Czechoslovakia

on the World Today

THE Comnunist rulers in Prague have become painfully aware of the fact That the number of “radishes” — people who, like radishes, are red outside and white inside—is rapidly growing throughout the country. This is the explanation for the widespread purge in the Party, the increasing brutality in stamping out any visible opposition, and the furious outbursts of the Communist leaders against the workers and alleged traitors in their own ranks.

The miners particularly seem to cause the government a great deal of trouble. Stefan Bastovansky, the powerful Slovak Party Secretary, admitted that in one area the miners have “temporarily passed under the influence of reactionary elements.” This is about the most devastating admission a Communist regime can ever make. During the first three months of 1951 the output of coal — Czechoslovakia’s most important raw material — has dropped nearly 10 pounds per man-hour.

The miners are not the only “shirkers.” The farmers, too, have been taken to task for noncooperation. Spring sowing ran far behind expectations and, according to Slovak Deputy Premier Viliam Siroky, the peasants are reluctant to bring their cattle to the communal cowsheds set up by the collectivization program. Less than half the expected number of cattle has been registered.

Despite pressure, threats, and punishment, only 30 per cent of the peasants have signed up. The scheme is somewhat different from collectivization in Russia. On paper at least, the farmer remains owner of his land, livestock, and tools, He simply pools them with the rest of the village for operational purposes. But no matter how much he contributes, profits are divided into equal shares among the participants of the “coöperative.” There is little enthusiasm for such a deal. This is the real explanation for the present food shortage.

Moscow runs the railroads

During the budget debate in Czechoslovakia’s Parliament, complaints against the transport workers were voiced repeatedly. Above all, the railroads were sharply criticized for delays, breakdowns, and increasing numbers of accidents which interfered with the fulfillment of the Czech-Soviet Trade Pact. Josef Frank, Deputy Secretary-General of the Communist Party, said in a speech before an allstate conference of railroad workers and officials, “It is certain that a considerable part of the disturbances and breakdowns is the work of malefactors and enemies.” On March 20, Soviet experts arrived to take up key positions in the railroad administration. In other words, Moscow is now in control of the Czech railroad system and is trying to keep the workers in line after the local Communist bosses have failed.

The difficulties are not confined to one or another branch of industry or agriculture. They are nationwide. Premier Antonin Zapotocky told a meeting of Cabinet ministers and labor union leaders that the nationalized industries are not functioning properly. They don’t make use of the available capacity, their administrative overhead is too big, and there is a widening gap between wages and productivity.

Mr. Siroky was even more specific than the Premier, He disclosed that production costs had increased rather than decreased. In 1950 wages in the light industries rose almost three times as fast as production. In industry in general, wages have gone up 39 per cent, production only 22 per cent. The Premier blamed the managers of the stateowned plants because they have failed to see to it that workers produce more. From now on, he warned, whoever fails in his duties or whoever condones such failure will go to a forced labor camp.

Fully as important as this open threat and admission of helpless fury was the Premier’s new program for increased productivity and lower cost. He revealed the creation of a new State Wage Commission under his chairmanship, to be composed of the Ministers for Heavy Industry, Construction, and Planning as well as three labor union leaders. This commission will draw up a budget for each factory, fixing wages according to the plant’s output over a certain period. If production fails to reach the norm of the Five-Year Plan, wages will be proportionately reduced.

In order to realize the scope of ibis task and the seriousness of the situation, one has to recall how sweeping has been the government’s nationalization program. Only about 4 per cent of industry is still in private hands. The few surviving independent enterprises are mostly home industries where people working in their homes produce inexpensive goods — for example, costume jewelry — for a small company.

Foreign trade is fully nationalized, wholesale trade to 85 per cent, retail trade about 50 per cent. This huge unwieldy complex of state-run enterprises would be difficult to organize even with well-trained executives and a willing labor force. The Czech Communist regime lacks both. Management is hampered by Party interference and political appointees who have little business experience. The workers are dissatisfied, tired, and resentful.

All work and no play

They are being pressed to work longer and harder, with comparatively small returns for their labor. They are also made to attend political reorientation classes and Party gatherings, and arc expected to volunteer for all kinds of propaganda activities. The result is that “volunteer” brigades are doing their “volunteer” shifts during paid working hours, and political conferences are being held during working hours, too. Thus production suffers and the state pays the bill for what is supposed to be voluntary work for the Party.

Poor living conditions are one reason for t the drop in public morale. The percentage-wise wage increases may look good on paper. But prices are so high and goods so scarce that people have little incentive to work harder and to earn more.

Regardless of one’s ability to pay the price, cameras, radios, bicycles, and other “luxuries” are virtually unobtainable except for a small number of privileged Party officials or shock workers. Even food, formerly so abundant in Czechoslovakia, is very scarce. The price of a pound of rationed meat is about as much as the average worker receives for an hour’s labor. But once he exhausts his small rationing allowance and resorts to the free market, a pound of meat costs him a whole day’s pay.

Last spring, bread and flour were added to the list of rationed foodstuffs. This was a very hard blow because Czech diet, traditionally very heavy, relies on bread, dumplings, and other flour products. Now a worker is allowed about four ounces of bread and the same amount of flour. People who do not come under the classification of “worker” receive a third less.

Few people believe the government’s explanation that rationing has been brought on by overconsumption during the first three months of 1951. Premier Zapotocky said the existing shortages were merely natural growing pains of a new economy. President Klement Gottwald hastened to explain that the difficulties could in no way be blamed on Russia. The Soviet Union, he declared, had “offered” plenty of grain but the government had not ordered enough.

This willingness of the regime to assume responsibility for the failure rather than to risk resentment against Russia is quite revealing. It seems to answer a widespread complaint that Russia compelled Czechoslovakia to cancel her application for Marshall Plan aid from the United States in 1947 and promised her own Molotov Plan. The Molotov Plan never materialized. On the contrary, goods have been flowing in the opposite direction.

Moscow milks the Czeeh cow

How the Czechs feel about the situation is apparent from a story which is being whispered about the country. One example of Russia’s important aid, so the anecdote goes, has been the miracle fodder invented by Soviet scientists. It was brought to Czechoslovakia and tried on chickens first. They produced eggs at the age of three months. Pigs grew to the size of horses after six months. Now the regime has made that miracle fodder available for cows, too, and they have become so big they can be fed in Prague and milked in Moscow.

The grim facts behind this story are that Russia takes 75 per cent of Czech exports compared with 8 per cent before World War II. About 6 per cent of the country’s heavy industry output is earmarked for the Soviet Union. This includes machines, rails, locomotives, and rolling stock. On the other hand Czechoslovakia, like Russia’s other satellites, has been cut off from the non-Communist world, especially from Great Britain and the United States.

On April 10 the government ordered that all foreign trade agents must deal exclusively with the Ministry of Foreign Trade. There is to be no more personal contact between factory managers and foreigners. Even without such restrictive measures few businessmen would find it useful to go to a country where production figures, quality of material, price trends, are anxiously guarded Secrets. “Statistics,” warned a Party magazine lately, “are not mathematical science but a social science and a weapon in the class war. . . . So long as capitalism exists in other countries we must be careful what statistics we publish.”

The purge of the of the generals

It is no secret that the Czech Army is full of enemies of the regime. Recently the entire Czech Military Mission in Austria was “purged.” Deputy Defense Minister General Beidrich Reicin has been arrested as a traitor. He is said to have been a spy and the accomplice of such “rebels” as Otto Sling and ex-Foreign Minister Vladimir clementis, both formerly ranking members of the Communist hierarchy.

General Reicin is a dyed-in-thewool Communist. He spent the war in Moscow, as a corporal, received a commission after the war, and became a general and Deputy Defense Minister following the Communist seizure of power in February, 1948.

Purged at the same time as Reicin was Josef Pavelic, the Deputy Minister of the Interior and Chief of the Security Police. He was the organizer of the notorious militia which engineered the 1948 uprising and brought the Communists to power. Also arrested were the Commanding Generals of Moravia and Northern Slovakia, General Staff members having the rank of general, and other prominent officers of the armed forces.

Parallel with this defection in the army runs the schism in the Party ranks. In 1950 alone 170,000 of the 1.5 million members of the Party were expelled as “ radishes.” Among them were members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, influential regional Party Secretaries, Prime Ministers and Ministers of Provincial governments.

The case of Vladimir Clementis, the former Foreign Minister and friend of President Gottwald, has received much attention abroad because he was the best-known to foreigners. But in Czechoslovakia the purge of some of the other “rebels,” “traitors,” and “spies” who objected to complete domination by Russia caused no less excitement.

Clementis is a convinced pre-war Communist, HE intrigued against his predecessor, Jan Masaryk, and is considered partly responsible for Masaryk’s mysterious “suicide.” Clementis then took over the Foreign Ministry and followed a clear antiWestern line. In May, 1950, he was accused of deviationism before the Party convention. But he was not yet considered dangerous.

Six months later, however, as the schism in the Party grew, Clementis became a “renegade,” a “poisonous viper,” an “unbelievably despicable criminal,” and an “espionage agent of the French since 1939.” He is now being charged with plotting against the life of President Gottwald and trying to overthrow the government.

All this sounds very much like fictitious accusations meant to cover up Clementis’s real “guilt.” He was in London when Stalin signed his nonaggression pact with Hitler in 1939, and Clementis was opposed to the cynical deal with the Nazis who at that time occupied and oppressed Czechoslovakia. Thus, says the official announcement, Clementis made it clear twelve years ago that he had lost confidence “in the Soviet Union and Comrade Stalin, a crime which is unpardonable for a Communist.” Obviously, he still is a Communist, but he, too, refuses to deliver Czechoslovakia into the hands of anybody, Hilter or Stalin.

The same is true of many other so-called traitors — for example, Major Nechansky, a very outspoken left-wing Socialist, who was parachuted into Czechoslovakia in 1943 as a liaison man between the London and the Moscow factions, He led the famous uprising against the Nazis in May, 1945. A few months ago Nechansky was executed as a traitor. A survey which was made before the Communist censors stopped publication of verdicts of the people’s tribunals showed that 10 per cent of the defendants were condemned to death, 20 per cent to life terms in jail. There are about 200.000 people in concentration camps today.

Productionspeed-up

To suppress opposition against Moscow is a question of life and death for the totalitarian dictatorship. Russia has just ordered a tremendous speed-up of production. Dr. Dolansky, Minister for State Planning, told the Central Committee of the Party that the Five-Year Plan must be completed in three anda half years; industrial output must be doubled by 1953. The emphasis is on higher productivity, heavy machines, more raw material, and industrialization of Eastern Slovakia, the area nearest to the Soviet Union.

Agricultural production will have to be boosted too. The original plan called for a 27 per cent increase of production above the 1948 level; under the new directive, the improvement will have to be 65 per cent.

It remains to be seen whether the regime can force such a speed-up on the people. The Czechs are noted for their stubbornness and a deep, age-old yearning for independence. They combine keen awareness of their national traditions with a desire for international coöperation unknown in any of the other Soviet satellite countries.

The Czechs have always been a part of the Western, not of the Eastern, world and are proud of the old democratic tradition which Thomas G. Masaryk made the foundation of the new republic in 1918. In their desperate attempt at breaking ties with the West, the Communists lately began to vilify the memory of Thomas Masaryk, while praising Stalin. This may well turn out to be one of their greatest blunders and stir up about as much resentment against Russia as the dictatorial rule itself, the open warfare against religion, food shortages, exploitation of the workers, and the Kremlin’s milking of the Czechoslovak cow.