Czech Deviation
By SH1ELA GRANT DUFF
THE fact that Czechoslovakia, alone of the East European satellites, was allowed to send a note to the Western Powers supporting the Russian view on the subject of German rearmament, which concerns them all, throws interesting light on the Czech internal situation. This is the first "independent " move
by the Czechoslovak Government since Clementis was dismissed
as Foreign Minister on no other grounds than having opposed Soviet policy in 1939 and persisted with," germs of distrust towards the Soviet Union and Comrade Stalin" into the post-war period. Furthermore it comes after extreme pressure has obviously been put on the Czech Government to forget its hatred of the Germans at any rate as far as the East German Republic is concerned. Last year saw the reception in Prague of the first official German
delegation ever to be received in the Czechoslovak capital. It also saw the appointment, unthinkable in the first Czechoslovak Republic, of a Sudeten German, Karl Krcibich, as Ambassador to Moscow.
The East Germans, it is true, paid part of the psychological price—their spokesman declaring in Prague that the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans was not only final but had even been " just " —but Moscow's attempt to win over the Germans must be gravely disturbing to a Government whose strongest card with its own people is fear of German revival with the aid of the Western Powers. By sending the note of protest on February 7th the Czechoslovak Government was once more playing this card.
The opportunity to act in its own national interest must have come as a godsend to the Czechoslovak Government after a year in which the hand of Moscow has been falling ever more heavily on its head. A joke current in Prague reveals the temper of the people. "What is the time ? " asks Mr. Novak. "Thanks to the Great Soviet Union and to Comrade Stalin," comes the reply, " it is ten minutes to eleven."
But it is not the man in the street who is most directly affected by the heavy hand of Moscow—though admittedly the present shortage of bread in Prague is blamed on the Russians (which is perhaps inevitable, since the public has had to look at posters for several years now declaring that " two loaves out of every three are thanks to the Soviet Union "). The pressure now is not so much on the masses, though it is reported that grain deliveries are being held up as a punishment for insufficient industrial deliveries by the Czechs, as on the elect. Though more men and women were sentenced last year for resistance than were sentenced in any normal year of the German occupation (I exclude 1942 when Heydrich was appointed and assassinated) the significant character of recent dismissals and arrests has been that It . was not "band-wagon Communists" who were affected, but old and tried party. members.
.What was their crime and that of those even more illustrious heads which have rolled during !the last year in Czechoslovakia ? Since the Rajk trial in Hungary and the fall of Kostov in Bulgaria and Gomulka in Poland, there has been a significant clamping down on Communist " deviationists." In spite of several speeches, mostly a year or so ago, by leading Communists in Czechoslovakia about the " Titoists in our midst" and their imminent liquidation, there has been no public trial of a Czech Communist. Yet it is clear that the party is no longer united. Leading Communists have been dismissed (like Vilem Novy from Rude Pravo), or have been arrested (like Evzen Loebl, the permanent head of the Ministry of Foreign Trade), or have met with sudden death (like Reimann, the head of the Prime Minister's office), or have been removed from office (like the three Slovak Commissars, Husak, Schmidke and Novomesky who were thrown out of the Slovak Government last summer), or—the mildest of the penalties which by surely no chance affected the most important of the party leaders—their "resignation has been accepted" (as in the case of Clementis, the former Foreign Minister).
Very little evidence was published concerning the guilt of the accused—not one was brought to trial—but some form of explana- tion had to be given to the rest of the party of the fall from power of at least such important comrades as Clementis and his colleagues of the Slovak party. I have in my possession a full report of the indictment before the Slovak Communist Party Congress of the four Slovak leaders. Two of them, Husak and Novomesky, were accused of "bourgeois nationalist deviation " ; the case against the third, Karel Schmidke, who is an old trade unionist and a worker, • had to be slightly differently worded, while Clementis, though he had "roots similar to bourgeois nationalism," was in fact • dismissed for unreliability in his attitude to the Soviet Union. The error of "bourgeois nationalism" is that "it wants to solve the national problem of the formerly oppressed nation as an all- national problem jointly with the old bourgeoisie and not in alliance with the proletariat of the formerly ruling nation." It seems that Novomesky and Husak "did not lean on the Czech working class," with the result that ." while in the Czech lands the regime was daily strengthened and the influence of the Communist Party increased," in Slovakia "chauvinistic elements were able to roam freely inside and outside the party."
Only on one occasion was open resistance to Russia castigated, and that slipped through the general security black-out which surrounds military details in all countries. As early as last spring (after the purging of all " Western " officers in the Army), the Chief of Staff, General Dagac, was dismissed and General Prohazka was appointed as his successor. A month or two earlier Prohazka had made a speech denouncing anti-Russian feeling in the army, which he described as "an unqualified distaste and resistance based on a hatred of everything Soviet." He even admitted that this resistance was growing into "sabotage." Shortly afterwards General Bulganin arrived on a visit to Prague (General Koniev is now said to have taken up permanent residence there) accompanied by Zorin, the Soviet Vice-Commissar for Foreign Affairs, who turns up to collect the Soviet due at every crisis.
In the case of Clementis, whose original error was to have opposed the Nazi-Soviet alliance of 1939 and condemned the Soviet invasions of Finland and Poland, it was not opposition to, but lack of, understanding of Soviet policy with which he was reproached. There was nó attempt to disguise that his crime lay in nothing else than those "germs of distrust towards the Soviet Union." But it is interesting that for this he could be dismissed from the Government but not actually arrested—that is last May. What has happened since to turn an error into a crime ?
The recent arrival of Zorin in Prague points to a state of crisis. There have been rumours of other persons about to fall—Gottwald, for instance, who was Prime Minister in 1947 when the Czecho- • slovak Government voted unanimously for Czech participation in Marshall Aid ; Nosek, the last Minister to have been in London throughout the war ; Zapotocky, the Czech trade-unionist Prime Minister who was put up at the Slovak party congress to condemn his fellow worker, Karel Schmidke. It is ominous that the power of these two last was reduced last year • control of the police was taken from Nosek after the reorganisation of the Government last May and control of the trade unions was taken from Zapotocky in June. Liquidation behind the Irow Curtain often takes place
in stages. It cannot be any more reassuring to the victims, especially when, as is shown by the mystery which surrounds the present whereabouts of Clementis, escape is so difficult. A state of profound distrust is now prevalent in leading Communist circles in Prague. Is it felt deeply in Moscow too ?
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