The New York Review Abroad (34 page)

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 message. “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.”