Normalization revisited FOR THE SAKE of comparison with the situation in Poland, the following article and interview on the state of affairs in Czechoslovakia have a particular interest. They trace the failure of the leadership of the mass movement for democratization to organize a determined struggle against the Stalinist bureaucracy. They are from the October 28, 1985, issue of Profil, a broad circulation Austrian magazine. The interview that follows was also done by Hermann Dworczak.
asked about the attitude to Franz Kafka in Czechoslovakia today. "In 1983 and 1984, a few selected readings were published and a collection of stories in a small edition. There is no study of him. Actually, Kafka is living in exile again."
A salesperson in a bookshop where in 1967 I bought the book containing the materials from the Liblice conference confirmed that. "You will find nothing of Kafka here. He is taboo here."
In a submission of Charter 77 to the Budapest Forum of the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which was signed by the Nobel prize winner Jaroslav Seifert, among others, the following was said about the cultural situation;
"After 1968, a long period began in Czechoslovakia of destruction of all. the major values of a sovereign national culture, in many respects reminiscent of the 1950s and in many re-
HERMANN DWORCZAK
Two border crossings, two scenes of "normalized" Czechoslovakia. Ceske Velenice, the train from Vienna to Prague has just passed the iron curtain. An elderly man speaks to me in German: "A lot of people on your side don't appreciate freedom," he says in a chatty tone.
Although he has been retired for a long time, in the last two years, including cost-of-living increases, he has not gotten more than 900 crowns (officially, the average income in Czechoslovakia is around 2,900 crowns). So, despite his advanced age, he is obliged to supplement his income by working as a homeworker.
Arother scene, Bratislava. At the Petrzalka border crossing, alongside the customs building there is a kennel. Going through passport control, you are confronted with the barking of savage dogs.
In the Prague Spring, Czechoslovakia set about ridding itself of the Stalinist straitjacket, and took the first steps toward "socialism with a human face." In 1985 in Petrzalka it's the snouts of animals that confront you.
Leaving the railway station in Prague, I thought at first that I had come to Linz [an Austrian city ]. The bad air almost took my breath away. From Hradschin, I saw the massive dome of smog that presses down on the city. Because of the sulphurous yellow cloud, the Zizkov, the national memorial for the Hussite leader Jan Zizka, was visible only vaguely.
Defense of the environment gets short shrift in Czechoslovakia. A report entitled Analysis of the Environmental Situation in Czechoslovakia which was sponsored by the government is still being kept under wraps. 18
Supporters of the civil rights movement, however, got hold of a copy and got it published - in the West. On the appropriations for defense of the environment, it says:
"In the USSR, spending on environmental defense as a whole amounts to 2.7% of the national income, in Sweden it is 0.8%, in the USA it is 1.5%, in the Federal Republic of Germany it is 2% of the GNP. Even these spending totals are not strictly comparable from a methodological standpoint, it is clearly food for thought that in the sixth five-year plan (1976 - 1980) such spending in Czechoslovakia will amount to only 0.3% of the applied national income and 0.85% of total investment."
The Czechoslovak-Hungarian version of Hainburg (1) is called Babcikovo-Nagymaros. For the joint power plant that is planned to be built there, the Austrian building firm, Baufirma Universale, has just gotten a 400 million schilling contract [twenty Austrian schillings equal approximately one US dollar].
A publication issued by Hungarian environmentalists in mid-September, with an introduction by Charter 77, warns of negative effects of the power plant on the drinking water supply in Czechoslovakia.
The environmental gray veil matches the cultural scene. In 1963, at the legendary conference on Kafka in Liblice, which is supposed to mark the beginning of the development that led to the Prague Spring, Ernst Fischer demanded an "extended visa" for the writer, who had been banned in the East up until that time.
Frantisek Kautman, who was a participant in the Liblice conference, was specs evell worse. spects even worse."
A young film maker talked about the "sterility of official cultural activity. Only on the fringes do you see occasional sparks." For example, the Concreto Grosso by the pantomimist Boris Rybner is treated as an allegory.
After 8:00 pm, most of the streets in Prague are empty of passers-by. On the Karlsbruecke alone a crowd of young people ebbs and flows and music is played. "Only here because there are foreigners around do you have any chance of not being moved on right away by the police," one of them said. River of forgetfulness
The taverns, on the other hand, are chock full, and beer flows in rivers. On the situation of youth in North Bonemia, the writer Jan Pelc has said: "There are no open spaces where people can meet. Everywhere you run up against the regime and its long arm. So, people go to the only place still open to them, the tavern."
Along with sousing, a weekend in a countryhouse is one of the most common means of escape from an oppressive reality. A quarter of the 450,000 Prague households have such a second dwelling, and seek by this means to get away a bit from the Kremlin big brother and his local viceroys.
The press resembles a morgue. Even the party boss, Gustav Husak, finds it too boring. He is quoted as saying: "Everything is in good order
1. A nuclear power plant against which there have been big mobilizations in Austria.
International Viewpoint 27 January 1986
### CZECHOSLOVAKIA in the papers; it's just that they are often unreadable."
Western TV is generally "in." In Pizn, police built a common antenna in order to get better reception from the West German transmitters. On weekends in Bratislava, you can see lines in front of the newspaper kiosks. There is a real scramble for the Austrian Communist Party paper Volksstimme, because it has a supplement that gives the TV listings.
After the setbacks of 1981 and 1982, the present economic situation in Czechoslovakia is rated as "relatively favorable" (c.f. Die Sueddeutsche Zeitung). Cited on the positive side are a sharp increase in agricultural production, a positive trade balance since 1980, and a small debt to the West.
Czechoslovakia's debts to the West are estimated at around 2 billion dollars, as against a total indebtedness of the Warsaw Pact countries that stands at 75 billion dollars.
In 1968, the Kremlin ended the attempt to bring together socialism and democracy in a brutal way. In the wake of this, the bureaucracy moved with a similar brutality to reconsolidate its threatened positions. A half million party members were purged. A couple of hundred thousand people lost their previous professional status.
Corruption is in full swing in getting housing, hospital care, or the many "approval stamps" for a trip abroad.
The reaction of the population? Apathy, inner emigration, and Svejkism (2). On the "Lennon Wall" in a part of Prague, it says in a resigned way, "Vy mate Lenina - nechte nam Lennona" ("You have Lenin, leave us Lennon"').
A former journalist, now a porter in a hotel said, "Among fellow workers people talk quite openly about the machinations of the rulers. Of course, everyone is in the party and they all give their lip service on May 1. But no one believes in the swindle at the top."
Anyone who engages in any oppositional activity is watched, harassed, or locked up. "Bugs" in the homes of Charter 77 signers are the rule. When a former spokesperson of the Charter, Petruska Sustrova moved, the new tenants found a listening device "made in England" when they were renovating. They gave it to Sustrova as a souvenir. It was not long before the police came and demanded that she return their "tool."
In September, the Catholic priest Vaclav Maly was interrogated by the state security service and dragged off into a wood. Lenka Mareckova, a 22-year-old clerk, following the personal intervention of the minister of justice, was tried twice; and for her poem "Death of a Dictator" (Leonid Brezhnev) she got several months in prison.