Page:NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE SURVEY 18; CZECHOSLOVAKIA; GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110010-2.pdf/22

APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110010-2

After the experiment was abruptly checked in August 1968 by the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations, it became Gustav Husak's task to reestablish the party's control over the entire government and social structure and thus to reassure the U.S.S.R. that Czechoslovakia no longer constituted a threat to its domain. This Husak has done. The Husak "counterreformation" has not, however, been a reversion to the authoritarian style of Novotny which held scant regard for popular needs or desires. Husak has emerged as a "moderate" with a new and distinct understanding of the structure and the governing authority of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. He has committed himself, insofar as possible, to base party rule ultimately on popular cooperation, despite the odds against this inherent in the popular mood. By 1973, there were increasing indications that the regime was ready, as political conditions allow, to look anew at some of the reforms of the 1968 era—particularly in the economic sphere—with a view to implementing them in modified form. Yet each such hopeful sign appears balanced by countervailing repressive moves. Moreover, the advent of detente in Europe has intensified this conflict between the need for economic reinvigoration, if not reform, and the need for political control in order to counter the potentially corrosive effect of Western influence.

To a large extent the course of the Husak regime since 1969 has been influenced by the interplay of pro-Soviet party extremists on one end of the spectrum and the disruptive though relatively benign political activity of liberal dissidents on the other. Husak's desire for political peace as a precondition for some degree of relaxation, cautious reform and, ultimately, popular support has thus been inhibited by the need to counter both liberal dissidence and ultraconservative pressure for even more draconic measures. By alternately moving against both extremes, he may have wished to strengthen his fundamental position as a moderate/conservative. Yet to many Czechoslovaks he has only succeeded in appearing to yield to conflicting pressures and, on balance, to be compromising his principles to Soviet desires.

It is difficult to determine how many of Husak's "counterreforms" have been the result of Soviet pressures and how many have resulted from his own initiative. Once his "normalization" campaign had succeeded—basically the reestablishment of party control domestically and reaffirmation of Czechoslovak allegiance to the Soviet Union—Husak appears to have been free to chart his own course so long as it was consistent with Moscow's foreign policy objectives. Close Soviet supervision continues, and all important issues, such as economic planning, have stayed closely in step with Soviet purposes. By early 1973, however, Moscow was clearly content to let Husak deal with his own domestic problems and endorsed his assertion that the process of "normalization" had been completed.

Gustav Husak (Figure 7) has unquestionably put his personal stamp on Czechoslovakia. He his highly intelligent and dynamic, and effectively holds the reins of power. He is the first intellectual since Lenin to head a ruling European Communist party. His reputation has a competent political tactician stems largely from his role in establishing the Slovak state. An ardent Slovak nationalist, he was prominent in the anti-Nazi Slovak uprising in 1944, and emerged from the war a major Slovak political figure. Husak became embroiled in the power struggle following the Communist coup in 1948 that ushered in Czechoslovakia's Stalinist era. Accused of "bourgeois nationalism," he was expelled from the party; in 1954 he was tried on trumped-up charges of treason, sabotage, and espionage, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released in 1960, but avoided becoming politically active in the Novotny regime, for which he held no sympathy. Although he apparently played a minor role in the 1967 drive to unseat Novotny, he was picked up by Dubcek in early 1968 to mastermind the Slovak drive for federalization.

During the first two decades of Communist rule, Husak refined a sense of political "realism" which, by his own evaluation, governs his formulation of current policies. His dealings with both the Germans and the Soviets during the war years, his political caution

FIGURE 7. General Secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party Gustav Husak (C)

16

APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110010-2