The Press THURSDAY, AUGUST 22, 1968. Purging The Heresy Of Freedom

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31764, 22 August 1968, Page 14

The Press THURSDAY, AUGUST 22, 1968. Purging The Heresy Of Freedom

Twelve years after Russian forces brutally crushed the rebellion in Hungary, Russian tanks have again crossed the border of a neighbouring Communist State to put down a regime which has fallen out with the Kremlin. Whatever trumped-up charges may be levelled at Mr Dubcek and his presidium, no-one could seriously suggest that Mr Dubcek intended to lead his countrymen out of the Communist camp or even to question his country’s loyalty to the Warsaw Pact. Mr Dubcek’s crime is the dangerous heresy of individual freedom.

The procrastinating withdrawal of the Russian tanks from Czechoslovakia after the Warsaw Pact “ manoeuvres ” in June and July this year, followed, weeks later, by their lightning invasion of the country, is depressingly similar to the pattern of events in Hungary in 1956. No-one need doubt Russia’s intentions towards Czechoslovakia: to exterminate all vestiges of liberalism in the country and to impose on its people a regime unquestioningly subservient to Moscow. The liberalism which has characterised Mr Dubcek’s brief tenure of the office of First Secretary of the Communist Party has been disrespectful of Moscow, though loyal to communism. It has fostered critical self-examination within Czechoslovakia, producing a ferment of new ideas—from intellectuals on the structure of political power within a socialist State and from workers on the organisation of their factories.

The East German leader, Mr Ulbricht, has probably been urging Messrs Brezhnev and Kosygin for months to put a stop to Czechoslovakia’s dangerous liberalism. Since as long ago as 1963 several prominent East Germans have been absorbing heretical ideas at conferences and other activities in Czechoslovakia. Professor Robert Havemann, one of this group, was-dismissed from his post as director of the Institute of Physical Chemistry at the Humboldt University in East Berlin. In May this year he wrote, in an article published in Denmark and Czechoslovakia: “The solution of the German question as “ a problem of democracy and socialism would be “inconceivably eased and advanced if we were also “to take the road on which Czechoslovakia' has “ embarked ”, Mr Ulbricht, who, unlike Mr Dubcek, relies on Moscow’s patronage to keep him in office, could not disregard the effect of such inflammatory statements in East Germany. He has, no doubt, represented strongly to the Kremlin that the Czechoslovak regime which permitted and encouraged the dissemination of such thoughts must be put down. Nor could Messrs Brezhnev and Kosygin ignore the effects of a liberal Czechoslovak regime on thinking Communists in Rumania, Poland, Bulgaria —or Russia. If individual freedom is compatible with communism in Czechoslovakia, people were

beginning to say, why not here? Now the Russian tanks have silenced those doubts. Their actions must also have profound effects outside the Communist world, particularly in the emerging countries of Asia and Africa which have been inclined to think of Russia as a benefactor and protector of small countries. The implications for Russia’s relations with the rest of the world of this exercise of naked power can only be guessed at as yet. Does it reduce or intensify the enmity between Russia and China? Will it help or hinder the Vietnam peace talks? What reaction will it provoke from America?

While these are matters of speculation, the treatment in store for the Czechoslovaks is all too plainly to be seen. Another Novotny or Ulbricht will be found to give a semblance of national identity to the Russians’ next puppet regime, which will suppress, as violently as necessary, any evidence of liberal thought or action. Armed intervention by Czechoslovakia’s sympathisers on either side of the Iron Curtain would be useless or worse; it would surely provoke massive Russian retaliation. Sadly, the rest of the world must stand by and watch the small flame of liberty which had kindled in Prague being snuffed out by the Kremlin’s brutal fingers.