Yes. In the coming year the left will leave the CP, as in Poland in 1981, but there is nowhere for them to go. There is no Solidarosc. We do not want to repeat some of the mistakes of Polish comrades. We think they made two main errors. The first was that they didn't form a vanguard party before the mass movement and secondly there were the endless clashes between the left-wingers. We want to overcome primitive anti-Communism, and try to build the embryo of a mass revolutionary party. But, of course, we are just creating some preconditions; there is no guarantee that we will succeed. *
USSR / CZECHOSLOVAKIA High hopes and deep suspicions
5., Show me another - somehow I don't feel free in this one (from Lidové noviny) DEMOCRACY in Prague. Walls and windows in the city centre are plastered with leaflets. Some advertise services, but most are political appeals from a myriad of newly formed political groups ranging from the libertarian Marxist Left Alternative to the Republican Union, promoting thoroughoing free enterprise and "closely connected with Jacques René Chirac". There are also leaflets about specific questions such as the expulsion of the German minority from Czechoslovak territory after the Second World War. Posters of the founding father of the Czechoslovak Republic Tomas G. Masaryk are everywhere and many parties lay claim to his heritage.
COLIN MEADE
N THE subways people are collecting for petitions. One for the outlawing of the Communist Party (KSC), another in opposition to the proposal from Slovak parties that the name of the Republic should be changed to emphasize Slovakia. In any case the word "Socialist" has been removed from the country's name. An appeal is being circulated calling for a token general strike on April 11 to demand that the KSC should hand back most of its property to the state.
The changes are not just cosmetic. On Wednesday March 28 the Czechoslovak government announced the following reforms: the convertibility of the currency; the freeing of prices and the ending of subsidies by the end of the year; elimination of central planning and the creation of an office of privatization. In a thoroughly nationalized economy such as Czechoslovakia's these measures will have incalculable social and economic consequences on living standards, public services and employment.
There were reports that differences existed in the government on how fast to introduce these reforms between populist First Deputy Prime Minister Valtr Komarek, urging a slow approach and the Finance Minister Vaclav Klaus who wanted to move fast. Klaus wants to make the changes before the June elections, thus creating facts that the Czechoslovak people, should they wish to do so, will find hard to reverse. President Vaclav Havel is rumoured to prefer the Komarek approach.
Whatever the tensions in the government there is wide agreement, including the new leadership of the Communist Party (KSC), that the way to solve Czechoslovakia's grave economic and ecological problems is through some sort of market 7 reform and an opening to Western capital.
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
This is also the view of the population.
According to an opinion poll in the second half of January, 68% of the respondents expressed support for radical market reforms and 63% the rapid development of the private sector. Only 10% and 18% respectively firmly rejected such developments. Such figures express a heartfelt rejection of decades of bureaucratic mismanagement, which has led to growing backwardness and dilapidation in every area of economic life as well as a tremendous ecological crisis, apparent at the most superficial level in the air pollution in Prague. Every evening the news programmes end with figures on the level of toxic gases in the atmosphere, providing figures many times above accepted national and international safety standards. Despite 42 years of a supposedly socially conscious "socialist" system, the West seems, simply, cleaner!
### Civic Forum produces depressing statistics
A booklet issued by Civic Forum entitled Czechoslovakia at the Crossroads, gives a depressing picture of the coun try's economic decline over the past decades. In 1937 production per head in Czechoslovakia expressed in SUS was 200, in Austria 220 and in France 255.
figures for 1987 are (estimated) 5,000 - 8,000 in Czechoslovakia, 11,647 in Austria and 12,739 in France. These figures, furthermore, do not include the amount of resources used for each unit of production or the quality and usefulness of the products. For example in Czechoslovakia some two and a half times as much steel is consumed for each unit of domestic product as in the West. As Vaclav Havel explained in his New Year's address: "Whole branches of industry are turning out things that noone is interested in, while what we need, we don't get."
It takes a Czechoslovak citizen two and a half times as long as her/his West German counterpart to earn enough for basic foodstuffs and the relative figures for electrical goods are vastly greater. Such figures translate into daily life as longer working hours for a lower living standard. To achieve the West's prosperity, it is necessary to use the West's methods. This simple proposition dominates all discussion of economic questions.
However underneath this pro-market consensus there are significant tensions within the society around questions of democracy, including economic democracy.
In November's "gentle revolution" millions of Czechs and Slovaks decided to take back control of their country from the arrogant and incompetent clique of bureaucrats who had run it for their own benefit for 42 years. Every institution and 8 workplace was affected by this upsurge to one degree or another.
This democratic tide continues to flow. Hundreds of political and interest groups have emerged. The whole gamut of political parties exists, including social democratic, Christian democratic, green, liberal and conservative parties. An example of the political ferment is the appearance of both a cultural association and a political party to represent the interests of the country's large and much discriminated against Romany population. A strong nationalist sentiment has reawakened in Slovakia, complicated by the existence in the region of a large Hungarian minority, which is also organizing itself.
The Communist Party - which has both suffered a significant split and lost more than a third of its membership since November — has radically changed its programme and now calls for a multi-party system while opposing privatization.
An article calling for actions to win rights and social acceptance for the coun try's "forgotten minority" of homosexuals has appeared in a widely read independent journal. Strikes have occurred, often related to personnel issues. A bus and tram drivers strike in Brno took place about a disputed planning decision in the city. The action was organized by the enterprise committee of the independent trade unions that have developed out of the Factory committees set up to mobilize for the November 27 general strike that sealed the fate of the old regime.
Mass movement of conscripts develops
Pressures have been building up for changes in the conditions of military service - alternative service has at last been permitted, while there have been embryonic and controversial moves towards the formation of trade unions in the police force. It is reported that on January 20 this year some 650 delegates met to form a Union of Young Soldiers, although I do not know details of its programme. The January edition of the Bulletin Independent Peace Association (NMS), a group active in the dissident movement for some years, prints excerpts from letters from the barracks about how, even after November, conscripts have been unable to get newspapers other than the KSC daily Rudé Právo and the official armed services publication. It reports on hunger strikes in the army in favour of immediate application of a shorter period of conscription.
The NMS calls on local Civic Forums and students to make contacts with the barracks. The journal also complains that the central leadership of Civic Forum has been indifferent or even hostile to these developments. On December 18 the Defence Ministry issued a decree forbidding the activity of all political parties,
International Viewpoint #183 • April 23, 1990 movements and churches in the army.
Throughout the country Civic Forums (OFs) exist in the districts and workplaces, attempting to give a voice to the demands of all currents and groups with no attachment to the bureaucracy. The OF in the Prague 3 Zizkov district, for example, organizes commissions on issues such as building — engaged in a survey of empty properties in the district - the environment and security. The OF is involved in a campaign for the removal of a radio transmitter (for jamming purposes I was told) that has been constructed on the ruins of a local park.
The Zizkov OF had taken seriously the Federal Assembly's decision to remove the leading role of the party from the constitution, and launched a campaign for the recomposition of the committee of the local National Committee (ONV). The existing Communist Party (KSC) dominated ONV refused to cooperate; by not turning up they made the meeting formally invalid.
Citizens assembly in Prague suburb
The OF invited local people to turn up to observe the meeting and the session became a "citizens assembly". After negotiations, the KSC finally backed down and now has only three out of the 15 seats on the committee. OF organizers however complain that there are not enough activists and that outside Prague the OFs are often dominated by recycled bureaucrats. The Zizkov OF also advertises the existence of the petition for outlawing the Communist Party.
Those involved at the grass roots are often suspicious of what is going on at the higher levels of the OF, in particular in relation to negotiations with the KSC.
Many of the tensions have been brought to the surface by a an apparently minor dispute in Bmo between two longterm dissidents, now leading members of the city's Civic Forum, Jaroslav Sabata and Petr Cibulka.
Sabata is the head of the Brno Civic Forum and, according to Le Monde of March 28, "had reached a modus vivendi with the town's KSC mayor Josef Pernica in the run-up to the June elections". Accusing Sabata of "government behind closed doors" Petr Cibulka organized demonstrations against him in the name of direct democracy. "The Civic Forum must listen to the voice of the people", Cibulka stat-
The incident was widely commented on in the press and by leading spokespersons of the Civic Forum and government. A meeting of Charter 77 applauded Cibulka when he accused the OF leaders of manipulation, but most of the speakers criticized his methods. Cibulka is now standing independently of the OF in the June elections.
There is a real danger that frustration at
the stalled progress of the democratic revolution will give rise to a strong current of right-wing radicalism, reflected in the petition to ban the KSC and in attempts to drive individuals previously in the KSC out of public life or even their jobs. There are many rumours about "cryptocommunist" infiltration of new or renovated parties, with who knows what truth.
The networks of the bureaucratic elites — who executed a 180 degree turn after November, electing Havel unanimously to the Presidency as they would once have denounced him — are quite capable of finding new homes outside of the KSC. The discovery that many of new leaders in East Germany were working for the Stasi should remind us that, whatever their present policies, the old satellite parties of the Communist dominated national fronts were part of the old regime. But it is precisely these parties in Czechoslovakia — the People's Party (SL) and Czechoslovak Socialist Party (CSS) in the Czech Lands and the Democratic Party (DS) in Slovakia that are tipped to do well in the June elections.
Fingers of suspicion have even been pointed in the direction of the social democrats and greens as well as the newly formed Agrarian Party. This unease is intensified by the rumours surrounding the continued functioning of the secret police (StB). In the first post-November government the KSC attempted to hold onto the Interior Ministry, but was forced to cede it to a non-Communist Richard Sacher. A fortnight after his appointment the StB was abolished - long enough to get rid of incriminating material.
The danger is that justified anger that "they" are getting away with it, and that vital elements of the old order are being protected and preserved, will be channelled into rightist radicalism. This in its turn will give a new lease of life to the revamped KSC and its left unity projects.
The elements of the old democratic opposition who are now part of the government are aware of this problem. The new President, Vaclav Havel has expressed his opposition to a revanchist policy towards members of the KSC and in his major speeches, has eloquently emphasized political participation as the basis for the new order. Again in his New Year's address Havel insisted that the force which would allow Czechs and Slovaks to overcome the past was the human energy revealed in November. As he underlined "after centuries both our nations have straightened their backs by themselves, depending on no assistance from stronger states or on either of the great powers. It seems to me that this is the great moral investment of this moment: it has within it the hope that next
CZECHOSLOVAKIA time, we won't suffer from the complex of those who must constantly thank somebody for something. Now it only depends on us whether this hope is fulfilled and whether our civic, national and political self-confidence will awake in an entirely new way."
Furthermore in his visits abroad Havel has not hesitated to mention issues such as the withdrawal of American troops from Europe. However his belief that "politics is not simply the art of the possible" will be drowned in short order by the realities of political power if it is not backed up by a global democratic conception, which is not tender towards the powers that be anywhere on the planet.
Havel may well become increasingly isolated within the government — or his enthusiasm for playing the presidential role simply DECANSKÉ FÓRu
Move Icome his radical democratic instincts — especially if, as seems possible, the Civic Forum movement starts to fragment.
Already the social democrats have stated that they will stand independently of the OF in the June elections while a broad Christian Democrat regroupment, with backing from the West German CDU (party of the FRG's Chancellor Helmut Kohl) has been formed. If recent elections in East Germany and Hungary are anything to go by this latter force has a strong chance of capturing the popular mood for a rapid alignment with capitalism - and above all West German capitalism.
But desire is one thing, reality another, as East Germans are already finding out. Apart from the obvious economic and social problems attendant on full scalemarketization and opening to the West, Czechoslovakia may also face in the medium term a crisis of the unity of the state, as Bohemia moves into the West
German orbit, leaving Moravia and Slovakia behind.
Another area where the optimistic prognoses of the new government will face a major challenge is in relations with its neighbours. According to Havel, the East European "approach to the West must be coordinated". '. The feasibility of such unity will be tested by how the new Hungarian government deals with the issue of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia.
Furthermore there is a contradiction between the desires of the democratic movement for open government and demilitarization on the one hand and the pro-capitalist programme on the other.
On the economic front belief in the market as the just measure of the value of human activity excludes conscious control over economic policy. It also means tolerance of speculation and the use of political positions for profiteering. Furthermore at the political level the preservation of a "liberal" state separate from and above society requires that the repressive forces are not too seriously disrupted. Will the need to make the human being the centre of politics, which Havel expounds so eloquently, prevail when it comes to a conflict with the interests of potential foreign investors or the demands of domestic profiteers? And will the government "open the books" of the police to ensure that the old networks are unable to operate in secrecy and admit the validity of demands for the demilitarization of society? The answer to such questions does not lie solely or even mainly in the government itself. The small forces, such as the Left Alternative and others, who believe in a consistent democracy and are not prepared to sacrifice the gains of November on the altar of realpolitik, can have an impact far beyond their confirmed supporters, attracting the radical discontent away from the right.
But the answer lies also in the ability of the rest of the European left to propose their own forms of aid to the East which are both more effective materially and respect the right to self-determination of these countries. Anti-militarism and the whole range of issues relating to an enriched concept of human freedom raised by the womens liberation, lesbian and gay, and anti-racist movements will find a definite audience.
For a period of time the — real and genuine — attractions of access to the world market will probably overshadow the attraction of such themes. But the Czech and Slovak nations will find themselves let down by their rich Western "friends" before the end of the century and the possibility of a second, more profound stage 9 of the democratic revolution will open. *
April 23, 1990 • :