to be satisfied with economic gains without pushing Marxism down everyone╒s throat. It depends much more on the resolution with which the non-Communist parties defend their liberal morality and philosophy without slipping into a defence of capitalism. And most of all it depends on factors not under Czech control; a satisfactory relation with the Slovaks, a stable European order, and the revival of Czech foreign trade.
