BACK INTO THE DARKNESS

ONE by one, Czechoslovakia's faint remaining hopes for freedom last week flickered up, then died in the darkness of a new Soviet tyranny. Party Leader Alexander Dubcek and his government returned from Moscow alive and intact, only to be forced to dismantle their democratic reforms. The tanks pulled back out of sight from the centers of Czechoslovakia's cities, only to be replaced by hundreds of grim, brutal KGB (secret police) agents flown in from Moscow to manage and monitor the country's life. Liberal Czechoslovak officials were soon being removed from their posts, and from Moscow Pravda demanded the "liquidation" of 40,000 "counter-revolutionaries."

The free radio stations that had sustained the Czechoslovaks in the first days of invasion and uncertainty faded out, and state censorship was reimposed. Tourists and foreign correspondents were turned back at the borders. A great exodus began, as thousands of the country's ablest professors, artists, writers and journalists fled to freedom in the West. Gradually, inexorably, the little country that for eight months gave promise of showing Communism the way into the modern world--and for eight days dared defy its oppressors--slipped back into the dark age of a Stalinist-style police state.

Cut and Faint. As the leader of his country's experiment to infuse Communism with humanism and democracy, Dubcek was the symbol and hero of Czechoslovakia's will to be free. The circumstances of his arrival last week in Prague, after three days of negotiations in Moscow, illustrated the unyielding grip in which the Soviets and their hard-lining East Bloc allies now hold his land. Dubcek's plane landed in secret at dawn. Bulgarian troops and tanks guarded the field, and Soviet secret police whisked him and his fellow reformist leaders in official Soviet autos to a temporary government headquarters in Hradcany Castle. Dubcek's forehead was marked by a deep cut. His face was haggard with fatigue and despair. On arrival at the castle, he collapsed in a faint.

The Czechoslovak people were aware of little of this at first. They knew only that the Soviets had arrested Dubcek as a traitor the week before and spirited him away. Then, in what looked like an astounding turnabout, the Soviet leaders had him flown to Moscow, where they confirmed his status as continuing chief of the Czechoslovak party. Czechoslovaks joyously seized on his return to Prague as evidence that they had somehow prevailed in their improbable contest of national determination against Soviet force. That belief was buttressed by the fact that during the hours before Dubcek's arrival, Soviet armor withdrew from the central part of Czechoslovak cities.

Music dramatized the mood of hope. For hours, as tension and expectations rose, Radio Free Prague played over and over Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, whose stirring strains once served to rally Czechoslovakia's wartime resistance movement against the Germans. Then, in midafternoon, one of the leaders finally spoke. It was President Ludvik Svoboda, and when he finished, Radio Free Prague played a dirge.

Painful Speech. In a terse, ten-minute speech, Svoboda frankly told the Czechoslovak people that they had no choice but to submit to the will of the invaders or be crushed. Said Svoboda: "As a soldier, I know too well what conflicts can arise when people clash with modern armies. It was my duty to prevent the pointless flow of blood." A short time later, the man whom the people were waiting to hear came on the air. From his halting voice, it was evident that it was painful for Dubcek to speak the words that he felt he had to say. His speech was broken by sobs and long pauses as he fought to keep his emotions under control.

"The reality of this situation does not depend on our free will alone,'' said Dubcek. "We realize that fact as fully as you do. We must find a way out. The first point is the departure of foreign troops from our territory, but this depends on to what extent our own institutions are able to maintain order in our civic life. We hope you will trust us, even though we might be forced to take some temporary measures that limit the extent of democracy and freedom of opinion. Please realize the extraordinary conditions in which we live. Please let us remain united, calm and reasonable."

Loss of Control. As they listened. Czechoslovaks wept in sorrow and anger. Dubcek and his fellow leaders felt that it was better to bow to the Soviets in hopes of retaining a measure of self-rule. In the Moscow accord, the Soviets had reportedly agreed not to interfere in Czechoslovakia's internal affairs and to withdraw their troops within a reasonable time. They soon demonstrated that they had no intention of honoring either promise. From the first, many Czechoslovaks questioned the wisdom of Dubcek's reasoning. In a show of defiant courage, some 70 Czechoslovak patriots had been killed and another 1,000 wounded in clashes with the invaders. Those sacrifices seemed pointless when weighed against what loomed ahead. Soviet armed forces would stay in Czechoslovakia as long as the Soviets wished. Censorship was to be reimposed on the press. The results of the party congress that convened clandestinely the week before to oust the old hard-liners were to be declared illegal. Most of the Conservative backers of ousted Stalinist Party Boss Novotny were to retain their government and party posts. All opposition political groups were to be suppressed. Some Czechoslovaks felt that, in order to try and save his country, Dubcek had given up almost everything he stood for.

Suddenly Dubcek's control over his people, and their control over, themselves, seemed about to collapse. All across the country, local Communist parties declared their determination to resist the Moscow accord. Free radios and underground newspapers called for continued resistance. In Prague's Gorky Square, demonstrators chanted, "We have been betrayed!" The Czechoslovak student union appealed to the National Assembly. "If we surrender," it said, "we become once again in our history a nation of slaves." The National Assembly, which had defied the invaders by remaining in continuous session, not only damned the Moscow agreement but also issued an audacious set of fresh demands calling for the Soviets to evacuate at once and to make reparation for the damages they had caused.

Under the Soviet guns, Dubcek and the other reformist leaders worked frantically to keep their people from committing national suicide. In an urgent appeal to the National Assembly, they had implored the Deputies to refrain from inflaming the tense situation. The Deputies insisted on issuing their protest, but then they reluctantly went into recess. In a radio address, the President of the Parliament, Josef Smrkovsky, argued that the present regressions represented only a temporary setback. He and the other leaders, he said, had accepted the Soviet dictates, and the attendant crackdowns on personal and political liberty, in hopes of getting the occupation lifted. "We are sure that you will see in all this an essential measure aimed at a return to a normal situation and a renewal of the trends toward social democratization."

The Czechoslovaks responded, out of hope--or hopelessness. In Prague, students who only days before had taunted the Soviet soldiers and set fire to their tanks now dispersed at the first sign of a Red Army uniform. Shopkeepers used razor blades to scrape political slogans off their store windows. The free radio stations either went silent or dropped the word free from their names. The underground newspapers stopped publishing anything controversial (see following story). At the same time, the apparatus of repression fell swiftly into place, and the arrests of members of the underground, of liberal writers and artists, began.

Total Isolation. Gradually, what had really happened in Moscow was made known and the humiliation of Dubcek and the government exposed. On the morning of the invasion, Soviet troops had kicked their way into the room where Dubcek was meeting with the other leaders. The Soviets hauled them out of their chairs and frisked them roughly for weapons. Then they forced Dubcek and the others to lean against the wall, supporting themselves on their hands and remaining in that painful position for more than two hours. During that time, a Soviet officer stole Dubcek's wristwatch. Later in the day, the Soviets clamped Dubcek and the others into handcuffs and took each of them to separate places of internment. Abused, ill-fed, not knowing what fate awaited them, they were kept in total isolation for three days.

In the meantime, President Svoboda had flown to Moscow for face-to-face negotiations with the Soviet leaders. Though they gave him a regal reception in public, the Soviets subjected him in private to vitriolic abuse. "It was ten times worse than Cierna," a member of the Czechoslovak delegation said later. With Brezhnev leading the attack, the Russians ordered Svoboda to set up an anti-Dubcek puppet regime. They insisted on the right to name the members of the Presidium. If he did not comply, they warned, Czechoslovakia would be submitted to punishments that would make the rape of Hungary seem mild. They apparently even threatened to dismember the country, incorporating Slovakia into the Soviet Union and turning Bohemia and Moravia, the other two Czechoslovak provinces, into military protectorates.

Though he could barely control his tears, Svoboda refused to cave in. In a dramatic gesture, he placed on the table the Soviet medals that he had won as a commander of the Czechoslovak brigade fighting beside the Red Army in World War II and declared that he would commit suicide rather than give in. He demanded that Dubcek and the other reformists be allowed to join the talks. By this time, reports were getting through to the Soviet leaders that the Czechoslovak people were both defiant and in full support of Dubcek. As a result, the Kremlin leaders changed their tactics. If they could not find puppet leaders, they would try and attach their strings to the old leaders.

Calculated Cruelty. In separate planes, Dubcek, Smrkovsky and Premier Oldrich Cernik were flown to Moscow. Unshaven, unwashed, with their clothing torn in places, they were ushered into the Kremlin for one of the most outrageous bargaining sessions in history. Dubcek and his colleagues had no idea of what was happening at home. Yet they knew that the Soviets must be experiencing difficulties or they would not be there, and therefore there might be some room for compromise. But the men in the Kremlin left them small room for maneuver. The Czechoslovak leaders first had to agree to the long list of demands before the Russians would grant even such minor concessions as the withdrawal of troops from downtown areas.

With calculated cruelty, the Soviets placed Dubcek in a position where his only alternative seemed to be either to destroy himself or the freedoms he stood for, with the blood of his countrymen on his hands if he chose incorrectly. Dubcek made the only choice he really had, and flew back to Prague to aid the Soviets in turning back the clock in Czechoslovakia.

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