Crackdown

With his chilling vision of man as a helpless pawn caught within a brutalizing bureaucracy, Franz Kafka would have been intrigued by the sad happenings in his native Prague last week. He would probably have seen both captor and captives as almost equally powerless. The captor, in this instance, was Party Leader Gustav Husak, who has repeatedly vowed since taking power in 1969 that supporters of ousted Reformer Alexander Dubcek would not be put on trial for their roles in Prague's short-lived "springtime of freedom," which was crushed by the Soviet-led invasion of August 1968. His promise carried a special conviction because Husak had spent nine years in Communist prisons during the 1950s on trumped-up political charges.

Even so, the most significant trials so far of Dubcek's supporters took place in Prague last week--while Husak was vacationing in the Soviet Union. The 13 defendants, who were jailed months ago, were not tried on charges dating from the Dubcek era. Instead, most were accused of more recent subversion. Their specific offense: distributing leaflets before the 1971 national elections that reminded citizens of their constitutional right to cross out names on the one-party list of candidates. Yet the real aim of the trial was obviously to intimidate Dubcek's followers so that they would not seek any liberalization of the rigid authoritarian rule that the Russians have forced Husak to reimpose on the country. After several days of court sessions, from which foreign press and public were barred, the judges imposed sentences of up to six years on former Party Theoretician Jaromir Litera, Sociologist Rudolf Battek, Historian Jan Tesar and others. Five defendants were given suspended sentences. More important leaders of the Prague spring, including Milan Huebl, former chief of the Party Training College, and Liberal Journalist Jiri Hochman, are still in prison and awaiting trial.

Some Western experts speculate that Husak may have agreed to the trials of lower-ranking liberals in order to fend off demands from hard-liners that he try the political leaders of the Prague spring. Two leading "ultras" are Vasil Bilak and Alois Indra, the Soviets' principal collaborators during the Warsaw Pact occupation of Czechoslovakia. Bilak and Indra reportedly favor punishing even Dubcek, who lives quietly in Bratislava. He is in charge of the motor pool for the Forest Administration.

No Coexistence. The Prague trials are part of an overall pattern of political crackdown throughout the Soviet bloc (TIME, July 10). Many Western statesmen have hoped that East-West detente would lead to political relaxation in the Communist countries. The effect so far has been the opposite. Communist leaders throughout the bloc are seeking to immunize their people from the possibly liberalizing contamination that could result from closer economic and cultural contact with the West. Soviet Politburo Member Mikhail Suslov has warned that detente will actually mean a sharpening of the political tensions between the Communist and capitalist countries. "In the ideological field," Suslov declared, "there is not and cannot be any peaceful coexistence."

At present the Soviet people are being subjected to a massive program of indoctrination lectures that aim at increasing public awareness of the perils of imperialists' lures. At the same time, the Soviet Union is gripped by a severe wave of political and cultural repression. In addition to the suppression of demonstrators in Lithuania (see following story), Soviet security forces have recently arrested about 200 Ukrainians on charges of subversion. As long as Moscow is embarked on a policy of increased political and ideological vigilance, the rest of the East bloc has no choice but to follow suit.

Meanwhile, trials of perhaps an even more crucial nature are going on in Yugoslavia, where a recurrence of the old hatreds between Croats and Serbs threatens to sunder the country's fragile unity. Last week eight Croatian students who took part in last December's separatist riots were sentenced to periods of imprisonment ranging from three months to one year for "national intolerance"--a euphemism for agitation for Croatian independence from the Yugoslav federation. So far, some 100 to 150 Croats have been given similar sentences.

The most important trial is expected to begin in August. It involves eleven members of the Matica Hrvatska (Croatian Homeland) cultural society who have been brought up on charges of fomenting regional "chauvinism." In ordering the trials, the federal government of President Josip Broz Tito obviously hopes that the sentences will be stern enough to discourage future outbreaks of Croatian nationalism--but at the same time mild enough so that last year's demonstrators will not be made into martyrs.

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