A Noble Cause Betrayed ... but Hope Lives On
Pages from a Political Life, by John Boyd
Chapter 5
My Report on the 1968 Events in Czechoslovakia
This is the letter I sent to the Central
Committee of the Communist Party of Canada on Sept. 18, 1968. It was
sent as a contribution to the discussion bulletin on the events in
Czechoslovakia that was to be published prior to the meeting of the
Central Committee in October. The letter never saw the light of day.
Through the intervention of Tim Buck and William Kashtan it was decided
to discontinue the bulletin after two issues, "due to space
limitations." At the time the letter was written I did not know that I
would be attending the Sept. 18 meeting. When I did, I used about
two-thirds of this letter in the hour-long speech I made to the meeting
as my contribution to the discussion.
To the members of the Central Committee,
Communist Party of Canada:
First, let me apologize for the length of this
letter. It is the most important document I have written in my life. I
therefore ask your indulgence. Involved in this letter are all the hopes
and ideals I have worked for and stood for throughout the 36 years I
have been a full-time worker in our movement. I ask you to read it with
the same seriousness with which I am writing it.
It is regrettable that the CEC of our party was
unable to come out with a more forthright and clear-cut statement
condemning the August 21 military intervention in Czechoslovakia for
what it was: a monumental folly and a travesty on socialism.
Regrettable, but in a way understandable, for although the action was a
glaring violation of all principles governing relations between
socialist states and Communist parties, and although there have been
other moments in history when friends and advocates of socialism have
been cruelly misled by statements and actions of the leaders of the
Soviet Union and other socialist states, many people still sought
desperately for some sort of rational explanation of the action.
* * *
The TASS statement on the day of the intervention
declared that (1) the party and government leaders of Czechoslovakia
asked for "urgent assistance....including assistance with armed forces"
and (2) that "this request was brought about by the threat....emanating
from the counter-revolutionary forces which have entered into a
collusion with foreign forces hostile to socialism." Neither of these
statements is true. There was no imminent threat of counter-revolution
in Czechoslovakia. The overwhelming majority of the Czechoslovak
communists, leaders and rank and file, did not think so at the time
and they do not think so now. Significantly, the communique issued after
the talks between Czechoslovak and Soviet leaders on Aug 26 makes no
mention of any "counter-revolutionary threat." The Czechoslovaks did
not, would not and do not now agree to any such characterization...
* * *
What are the criteria for declaring there is a
counter-revolution or the threat of a counter-revolution in a country?
For the leaders of some of the socialist countries an article in a
newspaper criticizing or attacking the Communist Party or certain
government policies of one of the socialist states, or a few voices
(sometimes even one voice) raised in opposition are grounds for crying
"counter-revolution" or declaring there is a counter-revolutionary
threat. Even criticism by Communists or honest and sincere patriots of
socialist Czechoslovakia, because they were sometimes expressed in angry
and bitter terms, were branded as counter-revolutionary.
But the Czechoslovak Communists had a different
approach and different evaluation of these voices of opposition. In a
three-hour interview with Rae Murphy and me on August 8, Jan Kolar, a
Central Committee member of the Czechoslovak Party, said: "What basis is
there for claiming that Czechoslovakia faces the threat of
counterrevolution? Not one Communist has been killed, not one party
official has been physically assaulted. The press, radio and TV are in
the hands of the Communists (granted some of them are in what we call
the right wing in our party). Our army and police are in full command of
public order and prepared for any eventuality. Surely this is far from
being a counterrevolution."
* * *
There were and are, of course, anti-socialist and
anti-Soviet elements in the country, aided and abetted by the CIA and
similar forces (there are also such, by the way, in the GDR, Poland,
Hungary and the Soviet Union). But the Czechoslovak leaders always
admitted that there were such elements. They always pointed out,
however, that these were not large groups or strata of the population
but individuals, who were not in any positions of power and influence
and would not be allowed to get into any such positions. Nevertheless,
they were quite ready and able to deal with them if they ever presented
a threat. Indeed, they often made it clear that should ideological means
of fighting these elements prove to be inadequate and any kind of
emergency arose the government and the party were ready to use force.
The Czechoslovak Communists, however, always
differentiated between the conscious anti-socialist elements, who wanted
to turn Czechoslovakia back to the pre-198 and pre-1939 days and honest
citizens, including many Communists, who because of the excesses of the
Novotny regime were very critical of the party and its leaders. Some of
these were very bitter and some went to extremes. But although many of
these people were confused and wrong they were not in favour of a return
to capitalism. They wanted, as many of them put it, a "better"
socialism, a "more humane," "more democratic" socialism. The
Czechoslovak party leaders understood this and refused to brand them as
"agents of imperialism" or "counter-revolutionaries" or to lump them
into one camp with the conscious anti-socialist, truly
counter-revolutionary elements.
* * *
The Czechoslovak Party had its finger very much
on the pulse of the people. It knew that much of the dissatisfaction was
a "blowing off steam" by hundreds of thousands of workers and people
generally after more than two decades of bureaucracy, violations of
people's rights and distortions of socialist democracy. That there would
be extremes and excesses in such a situation was inevitable but the
Party was determined not to return to the old pre-January methods to
eliminate them. The main point is that they differentiated between the
honest elements who were confused, angry, bitter and highly critical and
those who wanted to return to capitalism or were consciously serving the
enemy. On the other hand, the Soviet press (and that of the other four
powers) lumped all the voices of opposition into one camp and almost
anyone who was "anti" or didn't conform was labeled a
counter-revolutionary, indeed, is still being so labeled.
It is being said that the threat of
counter-revolution was very real and very near. In the United Nations
Security Council and in the Soviet and other newspapers, statements were
made that the Warsaw Pact powers had "irrefutable proof' that a
take-over by the counter-revolutionaries in Czechoslovakia with the
assistance of "outside imperialist forces" was imminent. No such proof
has as yet been produced.
* * *
How imminent was the threat? It took only four
hours for the near half-million troops to occupy all the strategic
points in Czechoslovakia. Surely the leadership .. of the Czechoslovak
party wasn't that close to losing control of the government or being
overthrown by a coup! And if the threat was that imminent and the proof
of its existence so irrefutable, isn't it strange that the majority of
the Czechoslovak leaders could not be convinced of it? Why, for example,
could they not convince President Svoboda, an old general knowledgeable
in military problems, a fearless patriot of his country, a devoted
Communist? Or Dubcek, or Cernik, or Smrkovsky? Why couldn't they
convince these men at least enough to win their agreement for the
presence of foreign troops? And if the threat of counter-revolution
wasn't just hours or days away, why the rush? Why couldn't they, for
example, have recalled the Bratislava meeting or even an emergency
meeting of all the Communist parties in Europe?
* * *
We are told that the Czechoslovak leaders
themselves, indeed the majority, called for the foreign troops a claim
categorically denied by the Czechoslovak government and Party leaders.
If they did and if they were a majority, why did they not come forward
and identify themselves? If in the beginning they were afraid, why
didn't they come forward after they had the protection of the foreign
troops? Why is it that to this date nobody has named any of these
leaders? No, there was no such demand from the Czechoslovak leadership
at any time. In any case, whether there was a last-minute plea by a
handful if individuals in the Czechoslovak Party leadership who were
opposed to the policies of the majority is of secondary importance. The
fact is that an operation such as the one that was carried out within
four hours in the early morning of August 21 wasn't organized in the
last minute. It had been planned not weeks but months before. Thus,
while it is true that there were counter-revolutionary elements and
imperialist forces hard at work in Czechoslovakia in the past months,
seeking to use the situation that had developed to their own advantage,
the claim that the intervention was made necessary because
Czechoslovakia was threatened by counter-revolution simply does not
stand up.
Perhaps it is because the "irrefutable proof' of
counter-revolution was not so irrefutable that a Pravda correspondent,
S. Kovalev, came out (three weeks after the intervention!) with the
theory that it was a "peaceful counter-revolution." There need not be
killings and physical assaults on people to constitute a
counterrevolution, he wrote. There can also be a "peaceful" or "quiet"
counter-revolution. The tactics of such a peaceful counter-revolution,
we are told, "consists of references to the need for 'improving'
*socialism." Demands for "democratization" and for "a more democratic
socialism" are also included. By painting a detailed imaginary picture
of how such a "peaceful" counterrevolution could develop, step by step,
the Pravda writer creates the impression that this is precisely what was
going to take place in Czechoslovakia and what the intervention
prevented.
At least one flaw in this "theory" is that there
is hardly a single person in Czechoslovakia today who can be persuaded
to believe that there was such a threat or that the intervention was
justified. And was it necessary to send almost half a million troops and
7,500 tanks into a country the size of New York state, with a population
of 11/2 million, to crush a "peaceful" counterrevolution? If a
counter-revolution, peaceful or otherwise, was imminent and so extensive
and well organized, why is it that no one has been able to pinpoint
precisely who these counter-revolutionaries are and expose them? Why
haven't the leaders of this counterrevolution been named? Why is it that
to date not a single counter-revolutionary has been arrested? Surely if,
as it is claimed, there are some 40,000 armed counter-revolutionaries in
the country at least a few of them could have been produced by now.
* * *
The entire picture of the situation in
Czechoslovakia over the past several months has been also confused and
distorted by another factor: the role imperialism and its forces have
played in it and around it and the way this fact has been used by those
who have opposed the democratization process in Czechoslovakia.
That the capitalist powers would use the
differences that arose among the Czechoslovak Communists, supported by
the majority of the Communist Parties of the world, was inevitable and
should have caused no surprise or alarm to Marxists. But by applying a
primitive kind of logic, some Communists argued that if the Western
powers are supporting the Czechoslovak Communists, this is proof that
they are "on the wrong track." The GDR leaders were particularly prone
to using this argument. Every time a West German newspaper or radio
station quoted a speech or an article from Czechoslovakia this was
further evidence that the West German "revanchists" were master-minding
events there.
The more this happened, of course, the more the
Western powers joined in "backing" the Czechoslovak leaders, hoping
thereby to widen and deepen the split and they have been quite
successful. This primitive logic took its crudest form when a leading
Bulgarian Communist told me (this was at the time that Dubcek had been
taken away and nobody knew where he was): "Dubcek is a
counter-revolutionary. It's a good thing we've got rid of him." This
kind of "black and white," "who's not with us is against us" approach
has in one form or another permeated scores of articles and statements
written about the Czechoslovak events. This kind of approach and the
premise that "the Soviet comrades can't possibly be wrong" or "we have
to stand by the Soviet Union no matter what" has also motivated many of
those Parties that have endorsed the intervention. In this respect it is
interesting to note that the intervention was endorsed mainly by those
Parties that have had the least contact with the Czechoslovak Party,
whose leaders did not visit and have talks with the Czechoslovak
leaders, especially in the last few months, and who therefore had little
or no first-hand knowledge of the situation in this country.
If one starts out from the standpoint that the
leaders of the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries involved
were correct in all these events, that they made no serious errors, that
"there must be something to it if the leaders of five socialist
countries say so," then the problem becomes relatively simple: there was
a threat of counter-revolution in Czechoslovakia, the security of the
socialist world was threatened, therefore any and every action necessary
was justified. I, for one, cannot, do not and will not accept this
precept.
* * *
What are the reasons that prompted the leaders of
the Soviet and the other Warsaw Pact powers to take the drastic step
they did? To understand this one must go back to the January plenum of
the Czechoslovak Party's Central Committee, when the majority of the
committee ousted Novotny and a number of his supporters from leadership,
broke with the policies the old leadership had pursued and charted a new
course, which became known as the "democratization process," the aims of
which were summarized in the Party's Action Program.
The leaders in Moscow, Berlin and Warsaw opposed
this new path taken by the Czechoslovak Communists from the very outset.
The leaders in Budapest and Sofia joined later. Despite their claims at
the time that they supported the decisions of the January and May
plenums, those who carefully followed what was written in the press and
what was said by the leaders in these countries were able to notice that
at first this support was only formal and lukewarm at best; very soon
after, it became obvious that the course the Czechoslovak leaders had
charted was being fundamentally opposed.
* * *
The press of the five Warsaw Pact powers during
the past nine months was the best indicator of this opposition and the
escalation of that opposition right up to the August 21 military
intervention. The decisions of the January plenum were only
perfunctorily reported; the speeches of Dubcek, Smrkovsky and Cernik
were reported by quoting only those sections with which the editors
agreed and omitting important passages with which they did not agree. So
obvious was this to the Communists in Prague, who would read both
Rude Pravo and Pravda, that they were embarrassed. A major
speech of Dubcek, for example, was very briefly reported (only carefully
selected passages) yet only a short while later a speech by Gomulka in
Warsaw was carried by Pravda in full, taking two full pages. The Action
Program, a lengthy and highly important and historic document, was
confined to a quarter page and the selections most carefully chosen. A
representative from one of the European parties commented that "it must
have been edited by a surgeon." Even in the World Marxist Review
the first articles on the events and decisions in Czechoslovakia were
published only in May (and that not without some difficult manoeuvring),
while the Action Program, which many parties wanted as quickly as
possible, wasn't printed in the magazine's Information Bulletin
until late July, and that only in a limited edition in Prague. It wasn't
sent to Canada for reprinting in the English edition. It was obvious,
even to the not very astute political observer, that the leaders in
Moscow and the other Warsaw Pact capitals did not approve of the course
the Czechoslovak Communists had embarked upon.
* * *
Eventually, especially after talks in Dresden and
Moscow failed to divert the Czechoslovak leaders from their course, one
began to note a mounting campaign of attacks, at first somewhat guarded
and subtle but gradually more open and direct, against various
individuals and publications in Czechoslovakia. Some of these were
justified criticisms of extremist views, although all too often in an
inimical tone that is used against enemies rather than confused or
misguided friends. Some of them crossed the border of journalistic
ethics and good taste. An article in the May issue of Sovietskaia
Rossia, for example, attacking Czechoslovakia's first president,
Tomas Masaryk, was not only crude in its language and approach but a
distortion of history. It completely failed to take into account the
national feelings of the people of Czechoslovakia, what Masaryk still
means to them; and thus caused a great deal of resentment in the country
at a time when subversive forces were working overtime to arouse
anti-Soviet sentiment. The articles became more critical and more
one-sided. Fewer and fewer materials were published from the speeches of
the Czechoslovak leaders and from the statements and documents of the
Party's leading bodies. There was little or no attempt to differentiate
these from the views of the extremist anti-socialist elements that were
attacked.
As the pressure on the Czechoslovak leaders
mounted, the Warsaw Pact powers, to justify their chosen course and
policy, began to resort to more and more exaggerations, half-truths and
outright falsification. News that a small arms cache was found near the
German border in suspiciously strange and provocative circumstances
only half concealed in a culvert under a bridge (and after an anonymous
telephone tip) was picked up within hours and broadcast widely. A day
later, the Bulgarian press carried a story that "many arms caches have
been found all over Czechoslovakia." This was reprinted and broadcast in
all the Warsaw Pact countries so that millions got the impression that
Czechoslovakia was almost an armed counter-revolutionary camp. Next day,
the Czechoslovak government officially denied that other arms caches had
been found. But the denial wasn't printed in the press of the other
countries.
Much was made of the stories that thousands of
Western and particularly West German tourists were flooding into
Czechoslovakia and even that German and American soldiers disguised as
civilians had infiltrated the entire country. No proof of this later
charge was provided then or since. (That there were and are CIA agents
and West German agents in Czechoslovakia of that there is no doubt;
they are also present in every other Warsaw Pact country). On June 2,
the Czechoslovak news agency CTK published official statistics showing
the number of tourists that had come into the country up to that point
in the season. The figures showed: the number of tourists as compared
with the same period in the previous year grew by 20 percent, but most
of the increase was from the socialist countries; only 22 percent were
from capitalist countries, a drop percentage-wise compared to 1965; all
the other socialist countries had a larger number of tourists from the
West on a per capita basis. For every tourist from West Germany there
were .5 from the GDR and for every tourist from Austria there were three
from Hungary. Needless to say, none of this was reported in the press of
the socialist countries. Scores of additional examples of such
distortion and outright fabrication can be provided (I have retained
clippings of some of the most glaring ones).
* * *
After the January plenum of the Czechoslovak
Party's Central Committee the parties of the Warsaw Pact countries
resigned themselves to the fact that Novotny had been removed and would
have to be written off. But those who had supported Novotny and his
policies were not written off. There was a conscious effort in these
countries to push to the fore those individuals whom the Czechoslovak
Party members considered as "conservative" but whom the Soviet press
kept referring to (and still does) as the "healthy elements" in the
party. This was perhaps most flagrantly done in the publication by the
July 30 Pravda of a letter it had received from 99 workers of a
Prague auto plant in which they tried to portray the public's concern
over the fact that the Warsaw Pact troops that had been on manoeuvres
had long overstayed their departure date as an official or semi-official
campaign against the Soviet Union. The letter itself was not so
significant one way or another. What was interesting was the play
Pravda had given it: spread over a quarter page, complete with
facsimile signatures (the liberal space given as compared with that
given to Dubcek's speeches or the Action Program was not lost on the
Czechoslovak Communists). And the letter was signed by 99 workers in a
plant that employs 4,500 workers, most of whom would not have endorsed
it, especially its tone and implications. Of the 99 signators, about a
third had already retired and the letter itself was published just as
the plant closed down for a two-week summer holiday. Nor had the
signators discussed the problem taken up in their letter either in their
plant party branch or in their trade union.
* * *
It would be wrong, of course, to say that there
wasn't cause for some criticism of the Czechoslovak Party (this could
very well be said of all Parties) or that the Czechoslovak leaders had
not made or were not making mistakes. They were. Some they were aware of
and admitted, others not. It is true, for example, that there were times
in these months when they were not fighting back hard enough against
some of the anti-socialist elements; they said as much at the May plenum
of their central committee. When asked (at the aforementioned August 8
interview and on other occasions) why this was so they gave a number of
reasons. One reason was that after January there was quite a violent
reaction among the people to the long period of wrong leadership and
excesses of the Novotny regime. Some of the voices of dissatisfaction
and criticism were in the Party itself and among workers who had been
the closest supporters of the Party. In the face of this violent
reaction and this mood, many Party activists felt compromised,
especially when they'd find the workers throwing up the Party's past to
them. Many activists were also not experienced in fighting back
ideologically; they had always left it up to the "fellows on top" to do
that. The main reason, however, why little was or could be done, they
explained, was that the leadership was divided and therefore did not
have the confidence of the membership. There was a relatively small
"left" or "conservative" group and a small right-wing group (which was
more influential than its small number because many of its members were
linked with the mass media). The overwhelming majority, they claimed,
was in what they called the "centre," led by Dubcek, Smrkovsky, Cernik
and others. They felt quite certain that the scheduled 14th Congress of
the party would be able to isolate both the left and right wings and
consolidate the party around the latter group.
But to the leaders of the Warsaw Pact parties the
victory and consolidation of the "centre" led by Dubcek et all would not
have been satisfactory. This so-called "centre" was the main motivating
force of the democratization process and the Action Program. Those whom
the Czechoslovak Communists considered as "centrists," Moscow, Berlin
and the other three capitals considered as revisionists, right-wing
opportunists or apologists for and abettors of the
counter-revolutionaries. Indeed, at one time or another Dubcek and his
colleagues have been called all of these in the press of these capitals.
* * *
The pressure on the Czechoslovak leadership to
abandon its policies started quite early. It began in earnest at the
Dresden meeting of the Warsaw Pact powers (without Romania). It then
continued at the meeting of the Czechoslovak and Soviet leaders in
Moscow. When these two meetings failed to get the Czechoslovak leaders
to change their course, the five powers held a meeting in Moscow without
them. At this meeting for the first time military intervention was
openly discussed when it was reportedly demanded by the leaders of the
GDR and Poland. The Soviet leaders were divided on the proposal and when
the leaders of Hungary and Bulgaria opposed it, the proposal was
shelved. It is interesting to note here that at the end of June,
following the meeting between the Czechoslovak and Hungarian leaders in
Budapest, three different highly placed officials in Hungary told me
personally that while the Hungarian leaders were critical of some of the
weaknesses and errors which in their opinion the Czechoslovak leaders
had displayed, in the main they were supporting their efforts and felt
that the Czechoslovak party was doing a service both to its own country
and the cause of socialism. One of them added: "Our support is genuine
and sincere. We don't want to support them like a rope supports a
hanging man." But a few days after Dubcek's visit to Budapest the
Hungarian leaders were invited to Moscow. After that they changed their
attitude to the Czechoslovak Party quite drastically and adopted a much
harder line.
* * *
The Czechoslovak leaders found out, of course,
that military intervention had been discussed at the meeting to which
they had not been invited. Is it any wonder that when they were invited
to a similar meeting in Warsaw they refused to come? The story of that
meeting and the "to-be-forgotten" Warsaw letter that resulted are both
well known. Following that meeting the press of all five Warsaw Pact
powers pulled out all stops and published a flood of articles and
commentary on Czechoslovakia which continued right up to the Cierna nad
Tisou meeting. The atmosphere that had been built up was such that on
the eve of Cierna many Communists in both Moscow and Prague expected the
worst. Many of the conversations in both capitals in those days began
with: "Do you think there will be intervention ?"
Incidentally, the Czechoslovak Communists had
been alerted about a possible military intervention long before the
meeting of five. Some of them said that the first mention of that
possibility was as far back as last February. In any case, this advance
knowledge explains why the Czechs and Slovaks were prepared with a
network of secret radio stations (which by the way, were manned almost
entirely by Party members working in two shifts round the clock) as well
as facilities for underground newspapers, shop papers, leaflets, etc.
But during the week before Cierna an interesting
phenomenon took place in Czechoslovakia. The people all over the country
sensed that at Cierna their leaders were going to be put under
tremendous pressure and they rallied around them in the greatest
outpouring of unity in Czechoslovakia's history. Naturally, all kinds of
anti-socialist and anti-Soviet elements joined in this upsurge (and the
enemy agents were hard at work). But instead of seeing this unity for
what it really was, the leaders of the Warsaw Pact powers interpreted it
as unity based on anti-Sovietism. They saw and heard the few expressions
of anti-Sovietism, but failed to see that the overwhelming majority were
united around the Communist Party and its leaders.
At Cierna the pressure put on the Czechoslovak
leaders was truly great. The meeting was. expected to last two days; it
lasted four: We all know the results of that meeting and the Bratislava
meeting that followed. Like everyone else, I was very enthusiastic about
Cierna and Bratislava and I so wrote in my fourth article in the
Tribune. But I have since altered my view of these meetings
considerably. It is obvious that once the Soviet leaders had again
failed to convince the Czechoslovak leaders, the communique at
Bratislava (which really didn't say anything concrete or new) became
nothing more than a cynical cover-up for action that had already been
planned in just such an eventuality. As a matter of fact, I personally
have first-hand knowledge that the possibility of military intervention
on the weekend immediately after Cierna had been considered by the
Soviet leaders. This means that the intervention had been planned prior
to Cierna and Bratislava just in case and obviously decided upon and
consummated in the weeks after.
The leaders of the Warsaw Pact powers who decided
on the intervention doubtless expected different results than they got.
Based obviously on false information and poor judgment they.
believed that the majority of the Czechoslovak Communists and large
sections of the population, especially the working class, once they were
provided with an opportunity, would drop the "right-wing opportunist"
and "revisionist" leaders (Dubcek et all) and turn to the "healthy
elements." (It is said the Soviet leaders expected at least 50 percent
of the population to welcome and endorse their action). The first days
of the military intervention proved how utterly wrong they were; the
days since have only confirmed their miscalculations.
Many of the details about what happened in
Czechoslovakia in those first days are known to you: the statements made
by some of the leaders while they still were able; what the press wrote
before it was closed down; the role of the clandestine radio stations
all over the country; the verbal clashes and debates between the people
and the tank crews, etc. Not all of it by any means was as presented by
the capitalist press but much of it was, and certainly the photos tell
quite a lot. I had the misfortune of being on holiday in Hungary on
August 21 so I have only got my picture of those first days from the
leading Communists of the various parties here who witnessed those
tragic events. But while in Hungary I did have my ears glued to the
radio and heard round-the-clock broadcasts in Czech and Slovak by the
so-called Legal Free Radio stations and I can vouch for the fact that,
contrary to what the Warsaw Pact press wrote, they played a most
positive role in calling on the people to maintain calm and not lend
themselves to provocation. (Here I exclude, of course, the Czech and
Slovak broadcasts from Austria, Western Germany, Voice of America,
etc.). I have also had access to information from very highly placed
authoritative sources here about some of the events in those first few
days after August 21.
It simply is not true that the majority of the
party presidium called for intervention. As the proclamation by
President Svoboda and those authoritative bodies that remained on the
first day of the intervention declared: no authorized party or
government body asked for intervention. The facts are as follows:
The Party presidium had been meeting on the
evening of August 20. Just before midnight one of the members walked in
from a phone call and informed the meeting that foreign troops had
crossed the borders. The meeting continued. About 3.00 a.m. Soviet
troops forced their way into the meeting room, arrested most of the
members and took them away at gun-point. Dubcek was handcuffed, put on
the floor of a military transport plane and taken to Moscow. The others,
including Premier Cernik and Josef Smrkovsky, were taken to Poland, then
to Trans-Carpathian Ukraine and later likewise to Moscow.
* * *
During the day of August 21, one of the
commanders of the Warsaw Pact forces, Gen. Pavlovsky, and a
"conservative" member of the presidium, Alois Indra, visited President
Svoboda and told him they had with them a document containing the
resignation of the government, signed by Premier Cernik. The president
told them that he can accept the resignation of the government only from
the premier personally (Cernik was then under arrest; the document was a
forgery). Then the president was visited by the Soviet ambassador,
Chervonenko, accompanied by Indra, Kolder, Svestka and several other
conservative members of the presidium. Svoboda declared that he had
nothing to discuss with them and that if he was to have any talks it
would be only with the highest officials of the Soviet party and
government. He then contacted Moscow by telephone and said he would come
there for talks but only on condition that Dubcek, Cernik, Smrkovsky and
Kriegel were present. He also asked that Indra, Kolder and Svestka be
there so that a full picture would be obtained.
* * *
Svoboda was presented with a plan for the
creation of a new "revolutionary government." He was shown a list of
names of those who would be included in the new government. Svoboda was
to be head of the government and first secretary of the party. It was
also proposed to form a new "revolutionary tribunal" which would try
Dubcek, Cernik, Smrkovsky and other "revisionists." Svoboda
categorically rejected the proposal. Then the Soviet leaders declared
they would name a government without any further talks. Svoboda then
threatened to take his own life if the Soviet leaders would not agree to
talk with him and his colleagues ("And nobody will believe that it was
suicide," he added). He demanded that all the interned members of the
Czechoslovak leadership be present for the discussion. The Soviet side
agreed but chose first to meet with each one individually. Cernik
offered physical resistance and was brought in on a stretcher. Dubcek,
who had been manhandled after his arrest, also was ill and required
medical attention. Kriegel likewise.
* * *
The day after the intervention (August 22) and
before Svoboda had arrived in Moscow, Pravda carried a long
article (two full pages) titled "Defense of Socialism an International
Duty," setting out what in its view was the background to and the
reasons for the military intervention. It is a model "case for the
prosecution" but to those of us who have lived in Prague, followed
closely both the Soviet and Czech press over the past nine months, read
the statements, articles and speeches of the Czechoslovak Party leaders
and felt the mood of the people, the Pravda article simply didn't
ring true. And it certainly didn't square with the facts. As I have
said, it's a good "case for the prosecution" such as had been presented
to the world at the time of the 1937 trials in Moscow, the
excommunication of Tito in 1948 or the trials against Slansky and his
colleagues in Prague in the 1950s, all of them wrapped up in very
"convincing" argumentation, with suitable quotations from Lenin, and in
the name of lofty aims and ideals. This article had already written off
Dubcek and his colleagues as right wing opportunists and abettors of the
counter revolutionaries.
During the talks, the Soviet side made it
extremely difficult for all on the Czechoslovak side except Svoboda to
take part, threatening, lecturing and heckling them as they spoke.
Dubcek was several times branded as a traitor by the Soviet side. In the
course of the talks the Soviet leaders tried very hard to get agreement
on the formation of a government made up of the "conservative" members
or the acceptance of some form of protectorate. Even the alternative of
making Czechoslovakia a part of the USSR was discussed. The discussion
also revealed a considerable difference of opinion within the
politbureau of the CPSU.
On the first day the Czechoslovak leaders kept
rejecting the Soviet proposals. On the second day they drafted their
proposals which the Soviet side rejected. On the third day, Zdenek
Mlynar, one of the secretaries of the Czechoslovak Party's presidium and
its youngest member, arrived from Prague and gave his colleagues an
objective picture of the situation back home. (To get to Moscow he
pretended he had switched sides after the semi-illegal 14th Party
Congress and was now a "conservative"). His arrival and presence
considerably strengthened the determination of his colleagues to
maintain their stand. On the fourth day the two sides worked out the
compromise contained in the final communique, the terms of which have
been made public.
Thus the talks in Moscow, like those in Cierna,
did not go off quite the way the Soviet leaders expected. They had to
back down, accept most of the Czechoslovak leaders whom they had written
off and come to a compromise with them. The latter returned to Prague to
what Dubcek in his first speech to the people called "the reality which
is dependent not only on our will."
The Czechoslovak Communists and their people now
face an infinitely more difficult job than they faced last January when
they started out on their course of making some very necessary changes
in their Party and in their country. We can only hope that they will
find it within themselves to succeed. Perhaps, in the light of all that
has happened, we should also hope that they will be allowed to succeed.
* * *
But now we come back to the question: What led
the leaders of the five socialist countries, in the first place the
Soviet Union, to make this most disastrous error in the history of the
world Communist movement? I believe there are two reasons, which in one
way or another have been implicit in statements made by a number of
Parties both after the intervention and during the events leading up to
it. I think they can be summed up as:
(1) An utterly wrong concept of, and approach to,
the problem of democracy; and (2) A mistaken estimation or misjudgment
of the relationship of world forces today.
The problem of the concept of democracy in most
of the socialist countries to date is too big a problem to discuss in
detail here. It is one of the key questions relating to our party's
program ..and to the image of socialism we present to the people. To
take but one example, freedom of information: to this day readers of the
Soviet press (and of the other four countries) haven't been told that
the Italian, French, British, Japanese and a host of other Communist
Parties oppose the intervention, much less given a chance to read
quotations from their statements. Many people know, of course, from
foreign broadcasts and other sources but not from their own information
media. One could cite hundreds of other examples: from freedom of the
press to the right of habeas corpus and a fair trial, to the problem of
intellectual and cultural freedom, to the right of travel, to the
inviolability of personal mail, to the right to dissent and so on down
the line. Those who have lived for any length of time i these countries
(not just visiting them as tourists or as VIPs on a delegation) know
first hand what is involved.
* * *
The fact is that in the 50 years of the Soviet
Union's existence there have been extremely few periods in which genuine
socialist democracy in all its aspects could be fully developed. After
centuries of tsarist autocracy came the 1917 revolution; then followed a
brief period of military communism, the Civil War, the shooting of Lenin
and the "tightening up" that resulted, the period of forced
collectivization and intensive industrialization, the threat of fascism,
the 1937 Moscow trials, the war, the difficult years of the Stalin cult,
the excommunication of Tito. With such a background it is no wonder
there exists in the Soviet Union today an entirely different approach to
democracy than, let us say, in Britain or in Canada.
Czechoslovakia, on the other hand, has a greater
historical background of democratic traditions than any other socialist
country. The Czechoslovak Communist Party is the only Party in a
socialist country which, prior to coming to power, was a legal mass
Party working for many years in a bourgeois democracy and winning its
influence among the people on the basis of a struggle for greater
democracy than what the Czechs and Slovaks already had compared to other
countries. It is on this background that there was such a universal
rejection of the methods of Novotny, including the slavish copying of
Soviet methods and practices (under the worthy but much abused slogan
"The Soviet Union Our Example") and it is on this background that one
has to see the democratization process and the Action Program. It is
also on this background that one has to see the fears in Moscow of the
varied expressions of criticism, dissent and opposition opposition
which to the Czechoslovak and many Western Communists was nothing to get
excited about, particularly since the Czechoslovak leaders were quite
certain that they had the confidence and support of the overwhelming
mass of the people for the reforms they proposed.
* * *
Speaking of democracy, one cannot fail to mention
also the inadequacy and in some cases the utter lack of inner party
democracy in the socialist countries. My one year of close association
and work with Soviet and other representatives from socialist countries
has made me much more acutely and painfully aware of this. Democratic
centralism in these Parties is almost totally a one-way street. Here too
one could cite scores of examples. An editorial worker on a Party
journal who in the course of his work expresses a disagreement with or
criticism of some aspects of his Party's policy, especially if it means
clashing with his superior (even though both are Party members) can find
himself off the staff on two hours notice and the "misdemeanor" held as
a black mark against him for the rest of his career. Many of the
practices followed by the Czechoslovak Party under Novotny are still
very much in effect in all the socialist countries.
As an example of the difference in approach let
us take the now famous document issued by a group of Communist and
non-Communist intellectuals titled Two Thousand Words.
Immediately upon the appearance of this document, leaders in Moscow and
Berlin raised the cry of "counter-revolution" and to this day it is
Exhibit No.1 in their charge that counter-revolution was rampant in
Czechoslovakia. The presidium of the Czechoslovak Party likewise
condemned this document at the time. But it is significant that in the
opening paragraph of its criticism the presidium used the phrase
"regardless of the intentions of its authors" and then went on to say
how and why the document was harmful. The fact is that the Czechoslovak
Party leaders knew that this document was not written by avowed "agents
of imperialism" but by confused and misguided persons who resorted to
harmful extremist ideas and proposals to achieve their aims. Such an
approach, of course, is heresy to the leaders in Moscow and Berlin.
The Soviet leaders' mistaken estimation of the
relationship of world forces, according to Luigi Longo, the Italian
Communist leader, has led them to the concept that "the socialist states
of Europe today are a sort of beleaguered fortress" and that "the
strengthening of existing blocs is a precondition of progress." It was
on the background of this kind of concept that the Soviet leaders viewed
the developments in Czechoslovakia since January.
* * *
It is not accidental that only three months after
launching the democratization process in Czechoslovakia, that the
Central Committee of the CPSU at its April plenum came out with the
thesis that imperialism was now engaged in a new ideological offensive
to undermine the socialist world and that this required a general
"tightening up" on all fronts, "iron discipline" within the parties, a
rejection of the bridge building between East and West, etc.
Unquestionably, the West has stepped up its
ideological offensive (although one could argue that there has never
been a let-up in capitalism's ideological war; it goes on constantly)
but the question is: how should Communists in both the socialist and
capitalist countries meet this offensive of the West? It can be met by
going on an ideological counter offensive, by extending the ideological
dialogue with the people under the influence of capitalist ideology, by
using the bridges between East and West to carry forward our ideas
knowing that truth is on our side; or it can be met by a still greater
isolation of the people in the socialist countries from the ideas
circulating in the capitalist world, by a tightening up of discipline,
by greater limitations on democracy in general and inner party democracy
in particular.
The leaders of the CPSU chose the latter course.
One had only to read the Soviet press after last April (and soon after
the press of Berlin, Warsaw and Sofia) to note the great difference and
those who live in these countries (and I have had the opportunity of
speaking intimately with many of them) noted the difference even more
sharply. Individuals are once again being put in prison for such
"crimes" as telling political jokes; being found with a typewritten
manuscript of a Solzhenitsyn novel automatically gets you five years (a
number of such cases); hundreds have been expelled from the Soviet
Communist party for expressing agreement with the democratization
process in Czechoslovakia; contacts with foreigners are again
discouraged; people are afraid again to express themselves on certain
questions, especially if more than two are present. There has been a
tightening on the cultural front, with scores of scheduled plays and
movie scripts suddenly taken off the shelves as part of a struggle
against "Western bourgeois influences." One could go on and on.
Thus, on the basis of mistaken views, a mistaken
estimation and therefore a mistaken policy, the leaders of the most
important and decisive section of our movement have committed an
irreparable blunder and confronted their comrades and supporters
throughout the world (indeed, the world itself) with a most tragic
situation.
* * *
What now for our movement, for our Party in
Canada? Basing ourselves on the "new reality," our Party, like most
Parties, could not say much more than it did immediately after the
communique following the Moscow talks: express the hope that this would
be the beginning of a normalization of the situation. But the matter by
no means ends there. The developments around the Czechoslovak events
during the past 10 months, and even more so the intervention itself,
have raised many questions and confronted us with some grave problems. I
would like to present a few of them here as I see them.
We have said often that one cannot export
revolution or impose socialism on a people; that we cannot expect to see
socialism established in Canada, for example, until the majority of our
people want it and support the struggle for it. If this is true, can one
export or impose a political line or policy? There certainly has been an
attempt to impose a particular line on the Party and people of
Czechoslovakia in spite of the claim of the Warsaw Pact powers that they
"do not intend to interfere in Czechoslovakia's internal affairs."
We Communists have always emphasized the need to
take into account the opinion and feelings of the people. There was
nothing of the kind in Czechoslovakia. The opposition of the Czech and
Slovak people to the intervention is universal. You see it, you feel it
all around you no matter whom you talk to: old, young, worker,
intellectual, Communist, non-Communist, and they don't hesitate to show
or express their feelings. It is doubtful if one citizen in 50,000 is in
favour of the action taken. Yet in the face of this, anyone who opposes
the presence of the Warsaw Pact troops is described in the Soviet press
as a counter-revolutionary or an abettor of counter-revolution.
(Incidentally, the descriptions by the Soviet press of how their troops
were and are being "welcomed" are utter fabrications that have been
embarrassing to the foreign Communists who are working in
Czechoslovakia.)
The Czechoslovak press, radio and TV have been
told that they must not refer to the presence of the Warsaw Pact troops
as an "occupation" or the troops themselves as "occupation troops." But
nobody (not even party members in conversation) calls it anything else
than okupace and the troops as okupanty. The troops are
not just hated, they are despised. If they stay here a decade they will
never win the friendship of the people. The tragedy is that of all the
peoples in the socialist countries of Europe (with the exception of
Bulgaria, for historic reasons) the Czech and Slovak peoples had the
warmest and closest fraternal feelings toward the Soviet peoples, and
certainly the least inimical. All this has been destroyed for a
generation at least. Which is just what the few anti-Soviet elements
here and their abettors abroad wanted.
Linked with this is another question that needs
an answer: What gives a Party (or Parties) the moral right to impose its
line on another? Or to dictate (or try to dictate as has been done in
Czechoslovakia with some success) to another Party, not to speak of an
entire people, who its leaders shall or shall not be? Does it depend on
the size of the Party? Its military might? Its own conviction that it is
right and the other wrong? If so, let us for the sake of argument
imagine a most unlikely situation: that the Chinese leaders have
overwhelming military superiority over the Soviet Union and they declare
that the Soviet leaders are "revisionists," that they "have taken the
capitalist road" and that they "are in league with U.S. imperialism"
(charges that are no more true than that the Czechoslovak leaders are
revisionists who were taking their country out of the socialist camp or
letting it be taken over by counterrevolution); then suppose they
proceeded to occupy Soviet Siberia (or perhaps all of the Soviet Union)
in order to "save it for the cause of world socialism." Ridiculous? But
I'm sure that under such circumstances the Chinese would issue
statements and articles that would present a very "convincing" case.
* * *
At the plenary meeting of the Czechoslovak
Party's Central Committee on August 31, Dubcek had this to say:
"In evaluating the political development in
our country during that period (since January), our party did not
take into account the dark and real power of international factors,
including views held with regard to our situation by the states with
whom we are united in the Warsaw Pact.
"We did not always take sufficient note of
the strategic and general interests of the USSR and the other four
members of the Warsaw Pact as a real, objectively existing and
limiting factor of the possible pace and form of our own political
development.
"In the past, there occurred a diminution of
the confidence of the CPSU leadership in the ability of our ,
party's leadership to solve the problems which had arisen. One of
the principal tasks is to disperse this lack of confidence."
The press of the Warsaw Pact powers quoted this
speech to show that the Czechoslovak leaders had erred and were now
admitting it. But if you study this passage carefully you will see that
what Dubcek was also saying was that the Czechoslovak party has learned
(very bitterly, of course) that it could not proceed with the policy it
chose without the approval of the Soviet and the other four parties. A
number of questions arise: How are Communists in socialist countries
going to work for improving socialism, doing away with weaknesses and
even getting rid of entrenched bureaucracy if any effort in this
direction is branded as counterrevolution, albeit a "peaceful" kind? Or
do they have to wait for approval of the establishment itself or even a
superior Party? Or is it perhaps that the set up in the socialist
countries is perfect and needs no improvement? If a larger or stronger
Party has the moral right to "correct" errors of another Party by
unilateral action up to and including force, what can smaller Parties do
if and when they think a larger Party has made or is making a mistake or
is pursuing a policy that is harmful to the cause of socialism?
* * *
Many Czechoslovak Communists put forward the
following argument: During the past several months the Soviet and other
parties did not hesitate to speak out openly against many of the
policies and ideas of the Czechoslovak Party and eventually did not stop
at intervening physically. But why did they not find it necessary to
speak out and intervene against the policies followed by Novotny and his
colleagues? In Berlin I was told: "The Czechs themselves are to blame
for the economic and political mess they are in. For some time we have
watched them carrying out policies that were leading them into
difficulties." But why didn't they protest and intervene then? And if
they did, why didn't they do it effectively enough? The answer, one
would have given before, was because they did not want to interfere in
the affairs of a fraternal Party. But now it is clear there was another
reason. Apparently to some people dogmatism and bureaucratism are not
such a great threat to socialism. There was no intervention because the
methods and forms of leadership followed by the Novotny regime are very
much akin to those pursued in most if not all the other socialist
countries. It is precisely because the democratization process launched
by the Czechoslovak Party was aimed at doing away with such methods,
thereby endangering the entire set-up and way of life of the
"establishment" in each of these countries, that it was so vigorously,
and eventually so violently opposed.
* * *
Some other problems relating to democracy under
socialism have now been very sharply raised to the fore. For example,
the problem of freedom of speech, press and assembly. The Soviet Union
and at least three other Warsaw Pact powers from the very outset opposed
the abolition of censorship in Czechoslovakia (Hungary joined quite a
bit later), even though, it should be noted, the Czechoslovak Party had
never proposed that the press would be unrestrictedly opened to known
and avowed enemies of socialism. Now censorship has been reimposed and
if the Soviet Union and the other powers have their way it will stay
that way. As is known, the conditions imposed on the
Czechoslovak leaders in this respect are quite
sweeping. They include: no use of the word "occupation"; no mention of
the effect of the intervention on the economy of the country; no
criticism of the Soviet Union or other socialist countries or their
Parties; no reprinting of news, articles or statements from the foreign
press that are critical of these countries and Parties; no mention of
any killings or other incidents involving the occupying troops. (There
have been many such incidents some 70 killed to date and hundreds
wounded. In this respect the ruling is very one-sided, for while the
Soviet press can and does report the shootings of their soldiers, the
Czechoslovak press cannot report either these same shootings or
shootings of their civilians).
* * *
The question this brings up is: Does this mean
that no socialist country can ever abolish censorship as long as
capitalism exists without at best inviting the reprobation of the other
socialist countries, or worse? Does this mean that the model for all
socialist countries, as far as, let us say, press freedom is concerned
shall be the Soviet, GDR, Polish, Hungarian and Bulgarian press?
This problem has an important bearing on the
program of each Communist Party and merits serious consideration and
study. Similar programmatic questions arise in connection with other
aspects of the Czechoslovak Party's Action Program: how does the concept
of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" express itself 20 years after
the working class takes power? How does the Party assert its leading
role among the people? And many others. Had these questions been debated
and argued out on a theoretical basis, in a friendly atmosphere, all
Communists everywhere would have benefited. Resolving them (or rather
trying to resolve them) by military measures has dealt a shattering blow
to the world Communist movement from which it will be a long time
recovering.
* * *
There are many other aspects of the past year's
events in Czechoslovakia I would like to discuss and many questions
arising from these events that I would like to pose for discussion by
our Party, but I will confine myself to what I have written here. If I
have sounded very sharp in my criticism it is because that is how I feel
and because it is what the present situation demands.
I am sure that to the overwhelming majority of
the members of our Party I do not have to prove my many years of
devotion to the Soviet Union, my lifetime understanding of the
contribution and sacrifices the Soviet Communists and the Soviet people
have made to the cause of world progress or of the Soviet Union's
decisive importance to the future of socialism and world peace. And this
in spite of the tragic errors of the past and the weaknesses and
shortcomings that still exist. But I do not consider it either a
betrayal of, or doing harm to, the Soviet Union and its people to
criticize the tragic and unforgivable errors made by its leaders during
the past few months, any more than was opposition to and the eventual
exposure of the cult of Stalin.
The capitalist world is using and will use the
intervention to mount a still greater anti-Soviet campaign. We must
dissociate ourselves from this campaign. But neither can we any longer
remain silent when we believe that errors that harm or jeopardize our
common goal have been or are being committed. August 21 brutally put an
end to any justification there may have been in the past for the
Communists of the world to hold back such criticism.
* * *
From August 21 our movement, internationally and
in each country, will never be the same. The problem we now face is
whether we will allow this tragedy to destroy it or whether we will draw
the necessary lessons to make it a viable and effective factor in the
life of our country. I believe we can because I believe that true,
creative Marxism was, is and will continue to be the key to the progress
of our country and of mankind. But I believe also that to make our
movement viable we have to face up to some hard truths.
We have to admit that both internationally and
within each party, including ours, there are important differences. We
have to stop glossing over these differences, pretending they don't
exist, trying to put on a front of unity where there is no unity.
We have to recognize that both in our
international movement and within each Party, including ours, there are
today two different approaches to our problems: one is the dogmatic,
hide-bound, conservative approach that tends to base itself on the past,
stubbornly clings to the methods and practices of the past, goes along
"on faith" and turns a blind eye to our flaws and mistakes and a deaf
ear to unpleasant criticism. The other is the open, free, progressive,
constantly searching, creative approach that seeks to adapt the great
ideas and principles of our movement to the very new conditions of our
changed (and changing) world, that recognizes no gods and therefore no
sacred truths or commandments. Essentially, these two different
approaches are at the heart of the recent events in Czechoslovakia.
Irreparable damage has been done to the
international Communist movement and the cause of socialism. We face
difficult days ahead. We can still salvage some of the fruits of our
work of years past and see the horizon more clearly but only if we
adopt an open-minded, free and creative approach in all our work and
come out forthrightly for a return to the true principles and ideas of
Marxism, to the struggle for a genuine, humane and democratic socialism.
John Boyd
September 15, 1968
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