The beginning of June saw the session of ÚV KSČ (Central Committee of Communist Party of Czechoslovakia) take place that significantly influenced future developments. It was decided to call an emergency Communist Party congress for 9th September 1968. Also a specialist committee for the management of the economy was established and Professor Ota Šik was nominated as its chairman.
Alexandr Dubček noted in an opening report that there is no reason to be drawn into a change of the January political direction. He also said that the country mustn’t open space for antisocialist forces because in the divided world and due to the class war, we have to consider that the defeated bourgeois class may become activated and that various organisation without any legal base will come into being without any control
.
The final resolution also expressed the misgivings of leading Communists who were afraid that the process of socialistic democratisation may threaten the very basis of socialism. Therefore the resolution also included the following part: It is necessary to ensure that the Communist Party will be a political leader to protect the country against anticommunist and antisocialist tendencies, attempts to trigger mistrust and attempts to dispute the KSČ’s right to lead society must be stopped. We should also fight off attempts to discredit the People’s Militia. “
The Club of Committed Non-party Members, K231, was often talked about in connection with “not always healthy development of social organisations that function outside of legal platform. News about the danger of army intervention of Warsaw Pact countries were seen as lies. The current process was described as a renewal of socialism and democratisation with socialistic content. The most significant personal changes were removals of some supporters of the pre-January regime.
It is apparent that the ÚV KSČ session in fact signalled withdrawal from the Action Program, a fact that was registered also by the public.
At the same time as the session took place, a few people asked writer Ludvík Vaculík to draw up a manifesto which would be used by well-known scientists, culture workers, sportsmen and others to mobilise citizens to an activity that would support progressive forces.
Civic Society
The society was entering the second half of the year that saw more freedom than it had ever experienced throughout the last twenty years. Censorship, which was one of the main pillars of KSČ‘s monopoly, was done away with. The first, albeit imperfect, law about rehabilitation was adapted. Civic associations and media were asking for plurality of the political scene that was necessary for full implementation of democracy. It was something that Communist leaders never permitted. On the other hand, in June, after a long time, the memory of American soldiers who died during the country’s liberalisation fights was honoured. Sculptures of T.G. Masaryk (the first President of Czechoslovakia) returned to many places from which they had been removed after 1948. In Slovakia people were remembering M. R. Štefánik in the same way. The member of State Police suspected from the murder of Vicar Josefa Toufar in connection with the so called “Čihošť miracle” was taken into custody. In Prague, in the middle of June for the first time in many years the memory of Czech parachutists who carried the Heydrich’s assassination was honoured. President Ludvík Svoboda awarded them in memoriam with a decoration conferred by the State. Czech television broadcasted a successful document from Otta Bednářova that was directed by Milan Tomsa and called The Exemplary Testimony. The document was a re-enactment of the 1945 process with seven accused, members the so called Big Board. They were accused of industrial sabotage and sentenced to 14 to 20 years in prison. The document also showed a meeting with the attorney who wanted to meet the accused and look into the eyes of his own misdeeds. In June the National Assembly approved an amendment to the Press Act which marked censorship as illegal: With censorship we understand all interferences of state organs with freedom of speech and visual material and their distribution through mass media. Editors-in-chief are responsible for the fact that no information about state, economic and service secrets will be revealed.
On the 27th June papers Literární listy, Práce, Zemědělske noviny and Mladá fronta published the manifest Two Thousand Words to Workers, Farmers, Clerks, Scientists, Artists and Everyone
. On the 29th June the manifest was published by Ostrava’s paper Nová svoboda. (This document played a significant role not only in 1968 but also later. We deal with the topic of manifest in a separate article.)
Fund of Republic
June also brought another already forgotten phenomenon. It was the Fund of the Republic. It was created spontaneously in factories in the Most district and in Trenčín and it got spread into the whole country. Citizens and some companies managed to collect 159 mil CZK and 41 kg of gold within the first two weeks. This fund was supposed to secure the means for the improvement of the economy. (After the August it was irretrievably dissolved in the state budget.)
Rehabilitations
National Assembly adapted an Act about judicial rehabilitations No 82/1968 Col. This is a quotation from the opening part: "Repairing of injustices from the past, which were done by overstepping legality in the field of criminal jurisdiction, is the basic condition for the restoration of general and unreserved confidence in socialistic jurisdiction and justice. It is especially necessary that all citizens who were unjustly sentenced as saboteurs of socialism will be fully rehabilitated. It is, however, not possible to eliminate the deeds of revolutionary jurisdiction, to impair or even deny socialistic law. Rehabilitation cannot concern enemies of the socialist order who committed crimes against the Republic or otherwise broke the law and were rightly punished.”
Military Drill
The planed army drill of Warsaw Pact army at the territory of Czechoslovakia caused a significant commotion and evoked many discussions. The drill took place in the end of June in Western Bohemia and was accompanied by fears that the numerous foreign armies could by used to influence the domestic political scene.
The drill itself happened without any problems, what followed was, however, much worse. Troops didn’t want to leave the country. Their withdrawal was for various reasons delayed and eventually happened after much diplomatic activity on the part of then Czechoslovakian politicians. The drill finished on the 30th June and everyone was relieved when in the beginning of August the last military vehicle finally left the country.
White Book
Free media were subject of criticism on all meetings of Czechoslovakian delegations with representatives of USSR and other “brotherly” countries representatives, especially the German Democratic Republic and of threatening phone calls from Moscow. One of the documents proving how thoroughly the media were monitored is a booklet that was named after the colour of its cover as The White Book. Its full name was To the events in Czechoslovakia – Facts, documents, evidence of press and eye witnesses
. It was compiled by a special Press Group of Soviet journalists and was distributed among citizens after the August occupation
Quotations from the book opening:
"Tactical course of the contra revolution was to liquidate the leading role of KSČ, oust the working class and farmers of power and disrupt state bodies and social organisations. Reactionary forces considered corruption of the leading role of KSČ to be the most important condition for the restoration of capitalism in Czechoslovakia."
The document also labelled Jiřího Hanzelka’s article The Hour of Truth in Mlada fronta as a defamation of the twenty year development of Czechoslovakia. Ivana Sviták was labelled as a counter revolutionary ideologist because of his article Meaning of Revival in the paper Práce. Targets of attacks in the White Book also became e.g. Kramer, Ludvík Vaculík, Emanuel Mandler, Ivan Klíma. Also criticised were papers Literární listy, magazine Student, other domestic and foreign papers and magazines, radio and television. Television director Jiří Pelikán was labelled as a supporter of anti-socialism and was criticised for the fact that he allegedly permitted for the television to encourage anti-socialism and anti-Soviet moods including the disgraceful fabrication about the Soviet agents’ participation on the murder of Minister Jan Masaryk…
Source: totalita.cz, period press etc
František Sládek