World

Agreement follows
nation-wide strike

Continued from page 1

@ Deletion of the provision on the lead-
ing role of the CP of Czechoslovakia;

@ Deletion of the provision on the closed
character of the National Front (the nomi-
nal coalition of the CPCz and two smaller
parties that makes up the country’s legisla-
ture) and the leading role of the CPCz
within it;

@ Deletion of the provision that educa-
tion in Czechoslovakia is directed in the
spirit of the principles of Marxism-
Leninism. In the future, the statement said,
education will be based on scientific find-
ings and humanity.

_Adamec also pledged following the meet-
ing to ask the national committee of Prague
to provide premises for the Civic Forum
which, despite its whirlwind appearance as
the main popular movement seeking reform
in the country, still operates out of the
basement of the Lanterna Magica Theatre
in Prague.

Orbis reported that Monday’s general
strike, organized by Civic Forum together
with university students, brought “most of
the population of the country” into the
streets. It said that the strike was the fifth in
the country’s history, linking it with historic
demonstrations in 1918, 1920, 1938 and in
1948 when the socialist republic of Czechos-
lovakia was established.

In all regions of Czechoslovakia, the
news agency said, “the strikers called for a
speedy resolution of the all-society crisis and
for an effective dialogue for the purpose
of finding solutions to existing problems in
political life .. ..

One of the frequently voiced demands, it
said, was for termination of the leading role
of the Communist Party in society and for
free, democratic elections.

The statement Monday by Havel and
Adamec indicated a major step towards
acceptance of those demands, although a
timetable for elections has yet to be estab-
lished. The role of other parties has also to
be worked out but it is clear that Czechos-
lovakians will press for changes that will
give real political substance to a multi-party
system.

As it had done in the GDR, the Commu-
nist Party’s leadership initially resisted the
demand for economic and political reform
even when it was clear that a movement of
unprecedented proportions was sweeping
across the face of eastern Europe. Under
former CPCz general secretary Milos Jakes,
who resigned together with other Politburo
members Friday, repressive measures were
initially taken against demonstrators,
prompting the popular demand for a full
disclosure of police actions against student
demonstrators last month.

Unlike the GDR, however, the pent-up
demand for reform did not seem so readily
evident inside the Communist Party itself,
with the result that its leading committee
seemed paralyzed, unable to propose a pro-
gram for the growing political and eco-
nomic crisis.

In addition, much of the leadership was
left from 1968 — when it was reconstituted
following the intervention by Warsaw Pact
troops — and their continued role was pol-

itically unacceptable to most Czechosloy-
aks. That was a factor in the second round
of Politburo resignations.

Although Karel Urbanek was named as
the new CPCz general secretary following
the resignations, it was Adamec who
emerged as a key figure in the newly-opened
line of dialogue with Civic Forum. He has
been in the job for a year and is a Politburo
member, but his acceptance of the need for
negotiations and his appéarance at a huge
Civic Forum rally in Prague seems to have
won him a measure of popular support.

The overwhelming demand for changes
has also focussed primarily on political
reform, with a multi-party system and elec-
tions high on the list. Although Czechoslo-
vakia has not had the growth rates it
enjoyed in the 1970s, its economy has been
able to supply most material needs with the
result that there have not been demands for
major economic changes or significant
alternations to the socialist economy.

Streetcars halt in Prague during two-hour general strike Monday.

Me

Leading government economists have,
however, called for sweeping reform of the
“command-administer” system, advocat-
ing a Czechoslovak style-perestroika.

Organizers of Monday’s strike also took
note of the economic factor and sought to
avoid the severe economic impact that
strikes have had on the Polish economy, for
example. In his speech to the rally Sunday
on the eve of the general strike, Vaclav
Havel called on supporters to “make sure
that the strike will not threaten any vital

functions of industry, of health and people’s —

lives.” Adamec had earlier urged strikers to
stage a symbolic strike that would minimize
the damage to the economy.

Orbis reported that a workers in a
number of operations, particularly in health
services and transportation, simply raised
flags to demonstrate support, It added that
in a number of enterprises strikers pledged
to put in extra hours to make up for the time
lost during the strike.

Czechoslovakia: recalling the 68 reforms

By TOM MORRIS

The situation in Czechoslovakia, while
containing all the ingredients of other
movements sweeping the socialist Euro-
pean panorama — with calls for freedom
of speech and of the press, open elections,
‘an end to repression for political
dissent —contains a special, highly-volatile
factor: pent-up anger over the humiliation
visited on that country 21 years ago by five
armies of the Warsaw Pact, putting an end
to reforms being sought by the parents of
the very people who are today shaking the
regime. ‘

In a real sense, the Czechoslovak
tragedy never subsided since those days.
Youth who were scarcely born in August,
1968, are today, as the Socialist Youth
sadly remarked last week, “standing one
against the other” — some as demonstra-
tors, some as police — in ascenario not of
their making.

Ironically, those who set the invasion
stage, those who crafted the web of lies
and _ half-truths, those who played on
genuine fears over the “security” of social-
ism by painting reforms as_counter-
revolutionary, are mostly gone. Leonid
Brezhnev’s 22-year-long era is today char-
acterized as a period of domestic misman-
agement, stagnation and corruption at
home and dangerous adventures abroad.
The GDR’s Erich Honecker was recently
removed from responsible party and
government posts. Bulgaria’s Todor
Zhivkov faces the possibility of an investi-
gation. In recent weeks Poland and Hun-
gary have publicly called their participation
in the 1968 intervention a mistake.

This, it seems, leaves only the heirs of
the intervention — on the one hand,
those authorities who owe their posts to
that action, on the other, the mass of the
Czechoslovak people whose persistent
demands for reforms are again spilling

Backgrounder

onto the streets.

And what were those reforms?

What was so threatening as to trigger an
invasion? What were the Czechoslovak
people doing to cause their parliament to
be dissolved, their government and party
leaders arrested, their party purged and
their country occupied?

What so upset many communist parties
abroad (including the Communist Party
of Canada) that ringing denunciations of
the “Prague Spring” and stirring defences
of the intervention were issued?

“We want to revive all the creative for-
ces of our people, all the physical and
moral talents of our society,” explained
the Central Committee of the Czechos-
lovak Communist Party in April, 1968, as
it unveiled a 25,000-word Action Pro-
gram. And (in the sexist language of that
day): “We want to create such conditions
in life that every honest citizen to whom
socialism and the interests of his people
are dear, will feel that he is the real builder
of the destiny of his country, his native
land, that he is needed, that he counts for
something ...

“Greater activity of the socialist devel-
opment can be created only to the extent
that we can set into motion new penetrat-
ing forces in socialist life; that we will
boldly, but very carefully, experiment, bas-
ing ourselves on creative Marxist thinking
....” One can only speculate two decades

later what might have been the outcome
for Czechoslovak society and for socialism
in eastern Europe had the people, not the
command-administer machinery, pre-

vailed.

The Action Program is mild compared
to the standards projected by the USSR’s
perestroika and by reforms being enacted
in the GDR, Poland, Hungary and Bulga-
ria. But it contained the basic building
blocks toward economic reform and
democratic renewal of society. Here are
some examples:

@ About socialism: “Socialism can
only develop when it opens the way for the
realization of the varied interests of the
people and on this basis democratically
creates the unity of all working people.
This is the main source of voluntary public
activity and the development of socialist
orders

“Voluntary public organizations can-
not replace political parties, but neither
can our political parties exclude these
organizations from influencing state pol-
icy and the formulation and carrying
through of that policy. State power cannot
be monopolized by any one party, or even
a coalition of parties; it must be open to all
political organizations of the people.

“Socialism does not only mean the lib-
eration of the working people from the
rule of the exploiting classes, but must
bring more self-realization of the individ-
ual than is given by any bourgeois demo-
cracy.”

@ About the Communist Party: “Its
leading role was often understood in the
past as a monopoly of power in the hands
of the party organs. This was based on the
false thesis that the party is the instrument

of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This

harmful concept weakened the initiative
and responsibility of the state, economic
and social institutions and, in fact, also
harmed the authority of the party and
made it impossible for it to fulfill its most
important functions. The aim of the party
is not to be an ‘administrator’ of society,
not to give directives to all organizations
and every step in life... .

“Communists must again, in the
framework of the democratic rules of the
socialist state, constantly strive for the
voluntary support of the majority of peo-
ple for the party line.”

@ About democracy: “It is necessary to
give more precise legal guarantees for
freedom of speech and for minority inter-
ests and opinions, within the framework
of socialist laws and in conformity with the
principle that decisions are made by the
will of the majority.”

e@ About nationalities: “The party will
consistently defend the Leninist principle
that disregard of the interests of a smaller
nation by the representatives of a larger
nation is incompatible with socialist rela-
tionships among nations ....”

® About the economy: “We cannot for
long deaden our economic policy by tak-
ing from those who are working well and
giving to those who work badly ... Eco-
nomic planning and policy must be put
under the democratic control of the
National Assembly (parliament). The dif-
ferent leading economic organs must also
beso constituted that the special monopo-
listic interests of the enterprises shall not
prevail over the interests of the citizens as
consumers ....”

Seen in retrospect through today’s polit-
ical actuality, those demands are all the
more correct. They deserved a better fate.
Perhaps this time, in the absence of the
Brezhnev doctrine, the spirit and practice
of socialist renewal will prevail.

8 ¢ Pacific Tribune, December 4, 1989