The New York Review Abroad

by Robert B. Silvers

  Outside Prague, the situation was very different from place to place, with much more fear and nastiness in, for example, the industrial district around Ostrava. And then of course there was Slovakia, a different nation. To reach out to this wider audience the crucial medium was television and, to a lesser extent, radio. As in all this year’s Central European revolutions/transformations the battle for access to television and radio was one of the two or three most important political issues. Here, the battle was comically visible on screen, with direct transmission of a demonstration suddenly interrupted by some inane light music, and then the picture wrenched back again—as if by some invisible hand—to the demonstration. “Live transmission!” they chanted on Wenceslas Square, “live transmission!” Once it had access to television and radio, a good deal of the Forum’s energy was devoted to discussing what to say there.

  The second compound force was “the powers that be.” This term from the King James Bible was repeatedly used by Rita Klimová, a former professor of economics (sacked for political reasons), who translated into English for the speakers at the Forum press conferences with magnificent aplomb. At first hearing it may sound quaint, but it is actually a very good term, for one of the recurrent problems in describing Communist systems (or should I say, former Communist systems) is precisely to find an appropriate collective noun for the people and institutions who actually wielded power. To say “the government,” for example, would be wrong, since in such systems the government did not really govern: the Party did, or some mixture of the Party, the police, the army, and the Soviet Union. All these elements were in play here, and well embraced by the biblical term “the powers that be.”

  At the beginning, the Forum negotiated with the federal prime minister, who was also, of course, a Politburo member. They did this, in the first place, because he was the only senior power holder who would talk to them. But, making a virtue of necessity, they said: we are talking to the government of our country because we want a proper government, responsible to a proper parliament, not the rule of one party. As well as the federal prime minister they also negotiated with the Czech prime minister, for in Czechoslovakia’s elaborate federal structure, the Czech lands and Slovakia each have their own governments. Only then did they start talking to Party leaders as such.

  Behind everything there was the benign presence of Gorbachev’s Soviet Union: the Soviet embassy in Prague receiving a Forum delegation with demonstrative courtesy. Gorbachev himself making it clear during the Warsaw Pact post-Malta briefing in Moscow that Party leader Urbánek and Prime Minister Adamec should implement fundamental reforms, the demonstrative renunciation of the invasion in 1968. Others will have to assess how far (and how) Gorbachev deliberately pushed the changes in Czechoslovakia, and to what extent this was affected by his personal timetable of East-West relations, leading up to the Malta summit. Just as in 1980 the very worst place from which to assess the Soviet intention to invade was the Solidarity headquarters in Warsaw (a point never entirely grasped by television and radio interviewers), so in 1989 the worst place from which to assess the Soviet intention to do the opposite of invading was the Forum headquarters in Prague. Yet, of course, in a larger historical frame, the Soviet attitude was fundamental.

  At this point the “powers that be” shade into the third force, or theater, called “the world.” As I recounted in these pages just a year ago,* the first protesters in Prague on the national anniversaries last year chanted at the riot police, “The world sees you.” Yet in the autumn of 1988 it was, in fact, very doubtful if the world did see them. On the whole, the world considered that life was elsewhere. But now there was absolutely no doubt that the world saw them. It saw them through the eyes of the television cameras and the thousands of foreign journalists who flocked into the Magic Lantern for the daily performance. They were a sight in themselves: television crews and photographers behaving like minotaurs, journalists shouting each other down and demanding to know why the revolution could not keep to their deadlines.

  Yet a few of the questions were good, and the journalists served two useful functions. First, they concentrated minds. When there was a Forum plenum at, say, 5 PM, the knowledge that their spokesmen would have to field the hardest questions at 7:30 PM made for a much sharper discussion. Even so, Forum policy on crucial issues—the future of the Warsaw Pact, for example, or that of socialism itself—was sometimes made up on the wing, in impromptu answers to Western journalists’ questions. Secondly, the “eyes of the world” offered protection. Particularly in the days before the Malta summit, the Czechoslovak authorities must have been left in little doubt that there were certain things that they could no longer do, or could only do at an immense price in both Western and Soviet disapproval. Beating children, for example. Both externally and internally, the crucial medium was television. In Europe at the end of the twentieth century all revolutions are telerevolutions.

  4.

  Day Eight (Friday, November 24). In the morning, a plenum in the smoking room. Appointing people to the commissions. The agenda for this afternoon’s demonstration. The proposed slogans, someone says, are “objectivity, truth, productivity, freedom.” It is no surprise that two out of four have to do with truth. But “productivity” is interesting. From several conversations outside I gather that the “Polish example” is widely seen here as a negative one. If economic misery were to be the price for political emancipation, many people might not want to pay it. So the Forum places a premium on economic credibility. Demos only after working hours. The lunchtime general strike on Monday as a one-time necessity.

  In the early afternoon comes Dubcek. He looks as if he has stepped straight out of a black-and-white photograph from 1968. The face is older, more lined, of course, but he has the same gray coat and paisley scarf, the same tentative, touching smile, the same functionary’s hat. Everything contributes to the feeling that we have just stepped out of a time warp, the clocks that stopped in 1969 starting again in 1989. Protected by Havel’s bodyguards—lead on, John Bok—we emerge from the belly of the Lantern, Dubcek and Havel side by side, and scuttle through covered shopping arcades and tortuous back passages to reach the balcony of the Socialist Party publishing house and Svobodné Slovo: the balcony of the free word. Along the arcades people simply gape. They can’t believe it. Dubcek! It is as if the ghost of Winston Churchill were to be seen striding down the Burlington Arcade.

  But when he steps out onto the balcony in the frosty evening air, illuminated by television spotlights, the crowds give such a roar as I have never heard. “DUBCEK! DUBCEK!” echoes off the tall houses up and down the long, narrow square. Many people mourn his ambiguous role after the Soviet invasion, and his failure to use the magic of his name to support the democratic opposition. He has changed little with the times. His speech still contains those wooden, prefabricated newspeak phrases, the langue de bois. (At one point he refers to “confrontationist extremist tendencies.”) He still believes in socialism—that is, reformed communism—with a human face. The true leader of this movement, in Prague at least, is Havel, not Dubcek. But for the moment none of this matters.

  For the moment all that matters is that the legendary hero is really standing here, addressing a huge crowd on Wenceslas Square, while the emergency session of the Central Committee has, we are told, been removed to a distant suburb. “Dubcek to the castle!” roars the crowd—that is, Dubcek for president. The old man must believe he will wake up in a moment and find he is dreaming. For the man who supplanted him and now sits in the castle, Gustav Husák, it is the nightmare come true.

  After Dubcek comes Havel. “Dubcek-Havel” they chant, the name of ’68 and the name of ’89. (People point out with delight that 89 is 68 turned upside down.) Then Václav Malý, the banned padre, reads a message from the man he calls “the third great symbol” of this movement, the ninety-year-old František Cardinal Tomášek. “The Catholic Church stands entirely on the side of the people in their present struggle,” says the messag
e. “I thank all those who are fighting for the good of us all and I trust completely the Civic Forum which has become a spokesman for the nation.” “Long live Tomášek,” they cry, but I notice that when Malý later strikes up the old Czech Wenceslas hymn, much of the crowd either do not know the words or are reluctant to sing them. A striking contrast with Poland.

  At the end of the demonstration, after more speakers, including a football player, a theater director, and the obligatory Student and Worker, the people down in the square make the most extraordinary spontaneous gesture. They all take their keys out of their pockets and shake them, three hundred thousand key rings, producing a sound like massed Chinese bells.

  7:30 PM. The press conference. Havel and Dubcek together on stage. They are just starting to field questions about their different ideas of socialism when someone brings the news—from television—that the whole politburo and Central Committee secretariat has resigned. The theater erupts in applause. Havel leaps to his feet, makes the V for Victory sign, and embraces Dubcek. Someone brings them champagne. Havel raises his glass and says “to a free Czechoslovakia!”

  Then, rather absurdly, we settle down again to discuss “What is socialism?” Havel says the word has lost all meaning in “the Czech linguistic context” over the last fifteen years, but he is certainly in favor of social justice and a plural economy, with different forms of ownership. The models for a rational social policy are to be found rather in social-democratic than in Communist-ruled countries. The shortest and best answer comes from Václav Malý. I’m also for social justice, he says, but the only way to secure it is through parliamentary democracy.

  10 PM. Plenum in the smoking room. Arrangements for the weekend. The need for finance: establish a Treasury commission! An interesting but inconclusive discussion about the way in which Dubcek should or should not be associated with the Forum. Of course his name is magic, domestically and internationally. But he is, you know, still sort of, well … a Communist. On every face you see elation fighting a battle against exhaustion. Everyone is very, very tired. At one point, reading a draft declaration about the general strike, the writer Eva Kanturková says “Democratic Forum” instead of “Civic Forum.” “Oh, sorry, I was thinking of Hungary.”

  Civic Forum, Democratic Forum, New Forum—Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany—you can easily lose track; it’s that kind of year. Someone suggests the general strike should be described as an “informal referendum” on the leading role of the Party. Someone else says “symbolic,” not “informal.” Writers debate a fine point of style. Agreement by mutual exhaustion. Meeting over.

  After midnight. Back in Havel’s basement pub, with a wall painting of a ship in stormy seas. Beer and becherovka. What do you talk about on the night of such a tremendous victory, when, in just over a week, you have removed the gibbering thugs who have ruined the country for twenty years? In the first instant, on the stage of the Magic Lantern, you may cry, “To a free Czechoslovakia!” But you can’t go on talking like characters in a nineteenth-century play. So you suddenly find yourself talking about cats. Yes, cats. Two cats called “Yin” and “Yang,” whom their owner has not seen for more than a week. Poor things. Victims of the revolution.

  So what will happen after the revolution? I ask a beaming Jirí Dienstbier, the star journalist reduced to working as a stoker after signing Charter 77. Quick as ever, he says: Either the counterrevolution or … a Western consumer society. (Just over two weeks later he is appointed Czechoslovakia’s foreign minister. Kindly delete that remark from the record. No, of course you never said that, Mr. Minister. Someone else did. I imagined it. It was a voice from the wall.)

  Day Nine (Saturday, November 25). Two Forum statements. One issued after the plenum last night at 11:30 PM (events move so fast they have not only to date but to time the communiqués) describes the general strike as a “symbolic referendum” on the “leading role.” A second, issued at 4:30 AM, expresses dismay at some of the people elected to the new politburo (formally: Presidium) and Central Committee secretariat. The general strike is here described as “an informal, nationwide referendum on whether or not they should go on humiliating us, and whether this country should continue to be ruined by the leaders of one political party, permanently abrogating to itself the leading role.”

  The waiter in my hotel sees me reading Svobodné Slovo. “Ah, victoria!” he says, pointing to the blue, white, and red ribbon which he, like so many others, is now wearing in his lapel. Then he leans over and whispers in my ear: “finished communism.” Straightening up, he rubs his shoe across the carpet, as if crushing a beetle. Then he takes my Svobodné Slovo, but not my breakfast order, and disappears into the kitchen.

  This morning there is, by happy chance, a festive mass in the cathedral on the castle hill, to celebrate the canonization of Agnes of Bohemia. The actual canonization took place in Rome on November 12, just five days before the revolution started. (An old legend has it, so a Catholic friend informs me, that wonders will occur in Bohemia when Agnes is canonized.) In the freezing cold, a large crowd gathers inside and all around the cathedral, and in front of the Archbishop’s Palace. “Frantši Tomášek! Frantši Tomášek!” they chant, a wonderfully chummy way to greet a venerable cardinal. An old woman quaveringly sings patriotic hymns, pausing only to take a swig of vodka between verses.

  The Church here is nothing like the force that it is in Poland, for Czechoslovakia has historically been bitterly divided between Catholics (associated with the Habsburg counterreformation) and Protestants (from Jan Hus to Masaryk), while both churches were ruthlessly suppressed in the Stalinist period, and again after 1969. Yet Catholic intellectuals and banned priests like Václav Malý play a crucial part in the opposition leadership. Tomášek himself has become ever bolder as he gets ever older. A petition for religious freedom last year got more than half a million signatures, and was a major factor in breaking the political ice. And anyway, who could resist the glorious coincidence of this ceremony and the revolution? So there is a goodly crowd here too, some from the countryside and even from Slovakia. And the mass for the patron saint of Bohemia, the king’s daughter who came down to live among the poor, is a further celebration of national renewal. Angels at work. Oh yes, and the whole service is broadcast live on television: so far as I can establish, the first time that has ever happened here.

  At 2 PM, in freezing snow, there is the biggest demonstration of all: over half a million people, in the park before the Letná football stadium, just behind the place where the giant statue of Stalin once stood. With the banners and flags and upturned faces vivid against the white snow, it looks like a painting by L. S. Lowry. Whole sections of the crowd jump up and down together, to keep warm. The essential fact is that they are there, at the Forum’s invitation. In a sense, that is all that matters. But of course there is a program.

  Havel reiterates the Forum’s dissatisfaction with some of the new leaders, and especially with the survival in office of the deeply unpopular Prague Party secretary, Miroslav Stepán. “Shame, shame!” cry the crowd. And then he says that the only person in power who had responded to the wishes of the people is the prime minister, Ladislav Adamec. “Adamec! Adamec!” roar the crowd, and one trembles for a moment at the ease with which they can be swayed. This is of course a quite deliberate (but high-risk) tactic, worked out in the dressing rooms of the Magic Lantern: to build up the prime minister’s position as a negotiating partner by showing the authorities that he can enjoy popular support. In fact, this is precisely what Adamec asked Havel to do for him a few days ago. Dubcek, who, rather to some people’s surprise, has not yet returned to Bratislava, repeats the same support for Adamec. He also says, rather nicely, that he is pleased about the canonization of Agnes of Bohemia—Anezka—and that, although he will speak in Slovak, what matters is not how you speak but what you say.

  Petr Miller, The Worker, repeats the strike call, stressing once again that it must not damage the national economy. Ballads are sung
, including President Masaryk’s favorite song; and students and actors talk. “I speak in the name of Jesus Christ,” says one actor, modestly, “and call upon you to stamp out the devil.” Roars of applause. Then, in the extraordinary way these crowds have of talking back, they given an almost instant response: “The devil is in the castle, the devil is in the castle!” (If you stand in the crowd you see how one man can start a chant which, being taken up by those around him, becomes the voice of half a million.)

  7:30 PM. The press conference. Repeating the Forum positions about the compromised leaders, the general strike and so forth. Tomorrow a delegation will meet with Prime Minister Adamec. The agenda is to include the legalization of independent groups, the release of political prisoners, arrangements for further talks, oh yes, and an end to the leading role of the Party. Foreign journalists keep asking about things they cannot possibly know, such as the power balance inside the Party or the relations between the Soviet and Czechoslovak leadership. Jirí Dienstbier gives a good answer to the last question. Of course we feel the Soviet leadership should have some sense of responsibility for the 1968 invasion, he says, but we are certainly not asking for any more international “assistance.”