Will Czechoslovakia be next?
THE MASS DEMONSTRATION of 40,000 to 50,000 people in
Prague on Friday, November 17, and the following weekend
International Viewpoint #174 • November 27, 1989
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
HE demonstration of 28 October
T proved that the independent movement had lost none of its breadth. The number of demonhave finally launched a major challenge to one of the last strators was more or less the same as in unreconstructed Stalinist regimes in East Europe. Only the
January of this year when the twentieth
Albanian regime and the Romanian despotism under anniversary of the heroic death of Jan Palach was commemorated; it was two or
Ceaucescu remain as yet unshaken by demonstrations three times greater than that of August 21, demanding democratic reforms. According to a BBC when the bureaucracy wanted to intimidate the citizens through threats. There correspondent in the Czechoslovak capital, some Soviet was no shortage of the latter even on this soldiers publicly showed solidarity with the student occasion - some sixty militants were reported killed in the police attack on the November 17 subjected to preventive and illegal!)
demonstration. The following is a report by a leading Czech arrest, warnings were given to others, and the military oath-taking ceremony which dissident on the demonstration of October 28, which helped took place in Wenceslas Square on the to open the way for the much larger one on November 17, morning of the demonstration had a clearwhich evidently frightened the government into brutal and ly provocative character.
The repression against the demonstracounter-productive repression. At the time, the Westerr tion was, by the standards prevailing in reporters considered this demonstration of 10,000 to be
Prague, rather modest. No tear gas, no disappointing and illustrative of how far the movement for dogs, no water cannons, although these had been prepared. The police limited democracy in Czechoslovakia lagged behind those in the themselves to clubbing
"malconthe tents", above all in the late afternoon during rallies in different parts of the Old
Town, at which the participants are estimated as numbering up to 20,000.
Slogans show great political maturity
This time, the people carried banners, which had been rare at the previous demonstrations. The slogans of the day, written and chanted, showed the greatest political maturity - Freedom for the political prisoners!, This is our home, long live Charter 77!, Long live Havel!,
We want free elections!,
Down with
Jakes and Stepan, we want another government! Most of the 359 people taken in for questioning were freed the same evening; 148 had been detained by the police for two days.
They will be prosecuted for minor infringements against public order, punishable by up to six months in prison or a fine of 20,000 crowns ( it is worth noting that it is becoming more difficult for the ruling bureaucracy to involve judges in this dirty business; they find against the municipality or impose the minimum penalty). The 16 foreigners who were arrested on 28 October in Prague have also been freed.
An estimation of how strong or weak the independent and pro-democratic forces are must start from an analysis of their social base. It is true that Charter 77 - for 12 years the only independent formation to exist, along with VONS, the Committee to Defend the Unjustly Persecuted
14 yearsage.
- came out of its ghetto two or three
Other groups have been formed, cultural, ecological, religious, humanitarian and also political, the latter ranging from anarchist to monarchist. Four amongst them are particularly important, their adherents numbering from 500 to 1000 - the Movement for Civic Liberty (HOS), a liberal democratic group; the Socialist Renewal Club for Perestroika (Obroda), led primarily by ex-members of the CP expelled after the Soviet miliCzechoslovak Democratic Initiative which has recently established contacts with the Democratic Forum in Hungary; and, finally, the Independent Association for Peace which is an initiative for the demilitarization of society.
But the social base of the members and sympathizers of these groups remains very narrow; it is above all the young workers who arebeginning, more and more, to demonstrate their frustration with the political system and its harmful consequences in the cultural, economic and ecological spheres. Older workers, more settled and relatively affluent, are very much more prudent whilst retaining a critical attitude.
It is nonetheless the intellectuals, above all in the two spheres of culture and science, who are increasingly active around a number of initiatives — petitions of solidarity with the Slovak democrats who are now being judged by the town tribunal in Bratislava and with two journalists the independent monthly Lidové neighboring countries. PETR UHL Noviny, Jan Ruml and Rudolf Zeman who have recently been imprisoned; the foundation of a Circle of independent intellectuals and its activities; positive changes inside the People's and Socialist parties (two small parties dominated by the CP inside the "National Front"); the boycotting of television and radio by the Czech Philharmonic because of discrimination against artists who signed the petition "A Few Words". All of which shows that the demonstrations in the street cannot be taken as the sole measure of combativity and mounting social courage.
The Czechoslovak road to democracy
Undoubtedly, the Czechoslovak road to democracy and an efficient and socially just economic system cannot be a copy of the Hungarian, Polish, Soviet or East German roads. I see our tasks in the coming months as being in the work of the opposi tional groups, existing and future, defining their political programs, and in broadening their influence on other social layers and other milieu. Only a still greater Isolation of the leadership of the CP, culminating in its isolation from its own party base, will bring about its retreat The developments in our neighboring coun tries are important for us on two counts; they increase the isolation of the Czech bureaucracy and they provide an encouraging example for our society to follow.*