by Katherine McKay
In the late 1960s I spent two years in West Germany, first on a fellowship and then working in the German economy. In April 1968 I traveled to Czechoslovakia, during the "Prague spring," an experiment in liberalizing Communist strictures under Party Chief Alexander Dubcek.
Before the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia and before World War II, the country had been highly industrialized and as prosperous as Germany. After 15 years of Communist central planning, which effectively ruined the economy, the standard of living of the Czechs was about half that of the West Germans. When I visited, two decades after the forced conversion of socialism, Prague (in spite of its medieval charm) gave the impression of drabness and poverty. Run-down storefronts were empty of goods. Downtown streets were clogged with malfunctioning old cars emitting vast quantities of visible exhaust. On the outskirts of town, factory smokestacks devoid of cleaning devices poured particles into the air. (Not until I visited Mexico City did I see comparably bad air pollution.) I had thought the West Germans dressed dowdily, but in Prague, people appeared to be wearing the Germans' castoffs. There were few telephones. Apartment buildings were run down, with light fixtures permanently not working and bricks falling out of facades. People explained to me that since the buildings belonged to no one, no one felt responsible for their upkeep.
True to the artificial shortages which arise in centrally-planned economies, apartments were in extremely short supply. People put their names on years-long waiting lists to rent them, meanwhile living with parents and relatives. Marriages were delayed because of the lack of living space for new couples, and people became desperate for a place of their own. This was powerfully illustrated for me by the first place I stayed in Prague, a spare room in an apartment, which I got through Cedok, the travel information agency. The apartment was old and spacious, with several rooms; it even had a tiny shower - an incredible luxury. The man of the house, an architect who spoke neither German nor English, was young and handsome. The middle-aged woman, whom I took to be his mother, spoke German fluently and talked with me occasionally during my stay. I was surprised one day to hear her refer to "mein Mann," since I had seen no one I could identify as her husband. I was stunned to realize the young man had married a woman a generation older than he in order to have a comfortable, roomy apartment, obviously hers, to live in.
The "Prague spring" was initiated by Smrkovsky, the leader of the National Assembly, calling for freedom of thought and democracy in January 1968, and carried out by Dubcek, the party chief, a true believer in the coexistence of democracy and socialism. During this short-lived era of relaxed central control, Czech culture bloomed once again. The government instituted democratic reforms and lifted the heavy hand of censorship. Suddenly, newspapers carried real news and opinions again and were coveted for purposes other than wrapping fish. Creativity blossomed: plays were written and performed, books and articles were published, public demonstrations and discussions were held, all without censorship. There was an atmosphere of lightheartedness on the streets, and much lively discussion.
Even the centrally planned economy was to undergo fundamental changes. The new vice-premier for economics recommended that businesses should be free to make whatever they wanted and to sell their products to whomever they wanted at whatever price they wanted, and that the state should not subsidize businesses. The future seemed to open onto an expansion of freedom of expression and action, and enormous pent-up energies were unleashed.
Predictably, the lifting of censorship led to the intellegentsia's fierce criticisms of the way matters had been handled within the country for the past 20 years, and eventually to criticisms of the Soviet authorities themselves, who were directly blamed for political arrests and executions of many Czechs and Slovaks. Although the reform-minded government proclaimed that Czechoslovakia would remain Communist and a member of both the Warsaw Pact and the eastern economic community, the avant-garde soon began to push against these boundaries as well. Vaclav Havel, the writer who later became head of state when the Soviet Union fell, wrote in 1968: "One can speak of a true democracy only where the people have the ability to freely choose who shall rule them." The journalist Jiri Hanak wrote: "What if the majority of the population did not want to be led by the Communist Party any longer?"
Prague's reform government genuinely believed that Communism could coexist with democracy and freedom of expression. The authorities in Moscow realized that these could only subvert Communism and threaten the Russians' hold on their East Bloc satellite. Over the course of the summer they held repeated meetings with the heads of the maverick state, demanding that the reforms be reversed. On August 21 they invaded with tanks and armies from the Soviet Union and neighboring East Bloc countries, taking Dubcek and other members of the government in custody to Moscow, where they considered executing them. The only high official not arrested was President Svoboda, who was asked to head a new government. He refused and threatened to commit suicide if Dubcek and the others were executed. Eventually they were released, after being forced to agree to undo all the liberalization measures that had been taken in the previous half-year.
Five days after the invasion, I returned to Czechoslovakia, this time to stay with parents of a friend. I carried in with me the latest copy of Der Spiegel, an exhaustive weekly German news magazine, devoted to the story. My host family had received no news at all about what had happened to Dubcek and the other officials, censorship having been reimposed, so they avidly read the account in the magazine. I left the issue with them and it undoubtedly made the rounds in Prague for months thereafter.
The atmosphere in the city was markedly different from my last visit. People in the street looked as though they had just lost their mothers. There was no friendly conversation with strangers; once again the inhabitants were shut in and suppressed. I did not see the Russian panzers but I did see the machine-gun bulletholes in the façade of the National Library made by them. Shortly after my visit the border was closed to western tourists and journalists.
A few days before I left I spied oranges in the window of a shop that had a line out the door and down the street, and I stood in line for an hour to buy a few for the little granddaughter of my hosts. I learned that a shipment of oranges had just arrived from a southern country, and while they lasted each customer was allowed to purchase up to two kilos. The rarity of a commodity which in the west is taken for granted seemed a fitting end to my experience with the centrally-planned state.
Resources: several issues of Der Spiegel from 1968.
© Katherine McKay 1997
