The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2008

in turn, the enthusiastic applause of an appreciative population. Most of his fellow citizens came quickly to hail him for his own qualities — par- ticularly his tolerance of diversity — not just as the successor to the hated Novotny. When Josef Smrkovsky, a former radical communist who had been humanized by prison, wrote an article in a leading Czechoslovak journal urging that the truth be told, whatever the consequences, the nation took him at his word. A demo- cratic society was re-emerging from the ashes. Now newspapers that could not have been given away in 1967 began to publish enough interesting materi- al to make their sale swift. Television began to report without the “party spirit” of agitation-propaganda that had been a hallmark of the commu- nist system. It sampled public opin- ion — and the public agreed to speak up — demonstrating thereby that the citizens of a country dominated for 20 years by dictatorship knew precisely what democracy meant. Sixteen thousand young Czechs listened while Smrkovsky and two other reformers responded to their questions in a six-hour marathon. Others, including non-communists, asked for the formation of a new polit- ical party or at least a share in how they were to be governed. Those jailed by Novotny organized to press for redress and rehabilitation. Thou- sands marched to Lany to put flowers on the graves of the Masaryks and to ask questions about the supposed sui- cide of Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk 20 years earlier. University students denounced the central youth organization that had been a mere transmission belt for the dictatorship. They organized instead to represent their own interests. Big Brother Reacts This was not music to all ears. Novotny, still president of the repub- lic, made a warning speech to factory workers timed with the commemora- tion of the February 1948 Prague Coup, when Brezhnev, East German dictator Walter Ulbricht and other prominent foreign communists would be present. Our embassy was told that if the “bad guys” came back, heads would roll. Novotny would not be the bad guy, however, for he was driven from office in March, partially by the startling defection to the United States of a sybaritic military officer with many inside stories to relate. Dubcek and his colleagues re- placed him with a retired general offi- cer, Ludvik Svoboda (whose surname meant freedom in both Czech and Russian), who had the additional cachet of being a hero of the USSR. They felt such insurance was need- ed because the new Czechoslovak leadership had been subjected (on March 26) to heavy criticism by lead- ers of other Warsaw Pact countries in a conference in Dresden. This was the first whiff of August. Although chastened, Czechslovak leaders continued on course. Their progress reached a climax on May Day 1968 — a day traditionally dedi- cated to ideologically correct demon- strations in the socialist camp — when a grinning, waving Dubcek was hailed by hundreds of thousands of marching Czechs and Slovaks as their friendly neighborhood communist. That night he was summoned to Moscow by Brezhnev, whose bushy eyebrows were furrowed with con- cern. Within a week, Moscow con- vened a Warsaw Pact meeting — without Czechoslovakia. A crisis lay ahead. As early as January 1968, our embassy had warned Washington that democracy would eventually run into the “lead- ing role” of the Communist Party, the heart and soul of dictatorship. As a lifelong communist, Dubcek, of course, knew well about the leading role; but as a tolerant man whose socialist face was full of human emo- tion, he chose to interpret it in a didactic sense. The party should teach, edify, illuminate, admonish if necessary, but not just command. That would strengthen, not weaken, the party, he insisted. The Russians listened. They liked their “Sasha.” But they were not buy- ing his argument. Public dissent and publication of unpalatable opinions were not acceptable in socialist soci- ety, in their view. Late spring and early summer saw military maneuvers, followed by an ominous letter from a five-power meeting in Warsaw where the five warned that socialism was not some- thing with which Czechoslovakia was free to meddle. Meanwhile Czecho- slovak citizens, their patriotic impuls- es spurred by the outside threat, called on their leadership to stand firmly by the “post-January” course. Having achieved even a limited taste of freedom, they were not ready to give in. The Czechoslovak leader- ship, which contained covert critics of Dubcek, was caught between domes- tic public opinion and the menace from neighboring states. The Tanks of August Counting correctly on some high- level support in the Czechoslo- vak leadership, the Politburo struck 54 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 8 The explosion of spontaneity that began on Jan. 5, 1968, had little to do with anything Dubcek said or wrote.