Back in the darkest days of Stalinist terror in Eastern Europe, Matyas Rakosi perfected a technique which is today being used again by Gustav Husak in Czechoslovakia. The idea was very simple. In 1950 Rakosi wanted to slash the workers' living standards but he was sufficiently acute to grasp that this would bring resistance from the working class. So, taking a tip from the Russians, he hit upon the notion of writing hundreds and hundreds of letters from workers explaining how, what with technological progress and so on, their piece-work norms were ridiculously low; so they as workers demanded that the Party increase their piece-work norms so that they would have to do more work for the same money. And after a few weeks , when the 'workers' letters' to the press had reached flood proportions, Rakosi graciously acceded to their demands for a cut in their standard of living.
For the past few weeks in Czechoslovakia, Husak's secretaries have been busy writing workers" and peasants' letters demanding repression against Dubcek and the socialist opposition.
Rakosi also had another trick which Husak is using. He would give the workers a break from work to go to a meeting to demand death for whoever was up for a show trial. Resolutions would be passed demanding that the "Titoists" and "Trotskyites" were shot. Last month some attempts were made to organise similar meetSit-down demo on first anniversary of Russian invasion-same spirit survives today ings in Prague, condeming Dubcek as a traitor.
But the results of these efforts in some of the factories show how times have changed. Reports have reached us that that workers in at least two factories replied that they would be quite prepared to denounce Dubcek as a traitor, but on one condition: that his letter to the Party leadership be distributed to them so that they could read it and see for themselves!
• 'NORMALISATION'• Things have gone very badly for the Czechoslovak regime during the last two months.
Husak's six-year struggle to 'normalise' the situation has been shown to have been ineffectual. 'Normalisation' was actually a slogan designed to mean two entirely different things: for the Kremlin and the other East European regimes it was to mean that the resistance movement following the 1968 invasion had been decisively crushed; while to Western Socialists and Communists it was supposed to mean that there would be no more repression or the eed for "administrative' measures against dissidents.
Both these versions have been shown to be thoroughly false since the publication of Dubcek's letter (see Red Weekly for 1 and 8 May).
And nothing has shown their falsehood more than the activities of the regime itself.
First there was Husak's violent denunciation of Dubcek to the National Assembly, calling him a traitor and threatening him with repression or exile. The speech also contained an attack on Olaf Palme the Cocial Demarrotio OLIVER MACDONALD ist Parties.
But the question must be asked: why did Husak need to denounce Dubcek from the country's main political platform? If a rebuff to Dubcek was necessary for international reasons, to try to put pressure on the Western CPs to keep their mouths shut, why not simply issue a sharply worded press release through the Assembly.
state news agency? In fact it is clear that the speech was vitally necessary for internal political reasons: after six years of jailing communRN A ists and socialists and expelling half a million people from the Communist Party and throwing thousands out of work, the Party boss had to come out with such a speech in order to try to frighten the opposition and keep the regime together. The price of showing the emptiness of phrases about 'normalisation' was evidently considered worth paying.
An occasion to demonstrate that the regime was still fairly confident of its hold did nevertheless present itself with the 30th anniversary of the victory over fascism at the beginning of May. There was supposed to be an amnesty for prisoners to mark the anniversary. Of course, the regime claims that there are no political The replacement of Dubcek (left) by Husak (right) has not led to 'normalisation' - quite the reverse socialist community, for endangering state secrets to the detriment of a socialist state, activities abroad harmful to the interests of the Republic, economic and military crimes, actions opposing an organ of the state carrying out its functions, abuse of the power of a public office, placing in danger a professional secret, illegal possession of arms, and placing in danger the moral education of the youth.
• INSTABILITY • The latest event in Husak's frenzy of activity over the last few weeks has been his elevation to the Presidency of the Republic. He now holds three of the four top jobs in the country the Presidency, the General Secretaryship of the Party, and the Chairmanship of the National This move has taken place because of the extremely unstable balance of forces within the Presidium of the Party itself - a situation where Husak is faced with people who would willingly topple him and who cannot be trusted even with the largely honorific post of the Presidency. No clearer indication could be given of the failure of the post-1968 regime to stablise itself even at the level of the top Party leadership.
One of the great ironies of the present situation is that Husak cannot even rely on the. people who put him in power, the Kremlin. During the whole period of the European Security Conference the Russians have been extremely nervous about the lack of 'normalisation' inside Czechoslovakia, and their sensitivity has never been greater than now when the Conference has reached its most delicate phase.
It was for this reason that the Kremlin esta blished informal contacts with the Dubcekites to sound out the possibility of bringing some of them back into office in order to give the regime a facelift. Brezhnev can hardly have been impressed with Husak's performance over the last few weeks, and it was a bitter blow when he talled to turn up as promised for the 30th anniversary celebrations at the beginning of May.
•'CRITICISM'• A number of Western Communist Parties, including the CPGB, have made public state ments attacking the Husak Government. On 13 May the Morning Star printed a statement from the Executive Committee of the Party which declared that 'dissent and political differences in Socialist states should be handled by political and not administrative means' - the word "administrative is a euphemism for 'repressive". The statement said that 'on this matter a vital principle is involved which concerns all Communist Parties', and it added that the CPGB had suggested to Husak that those arrested in 1972 for expressing political views different from those of the Czechoslovak Party leaders should be amnestied. In the words of the statement, 'the issue was not only the right to hold different views, but the legal means to express them'.
The statement goes on to demonstrate the CPGB's own thoroughly unprincipled politics and continued Stalinist commitment by declaring fatuously: "Whatever differences may remain on particular questions, we are convinced that our solidarity will continue to grow.' In other words, while the CPGB leaders continue to make verbal statements of dislike for the crimes of Husak and the Kremlin its basic unity with them will remain and even get stronger!
The house searches and arrests inside Czechoslovakia during the last few weeks have not weakened the activity of the Socialist Opposition inside the country. The underground journals have continued to appear, clandestine meetings continue to take place, and the Dubcek letter is circulating in hundreds of copies in Prague. Experiences in the factories indicate thai the political traditions of 1968 have by no mean: be been forgotten among the working class, aid indeed the regime can expect io be shaken by new denunciations in the near future.
• DAMAGING • One of the chief targets of the secret police has been a 200 page document which carefully analyses the entire evolution of the Party since 1968. Copies of this have been seized by the police, and there is evidence that the regime thinks it has stopped the document reach- ching the outside world - an urgent objective since the document could be extremely damaging if it were to circulate befor the scheduled meeting of European Communist Parties this year. But the police searches have been ineffective: the document is already outside the country.
It only remains to be seen whether honest militants inside the CPGB and other Western Communist Parties will take a principled stand in solidarity not with the bureaucratic dictatorship in Czechoslovakia but with the socialist opposition in that country, and strengthen defence activity in this country for the victims of Husak's repression.