F OCUS - American Foreign Service Association

in turn, the enthusiastic applause of
an appreciative population. Most of
his fellow citizens came quickly to
hail him for his own qualities — particularly
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 democratic
society was re-emerging from
the ashes.
Now newspapers that could not
have been given away in 1967 began
to publish enough interesting material
to make their sale swift. Television
began to report without the “party
spirit” of agitation-propaganda that
had been a hallmark of the communist
system. It sampled public opinion
— 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 political
party or at least a share in how
they were to be governed. Those
jailed by Novotny organized to press
for redress and rehabilitation. Thousands
marched to Lany to put flowers
on the graves of the Masaryks and to
ask questions about the supposed suicide
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-
54 FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL/JULY-AUGUST 2008
The explosion of
spontaneity that began
on Jan. 5, 1968, had little
to do with anything
Dubcek said or wrote.
lic, made a warning speech to factory
workers timed with the commemoration
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 replaced
him with a retired general officer,
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 needed
because the new Czechoslovak
leadership had been subjected (on
March 26) to heavy criticism by leaders
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 dedicated
to ideologically correct demonstrations
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 concern.
Within a week, Moscow convened
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 “leading
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 emotion,
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 buying
his argument. Public dissent and
publication of unpalatable opinions
were not acceptable in socialist society,
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 something
with which Czechoslovakia was
free to meddle. Meanwhile Czechoslovak
citizens, their patriotic impulses
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 leadership,
which contained covert critics of
Dubcek, was caught between domestic
public opinion and the menace
from neighboring states.
The Tanks of August
Counting correctly on some highlevel
support in the Czechoslovak
leadership, the Politburo struck