Normalization revisited in exile again."
A salesperson in a bookshop where in 1967 I bought the book containing the materials from the Liblice conference confirmed that. "You will find nothing of Kafka here. He is taboo here."
In a submission of Charter 77 to
FOR THE SAKE of comparison with the situation in Poland, the following article and interview on the state of affairs in Czechoslovakia have a particular interest. They trace the failure of the leadership of the mass movement for democratization to organize a determined struggle against the Stalinist bureaucracy. They are from the
October 28, 1985, issue of Profil, a broad circulation Austrian magazine. The interview that follows was also done by Hermann Dworczak.
HERMANN DWORCZAK
Two border crossings, two scenes
"normalized"
Czechoslovakia.
of
Ceske Velenice, the train from Vienna to Prague has just passed the iron curtain. An elderly man speaks to me in side don't appreciate freedom, Your
German:
"A lot of people on says in a chatty tone.
Although he has been retired for a long time, in the last two years, including cost-of-living increases, he has not gotten more than 900 crowns in the average income around
2,900 age, he is obliged to supplement his income by working as a homeworker.
Arother scene, Bratislava.
the customs building there is a kennel.
Going through passport control, you are confronted with the barking of savage dogs.
the Prague Spring, Czechosloset about ridding itself of the
Stalinist straitjacket, and took the first steps toward "socialism with a human face."
In 1985 in Petrzalka it's the snouts of animals that confront you.
come to Linz [an Austrian city ]. The bad air almost took my breath away.
From Hradschin, I saw the massive dome of smog that presses down on
Because of the sulphurous yellow cloud, the Zizkov, the national memorial for the Hussite leader Jan
Zizka, was visible only vaguely.
Defense of the environment short shrift in Czechoslovakia.
port entitled Analysis of the Environmental Situation in Czechoslovakia which was sponsored by the government is still being kept under wraps.
18
Supporters of the civil rights movenent, however, got hold of a copy ano got it published - in the West. On the appropriations for defense of the environment, it says:
"In the USSR, spending on environmental defense as a whole amounts to 2.7% of the national income, in Sweden it is 0.8%, in the USA it is 1.5%, in the Federal Republic of Germany it is 2% of the GNP. Even these spending totals are not strictly comparable from a methodological standpoint, it is clearly food for thought that in the sixth five-year plan (1976 - 1980) : such spending Czechoslovakia will amount to only 0.3% of the applied national income and 0.85% of total investment."
The Czechoslovak-Hungarian sion of Hainburg (1) is called Babcikovo-Nagymaros. For the joint power plant that is planned to be built there, the Austrian building firm,
Universale, has just gotten a 400 million schilling contract [twenmately one US dollar].
A publication issued by Hungarian environmentalists in mid-September, with an introduction by Charter 77, warns of negative effects of the power plant on the drinking water supply in environmental matches the cultural scene. In 1963, at the legendary conference on Kafka in Liblice, which is supposed to mark the beginning of the development that led to the Prague Spring, Ernst Fischer demanded an "extended visa" for the writer, who had been banned in the East up until that time.
Frantisek Kautman, who was a participant in the Liblice conference, was the Budapest Forum of the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which was signed by the Nobel prize winner Jaroslav Seifert, among others, the following was said about the cultural situation;
"After 1968, a long period began in Czechoslovakia of destruction of all. the major values of a sovereign national culture, in many respects reminiscent of the 1950s and in many respects even worse."
A young film maker talked about the "sterility of official cultural activity. Only on the fringes do you see occasional sparks." For example, the Concreto Grosso by the pantomimist Boris Rybner is treated as an allegory.
After 8:00 pm, most of the streets in Prague are empty of passers-by. On the Karlsbruecke alone a crowd of young people ebbs and flows and music is played. "Only here because there are foreigners around do you have any chance of not being moved on right away by the police," one of them said. River of forgetfulness
The taverns, on the other hand, are chock full, and beer flows in rivers. On the situation of youth in North Bohemia, the writer Jan Pele has
"There are no open spaces where people can meet. Everywhere you run up against the regime and its long arm. So, people go to the only place still open to them, the tavern."
Along with sousing, a weekend in a countryhouse is one of the most common means of escape from an oppressive reality. A quarter of the 450,000 Prague households have such a second dwelling, and seek by this means to get away a bit from the Kremlin big brother and his local viceroys.
The press resembles a morgue. Even the party boss, Gustav Husak, finds it too boring. He is quoted as saying: "Everything is in good order nuclear power plant against which there have been big mobilizations in Austria. International Viewpoint 27 January 1986
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International Viewpoint 27 January 1986
CZECHOSLOVA in the papers; it's just that they are often unreadable."
Western TV is generally "in." In Plzn, police built a common antenna in order to get better reception from the West German transmitters. weekends in Bratislava, you can see lines in front of the newspaper kiosks. There is a real scramble for the Austrian Communist Party paper Volksstimme, because it has a supplement that gives the TV listings.
After the setbacks of 1981 and 1982, the present economic situation in Czechoslovakia is rated as "relatively favorable" (c.f. Die Sueddeutsche are a sharp increase in agricultural production, a positive trade balance
Anyone who engages in any oppositional activity is watched, harassed, or
"Bugs" in the homes of
Charter 77 signers are the rule. When a former spokesperson of the Charter,
Sustrova moved, the new listening device "made in England" when they were
They gave it to Sustrova as a souvenir. It was not long before she return their "tool"
In September, the Catholic priest Vaclav Maly was interrogated by the state security service and dragged off
Lenka Mareckova, a 22-year-old clerk, following the personal intervention of the minister of justice Death of a Dictator" (Leonid was tried twice; and for her Brezhnev) she got several months in
Despite the repression, the regime has not managed to silence the opposition. The Charter is ninth year of its existence. In its ranks are supporters of various philosophical
Spins his hopes primarily on the positive effects on some reform course in Moscow on the situation in Czechoslovakia. (c.f., the accompanying interview.) The revolutionary Marxist Petr Uhl, on the other hand, looks to "the fall of the bureaucracy"
as a result of mass resistance.
"The central thing is the struggle
here and the international synchronization of the independent movements in Eastern Europe.
That is creating for an explosive On the upswing is a Catholic movement critical of the regime. After the great festival in honor of St. Methodius in Velehrad in July, a good 30,000 pilgrims flooded into the west Slovak religious site of Sastin, most of them chant was "We want the Pops, popular
The regime holds the power, but no place in the affections of
An economic reform is overdue. But there is no threat of an economic collapse as in Poland at the end of the 1960s. There is an opposition, but it is far from endangering the bureaucracy. Great hopes continue to be expressed in very subdued ways. Another slogan on the Lennon Wall was "Dreams are our only freedom." D
The principal character of the novel "The Good Soldier Sveik' by the Czeck novelist Hasko. It describes an attitude of de facto passive noncooperation by Czechs to the Austro-Hungarian rulers based on avoiding confrontation by pretending to be a well-intentioned fool.