Page:NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE SURVEY 18; CZECHOSLOVAKIA; COUNTRY PROFILE CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110008-5.pdf/8

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replaced Alexander Dubcek at the helm of the Czechoslovak Communist Party in April 1969. Operating under the twin banners of realism and moderation, Husak played upon fears of much more unpleasant alternatives to win grudging acceptance of a policy of broad compliance with Moscow's demands. His task was made easier by his reputation for stubborn independence and personal integrity born of long years spent as a political prisoner of the Novotny regime on the charge of "bourgeois Slovak nationalism." Moreover, despite his insistence on discipline, he demonstrated a genuine determination to avoid returning to the harsh administrative and police methods of the 1950's. Like his well publicized efforts to improve the economic well-being of his countrymen, this aspect of Husak's style of rule did much to ease the pain of capitulation. (U/OU)

Not that the "normalization" process didn't take its human toll. The party was subjected to a purge which cost it—through resignation or involuntary separation—nearly one-third of the 1.7 million members carried on its rolls when Husak came to power. In addition, those individuals who stood in the forefront of the 1968 reform movement have been ostracized and denied responsibly or well-paying employment. But, thanks to Husak's continuing resistance to the demands of party ultraconservatives for more severe reprisals, only a handful—primarily people who could be charged with inflammatory or subversive behavior in the postinvasion period—have been brought to trial. Even Dubcek has been spared. And although the reform era remains a major point of contention within the Czechoslovak Communist Party, Husak has made it clear that he personally favors a policy of selective rehabilitation. (U/OU)

All told, however, Husak has asked his countrymen to swallow a great deal, not the least of which has been his own gradual conversion from an open critic of the 1968 invasion into one of its dutiful apologists. Although he initially promised to preserve the "positive features" of the Prague Spring, he has methodically dismantled or vitiated virtually all of the reforms, including those with which he himself was once closely identified. Censorship has been reinstitute. The party's control over all segments of the government and society has been restored—a process involving, among other things, both recentralization of the economy and abandonment of many of the established or projected features of the country's new binational federal system. Sharp curtailment of freedom of travel to the West has provided yet another cause for popular dismay. But perhaps the cruelest blow of all was the signing in May 1970 of a new bilateral Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance with the U.S.S.R., which not only vindicated the Warsaw Pact invasion but established a legal basis for possible Soviet intervention in the future. (U/OU)

Brezhnev and Husak shake hands following the signing of the 1970 bilateral treaty

Thus, Husak's bargain was at best a hard one, and it might seem a bit surprising that a people who had made such a show of defiant unity during the initial stages of their confrontation with their Warsaw Pact allies did not hold out for somewhat better terms. After all, the Kremlin's willingness to countenance some rather innovative reforms elsewhere in Eastern Europe and its apparent reluctance to risk taking any action which might adversely affect the new trend toward East-West detente must have suggested to the Czechoslovaks that such a goal was not beyond reach. But a capacity for prolonged heroics is not a characteristic Czechoslovak national trait. (U/OU)

Czechoslovakia was carved from the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918. It is not an ethnically homogenous state like Poland or Sweden and thus has lacked their cultural unity to help it withstand the unusual pressures occasioned by its

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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110008-5