The Press THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 1968. Sell-out Or Face-Saver?

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31770, 29 August 1968, Page 10

The Press THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 1968. Sell-out Or Face-Saver?

The first, angry, reactions of so many Czechoslovaks to the outcome of the talks their leaders had in Moscow with the Russian Communist Party’s Central Committee are understandable enough. Mr Dubcek, the champion of the country’s nascent liberalism, returned from Moscow to disclose that he had agreed to the indefinite occupation of Czechoslovakia by Russian troops and to “ ensuring effective measures “ serving the socialist power ” —in other words, the repression of liberalism. How could their leader have sold them out so abjectly? Understandable though this feeling is, it ignores the realities of Czechoslovakia’s situation, and in particular the reality of the Russian power that “ grows out of the “barrel of a gun’’, to quote another authority on the Communist power game.

No liberal sympathiser on either side of the Iron Curtain need doubt Mr Dubcek’s convictions; the Kremlin could scarcely have brainwashed in a few days the man who stood up to months of veiled threats and, more recently, open threats, from the same source. He accepted the Russian terms simply because the alternative appeared to be even less acceptable: the installation of a puppet regime, brutal suppression of opposition, the extinction of the last vestiges of Czechoslovak autonomy. Mr Dubcek’s own fate, had he defied the bullies of the Kremlin, would have been, at best, indefinite incarceration in a Soviet prison.

By accepting the Russian terms, harsh though they are, Mr Dubcek enabled the Russians to withdraw from a morally untenable position to one which at least has some semblance of legality. The distinction may be a fictitious—and infuriating—one to idealists, but it is of value to the Kremlin. Inside Russia, the pretence will be maintained that the “ independent ” Czechoslovaks have “ voluntarily ” agreed to strengthen the unity of socialist action; abroad, Mr Dorofeev and his glib colleagues in other diplomatic circles may escape the taunts which the exercise of naked power has exposed them to in the last few weeks. Hollow though such shams may appear outside a totalitarian society, they can be maintained by the Russians only so long as Mr Dubcek plays his part in maintaining them. Nor need Mr Dubcek feel too much compunction in falling in with this scheme, at least for a while. Provided he can retain —or recover—the confidence of his people, he may persuade them to accept the temporary occupation of their country and the suspension of some of their new-won civil liberties by promising them a gradual loosening of these bonds. At any time if the Russians failed to honour their side of the bargain he could resign. Such tactics should at least ensure that the bonds do not chafe too much, as they surely would if held by a Novotny.

If the Czechoslovaks finally decide to adopt such tactics, their fate may be decided sooner than expected by political changes within Russia. The liberal movement there, though not nearly so advanced as it was in Czechoslovakia this year, may topple the hard-line Communists—particularly Mr Brezhnev —from their Kremlin posts, and hand back to Mr Dubcek the real as well as the nominal power within his own jorders. But there is also the possibility that the next upset in the Kremlin hierarchy will be the removal of the moderates. This possibility will be diminished if Mr Dubcek’s regime submits in the meantime to Moscow’s wishes. The price of eventual liberty in Czechoslovakia, it seems, is the temporary surrender of much of the liberty briefly attained this year. An immediate rejection of Moscow’s demands could be no more than a futile gesture by the Czechoslovaks; and it might set this brave people back another generation.