Czechoslovakia

ATLANTIC

November 1952

On the World today

IN Czechoslovakia and, to some degree, in all the other satellite states a powerful Titoist ferment is at work. This ferment has driven the Soviet Union to desperate stratagems. In Czechoslovakia, for instance, the Kremlin has given real or feigned approval to the arrest of several thousand Communists who had long been known and feared as unusually devoted and trustworthy agents of the Kremlin. The purge to which they fell victim began late in 1950 and, spreading upwards through the Party hierarchy, reached a climax in the autumn of last year with the arrest of the most fearsome Stalinist of them all, sleek and handsome Rudolf Slansky, the secretary-general of the Party.

Meanwhile, with the disgrace of Ana Pauker and the arrest of hundreds of other Communist old-timers, the same process has begun in Rumania. The Russians are pulling out the old teams of Communist leaders who had been marked in the eyes of the people as servile Soviet agents and are sending in new teams who have at least the appearance of a more popular nationalism. They are installing a housebroken Titoism in the satellite countries.

Why are the Russians doing this? The explanation appears to be that the kremlin, more than a little alarmed by the ferment of a Czechoslovak type of Titoism, has decided that police espionage, mass arrests, and all the other forms of political pressure have reached the limits of usefulness in this area.

The Soviet Union can take no chances on losing Czechoslovakia, for it is one of the main economic and strategic keys to the satellite area of Eastern Europe. All the countries in this area depend on Czechoslovakia for industrial supplies essential to the fulfillment of their Five-Year Plans. Furthermore, Czechoslovakia’s position between the Ore Mountains and the Bohemian Forest in the west, the High Tatras in the north, and the Danube River in the south would make it a vital line of defense or a vital base of operations in time of war.

Such talk about the Soviet Union’s “losing” Czechoslovakia may seem strange after so much has been said about the Russians’ iron grip upon the satellite countries. But it will seem less strange if we look back and consider the respects in which the Soviet position athwart this vital area has deteriorated, internally and externally.

In February, 1948, when the Communists seized control in Prague, they had a large part of the working class with them: the rest of the population was paralyzed by fear; by the might of the Communist Party, the Soviet Union, and the Red Army; and by the weakness of the West.

The betrayal of Czechoslovakia

One of the tragedies of the “honeymoon period" of American—Soviet relations is that the Allied Army did not liberate Prague. At the beginning of May, 1945, General Eisenhower’s divisions held Pilsen and the southwestern corner of Bohemia as far as Rokycany, and could have easily moved on to Prague. The people of Prague had risen against the Nazis, and their emissaries begged the Americans to advance. Eisenhower radioed the Russian High Command asking them to agree to his advance, as was the practice in areas where Western allies and Russians were near to each other.

But the Russians would not agree; they insisted that they themselves would liberate Prague, even though it would be necessary for them to move troops all the way from Berlin. They cared no more for the lives of the people fighting in the streets of Prague than they did for those who fought in Warsaw while the Red Army sat idly on the east banks of the Vistula.

After the war was over, Winston Churchill privately gave Czechoslovak statesmen the full explanation of Eisenhower’s compliance with Russian desires. Churchill and Roosevelt had reached an oral agreement with Stalin at Teheran and had elaborated the subject at Yalta, placing Czechoslovakia in the Soviet military sphere along with Poland, Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria. Churchill said he had opposed this arrangement but was overruled. In any event, Eisenhower was bound to respect the agreement.

In the minds of many Czechs, this agreement and the resulting American failure to liberate Prague rank as a betrayal right along with Chamberlain’s and Daladier’s agreement with Hitler at Munich. The great Western powers had betrayed them to the Nazis at Munich and delivered them into the hands of the Soviets at Teheran and Yalta.

For almost three years after the war the Czechs maintained a balance between Western democracy, its political parties, and its cultural values on the one hand, and Communism on the other. They courageously put into practice the doctrine of “coexistence,” although they received from the West little economic support, and much political abuse. During this period the American Army was redeployed, leaving little except a constabulary in Germany;, the British demobilized; the branch Army disappeared. There was a vacuum of power in the West.

Meanwhile the Communists, after successive stages of coalition governments and phony national fronts, took over absolute control in one Eastern European country after another. The last to fall was Czechoslovakia. When the Communists decided that the time had come to put an end to “coexistence” and to strike, the opposition wilted. The democratic so-called bourgeois parties knew they could expect no backing from the West; they felt isolated, abandoned. The Communists, on the other hand, lost no opportunity to proclaim that they had the full backing of the Soviet Union and the Red Army.

Booty to the victors

During the first two years of their regime in Czechoslovakia the Communists were able to deliver material rewards to those who had supported them, partly by channeling to the workers the wealth that had formerly belonged to the country’s middle class. Many foodstuffs and items of clothing were taken off the ration. Prices on the unrationed, free market gradually declined and the supply of all consumer goods increased. The workers’ standard of living rose slowly.

At the same time, the Communists destroyed their enemies systematically. Opposition political parties were neutralized or abolished. The influence of the churches was eliminated by restrictive legislation and arrests among the clergy. The middle class generally was shattered; forced labor camps were peopled with former businessmen of all kinds, from factory owners to shopkeepers, and with lawyers, architects, journalists, and teachers. Today there are probably about 120,000 persons in Czechoslovak forced labor camps.

While the Communists were at work, however, counterforces were building up against them inside and outside the Communist world. On the economic side the Soviet Union went so far in its exactions that it began, by the slow process of overwork and underpay, to kill the goose that laid the eggs of steel—those fine precision tools, those splendid locomotives, those sturdy Skoda automobiles, those pipes, rails, boilers, and all the machinery used by a modern industrial state. Almost all these Czech products were more reliable, better finished, and more up to date than their Russian counterparts.

Feeding the Soviet machine

In November, 1950, conditions in Czechoslovakia began to deteriorate. The Soviet Union, displeased by delays in Czechoslovak deliveries of industrial goods, for several weeks around the turn of the year embargoed grain deliveries to Czechoslovakia. Bread rationing was reimposed suddenly in March, 1951. Meat became scarcer. Queues in front of stores grew longer. The Czechoslovak standard of living, though still the highest in the Communist world, was slipping; it is still declining.

The Communist Party, itself under pressure from Moscow, demanded more industrial production. Every time the Russians increased their demands, the Party had to order revision of Czechoslovak economic plans. This has happened four times. With each revision more pressure was brought to bear on the workers to increase productivity. This they were to accomplish by “shock work” — the Czech equivalent of Stakhanovism — and by “socialist competition.”

In the Czech lands, once 1 he industrial heart of the Austro-Iungarian Empire, the workers have a trade union tradition many generations old. They know a speed-up when they see one.

When, under the new Communist regime, the workers turned to their trade unions for redress, they were answered with warnings that obstruetion of production was sabotage. The Czech workers began to realize that the trade unions were no longer their own, but had been taken over by the state an instrument for controlling them. From here they went on to the realization that the Communist Party was not working for them or for Czechoslovakia, but for the Soviet Union.

The workers rebel

In increasing numbers the workers have turned against the Stalinist Communist Party in Czechoslovakia. It is difficult estimate to what extent they have turned against Communism Itself. The indications are that very few desire the return of pre-war capitalism. Some would like a Social Democratic typo of regime. But most have simply turned against the Soviet Union, which has so obviously been exploiting their country, and against the Soviet agents so arrogantly in their midst. They have become nationalist Communists — Titoists.

The workers have expressed their feeling by staying away from trade union meetings and Communist Party meetings. The Party organs howl with indignation and plead for Party discipline—in vain. In the factories the workers slow down production spontaneously. At present there can be little in the way of organization in their resistance: police spies are too numerous for that. But FiveYear Plan targets fall short of fulfillment by ever-increasing margins. Since July, 1951, presumably embarrassed by the obvious downward trends, the authorities have ceased publishing monthly figures of Plan fulfillment.

External pressures on the Communist regime of Czechoslovakia have also been multiplying. The United States has led the way in embargoing exports of strategic materials to Eastern Europe. Most Western European countries have followed. The restrictions have seriously embarrassed industry in Czechoslovakia and the other satellites. U.S. trade with Czechoslovakia nearly stopped after the imprisonment of William Oatis.

Communists on the defensive

Meanwhile Western Europe — thanks very largely to American aid — has regained a degree of economic health. With economic revival antiCommunist spirits have revived. In France and Italy the strength of the Communists has declined. Britain has rearmed; France has regained the stature of a military power. The Western European powers have been drawn together in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and a European Army is in formation. No longer need the anti-Communist and the anti-Stalinist people of Eastern Europe feel isolated and abandoned.

The tide has begun to turn. That the Communists are on the defensive is indicated by the purge of ardent and long-trusted Stalinist agents. In their desperate search for a lost popularity the Soviets have even played up to latent anti-Semitism by approving dismissal of nearly all the Jews who formerly held high office in the Communist Party or state bureaucracy of Czechoslovakia.

In installing a nationalism which they presume to be under control the Soviets are, however, playing a dangerous game. Can they he sure that a phony Titoist will remain phony forever, as he contemplates the growing power of the West and the durability of Marshal Tito’s regime? Furthermore, production still lags. Communist Party and trade union organizations have not yet regained their popularity.

Congress has allocated $100 million for use in helping our friends behind the Iron Curtain. With these funds and other allocations it will be possible to intensify our propaganda and to work with freedom-loving people in the satellite countries.

If we are wise and fortunate we may be able to force Soviet Russia back into her natural frontiers without war. If we are unwise or unfortunate, and war comes, we are assured of effective allies operating behind the Soviet front, inside Czechoslovakia, and throughout the satellite area.