Czechoslovakia

on the World Today

THE people of Prague are peace-loving, hardworking, prosperous, and happy on the surface, but they give the impression of being apprehensive about underlying political and moral problems and anxious to avoid hearing about them. Their prosperity is apparent on all sides: in the city streets, lively with traffic and with warmly dressed pedestrians; in the stores, full of consumers’ goods, often crude but always abundant; in cafés and restaurants, generously stocked with food and drink; in old-fashioned, lavishly furnished hotel rooms; and in brightly lit, well-heated, although sometimes overcrowded homes.

That the country is Communist ruled is well known to all, but the fact is not paraded. Very few party slogans and almost no portraits of Czech Communist leaders are displayed in public, as though the leaders were engaged in a gigantic conspiracy to escape the reality of Soviet rule. There is an evident desire on the part of the people to avoid the international complications of the Cold War, and Czechoslovakia, created in the West but now committed to the East, makes scant public demonstration of sympathy with either side, although there is no doubt of the direction its leaders would take if forced to make a choice.

In this People’s Republic, one of the most popular songs is the British marching tune from the American motion picture, The Bridge on the River Kwai. American, West German, French, and Italian automobiles circulate with those of Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. Western languages are frequently heard. And the foreigner, from either side, is made to feel quite welcome.

Front runner for the Kremlin

Along the fringe of the Iron Curtain — the outside fringe, that is — experts and exiles make a practice of rating the satellites by degrees of their relative independence of the Soviet Union. At the top of the list, definitely most independent at this time, stands Poland. Other satellites vary in standing according to current conditions. But alone, at the bottom of this rating, most servile of the satellites, is Czechoslovakia.

While Poland, Hungary, and even East Germany have erupted in violence against the Russians, Czechoslovakia has stayed quiet. While Rumania, Bulgaria, and even Albania have held back against collectivization, Czechoslovakia has gone ahead with this process even during the harvest seasons of the last two years.

Czechoslovakia has readily served as a front runner for the foreign policies of the Soviet Union: among the first and most vociferous of the satellites in echoing Russian criticism of the Communist renegade, Tito; first and most effective in development of the Communist offensive for economic penetration of the Middle East.

Recognition of these facts is not pleasant for those outside Czechoslovakia who would prefer to look on this country as a sturdy little offspring of the West and a stout little defender of democracy. It may well be, as some experts estimate, that 95 per cent of the Czech and Slovak people are opposed to Communism. But the record shows that their leaders are 100 per cent pro-Soviet. And the people are following their leaders.

More Communist than the Russians

To a great extent, the West can thank itself for this sorry state of affairs. Czechoslovakia was sacrificed to the Germans at Munich in 1938, conceded to the Russians at Yalta in 1944, and abandoned to the Communists at Prague in 1948. It has little reason to look to the West now for comfort and support.

Apart from the political reasons, to which the Czechs remain very sensitive, there are the economic reasons; the Czechs were quite prosperous under the Germans, during the war, and they are flourishing now under the Russians. Five months before the Russians announced last year their new seven-year plan for economic development, the Czech regime was proposing a 90 to 95 per cent increase in its industrial production by 1965.

Czechoslovakia’s Communist Party is the only one of Eastern Europe formed on a mass basis, from the left wing of the old Social Democratic Party. In the last parliamentary election in 1946, the Communists came first, obtaining 38 per cent of the vote. It was the Czech Communist Party, not the Russians, that took over the country in 1948. And ten years later, the party still claimed nearly one and a half million card-carrying members — close to its peak.

So Czechoslovakia, the modern state that was established at Geneva in 1918 — the only state of Eastern Europe to remain a true democracy in the two decades between the world wars — has now become, in some respects, more Communist than the Soviet Union.

Service for tourists

From the outside, the Czechs seem somewhat embarrassed by, and somewhat reluctant to expose, this condition to foreign visitors. In fact, the Czechoslovak government disassociates itself from the actual granting of visas to travelers. That function, normally handled in the consulates of other countries, has been turned over to the official travel service, Cedok. And Cedok, in turn, has entrusted the task to private travel agencies which have been designated as its representatives in various capitals.

These select agencies provide the customary local excursions, sight-seeing tours, and theater tickets for their customers. But they also offer, quite prominently, such services as a vacation trip to the Soviet Union or a cruise on the Polish liner Batory. And they make all the arrangements for a visit to Czechoslovakia.

They require a valid passport, four photographs, and four applications, containing printed replies to a few routine questions as to identity, occupation, and purpose of the visit. These documents are left with the travel agency. Presumably, at this point they are cleared somewhere with Czechoslovak officials. If there are no complications, the passport is returned ten days later, stamped with a visa, and a frontier pass is enclosed.

The agency charges a fee of $7 for the visa and sells the traveler — obligatorily in advance — tickets for his hotel room and meals in Czechoslovakia. Prices range from $4.30 a day for a thirdclass single room without bath to $12.55 a day for a de luxe single room with bath.

The visa is made valid only for the number of days that a hotel room has been paid for, and no visa is granted for less than three days — which could be a device either to obtain more foreign exchange or to prevent opposition couriers from coming in for a single day, depositing messages, and departing undetected.

Frontier formalities — passport, customs, and foreign exchange inspection —are performed perfunctorily at the airport. Many of the passengers are met by private cars, and little electric wagons scurry around delivering their baggage first. The rest of the bags are loaded into a dilapidated bus, and the more ordinary travelers then ride in the bus to the capital.

Antonin Novotny, Czech President

Prague under Communism, as under the AustroHungarian Empire or Czechoslovak democracy or German protectorate, remains a beautiful city unblemished by modern wars, with a population of about one million. The one hundred towers of its churches rise in mystic splendor over the gray, medieval mass of buildings, huddled in the bend of the Moldau River and sprawling over the Bohemian plain. Over all, from the high bank of the river, looms the ancient Slavic citadel, Hradcany Castle, now the official residence of the President of the republic, Antonin Novotny.

Novotny is not a strong man like Stalin or Khrushchev or a popular leader like Gomulka of Poland or the late Imre Nagy of Hungary. He is a bureaucrat who has made a career of the Communist Party since 1921 and who has lived long enough, while his colleagues were dying, to find himself occupying Hradcany Castle.

Western diplomats describe Novotny as a man of some dignity and ostensible independence, who insists that his pro-Soviet policy is correct and who has the support of the people. His line of reasoning is that Germany is the real enemy of Czechoslovakia, that the rearming of West Germany is the principal threat to Czechoslovakia, and that alliance with the Soviet Union is the best defense against this threat. Either from conviction or from servility, Novotny has been exceptionally diligent in directing the domestic affairs of Czechoslovakia along Communist lines.

The collective farms

Collectivization of agriculture has been one of Novotny’s main objectives. For nearly ten years after the Communist coup, the farmers succeeded to a considerable extent in escaping collectivization by retaining more than half the agricultural land in what is called the “private sector.” But in midsummer of 1957, before Novotny’s accession to power, a vigorous campaign was undertaken to complete the collectivization by 1960. Novotny has carried on the campaign.

During 1957, collectivization increased from 48 to 65 per cent of all farmland. During 1958, that figure went up to 75 per cent. By the end of 1958, it was estimated officially, there were 12,099 collective farms with a farmer-member population of 835,299, and 4,205,177 hectares of land being worked for the state.

There has been no physical resistance to collectivization and none of the famine that accompanied this process in the Soviet Union. But the conversion from private to collective farms, with its resultant decrease in incentive, has led to a decline in production. Before World War II, Czechoslovak agriculture was able to satisfy almost all domestic needs. Now some imports of food have become necessary.

National industry

On the economic front, Novotny announced to a congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia last June 18 his country’s new plan for an increase of up to 95 per cent in gross industrial production by 1965. This was similar to the seven-year plan that Khrushchev presented to the central committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in November.

Czechoslovakia’s new plan for economic development sets a number of specific targets. Steel production, for example, is supposed to increase from 5.2 million tons in 1957 to 9.7 million tons in 1965, and coal production from 24 million tons in 1957 to 36 million tons in 1965. Where once the principal industries were textiles, leather, and glass, priority has now been given to production of fuel, machine tools, and arms.

The country’s economy has undoubtedly been expanding since the Communist coup of 1948. The increase has been achieved by use of marginal resources and manpower. The entire labor force is employed, but there is still a shortage of manpower, although the average household has 1.7 wage earners. All industrial enterprises, banking, insurance, transportation, and other services have been nationalized since World War II. Foreign and domestic trade has been nationalized since the Communists took power, and now, with the exception of a few artisans, there is almost no private enterprise.

Diplomatic relations with the Western powers are poor. Czech leaders accept invitations to Western embassies only on national holidays and on rare occasions such as the visit of some nonpolitical, cultural delegation. Western powers, for their part, tend to treat the Czechs as poor relations of the Russians and are slow, for example, to reply to Czech notes, even on minor matters.

How this situation can be improved is not readily apparent. Some Western diplomats would like to deal with the Czechs as though they really were independent, in hopes of encouraging them to take a more independent course. These diplomats would try to convince the Czechs that the Western powers are not Fascist and that the rearming of Germany is not a gesture of aggression. Then they would expect the true nature of Czechoslovakia to be asserted. But they would not look with any great confidence to the immediate future. Somewhere beneath the surface a spirit of pride and patriotism, a spark of independence, must be smoldering. But nowhere does it appear today on the cold, gray surface of Communist Czechoslovakia.