Ferment among Czechs and Slovaks
| Date | 01 December 1964 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206401900405 |
| Author | H. Gordon Skilling |
| Published date | 01 December 1964 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Ferment
Among
Czechs
and
Slovaks
H.
Gordon
Skilling*
The
enormous
statue
of
Stalin,
which,
until
October,
1962
over-
looked
ancient
Prague
from
its
commanding
position
above
the
Vltava,
seemed
to
symbolize
the
continuing
"orthodoxy"
of
a
communist
country
that
had
changed
but
little
since
the
death
of
Stalin. True,
the
demolition
of
this
huge
group
of
stone
figures
was physically
not
as
easy
as
that
of
its
smaller
counter-
part
in
Budapest,
which
was
torn
down
in a
matter
of
hours
in
1956.
But
even
the
smaller
statue
in
Bratislava,
which
could
easily
have
been removed,
gazed
down
benevolently
on
the
May
Day
procession
in
1962
as
it
passed
through
Stalin
Square.
In
fact,
in
the
year
which
followed
the
XXII
congress of
the
CPSU
in
October
1961,
Czechoslovakia,
unlike
some
of
its
neighbours,
was
hardly
influenced
at
all
by
the
new
spirit
of
Moscow,
and
showed
no
signs
of
relaxing
its
strongly
Stalinist
course.
Para-
doxically,
this
country,
almost
unique
in
its
devotion
and
sub-
servience
to
Moscow,
was
increasingly
out
of
step
with
Khrus-
chev's
policy
of
de-Stalinization.
"Orthodoxy"
seemed
to
be
evolving
into "heterodoxy".
In
early
1963,
a
fresh
current
of
air
began
to
be
felt
in
Czechoslovakia,
with
more
pungent and
uninhibited
criticism
of
matters
as
far
removed
as
literary
criticism
and
economic
planning.
This
modest
liberalization
of
public
discourse
seemed
to
reflect
a
mounting
discontent,
beneath
the
surface,
with
the
continued
conformity
of
Czechoslovak
political
and cultural
life,
but
was
not
welcomed
in
high
political circles.
In
a
speech
delivered
to the
party
aktiv
in
Ostrava
at
the
end
of March,
and devoted
largely
to
the
critical
economic
situation,
Novotny
rejected
any
effort
"under
a
subjective
view
of
freedom,
to
smuggle
tendencies
of
decadent
capitalist
society
into
our
life,
especially
our
culture".
While
avowing
the
needs
for
"constructive"
criticism,
he
went
on:
"But
to
criticize every-
Department
of
Political
Economy,
University
of
Toronto.
This
article
was
made
possible by leave
from the
University
of
Toronto
and
by
grants
in
aid
of
research
from
the Canada
Council
and
the
Social
Science
Research
Council,
New
York
City.
FERMENT
AMONG
CZECHs
AND
SLOVAKS
497
thing,
to make
a
fashion
out
of
it,
to
criticize
socialist society,
this
we
shall
not
permit.
We need
criticism here
as
we
need
salt
or
our
daily
food,
but
no
one
may
touch
our
Communist
Party,
its
programme, or
our
socialist
order.
This
must
be
and
must
remain
sacred
for
everyone".
He
proclaimed
the
right
of
the
party
"to
direct
cultural
activity,
just
as
it
directs
and
leads
the
entire
life
of
the
country",
and
warned
cultural
and
artistic
workers
that
"they
did
not
have
a
monopoly
in
criticism".
They
were
not,
he
said,
"special people
differing
from others",
nor
were
they
" 'a
god'
sent
to
this
earth
to
judge
the
life
of
the
people
from
their
exalted
position, like
a
conscience,
and
on
the
basis
of
this
human
activity, to
reach
god-like conclusions".
Reverting
to
more
directly
political
matters,
Novotny
declared
that
they
were
going
to
"finish
with"
the
cult
of
personality,
but
this
did
not
mean,
"under
the
shield
of
the
struggle against
the
cult
of
personality,
to
attack
what
the
working
class,
led
by
the
Communist
Party,
had
struggled
for
decades
to
achieve,
and
to
smuggle
into
our
life
bourgeois
liberalism".
An
even
more
revelatory
indication of
the
tenseness
of
the
situation
was
given in
the
leading
article
in
Nova
mysl
by
its
editor-in-chief,
Cestmir Cisar,
entitled
"The
Pure
Shield
of
Com-
munism".
1
Arguing
that
a
great
deal
had
been
accomplished
since
the
20th
Congress
in
1956,
he
admitted
that
much
remained
to
be
done.
"Every marking
of
time
means
a
loss
of
momentum
and
the
prolongation
of
an
unsatisfactory
situation".
Re-stating
the
familiar
theme
that
the
liquidation
of
the
cult
of
personality
was
not
easy
and
was
a
"continuing
process",
he
said:-
"The
cult
of
personality
was
not
simple
ideological
matter
involving
the
adoration
of a
leading person;
it
was
a
whole
system
of
views,
customs,
organizational
measures,
procedures
and
methods,
which
were
deeply
rooted in
life and
stubbornly
persist.
It
must
also
not
be
overlooked
that
it
is
the
same
people who
struggle
with
the
remnants
of
the
cult
of
personality
who
used
to
be
for
many
years
subject
to
it
and
who
got
used
to
its
norms
and methods;
it
was
said
at
the
Congress
that
everyone
of
us
has
paid
his
due
to
that
era
and
everyone
of us
has
made
a
larger
or
smaller
contribution. To
rid
oneself
of
deep-rooted
ideas
and
habits requires
a
hard
struggle
within
oneself
and
around
oneself,
a
struggle
of
truthful
recogni-
tion
against
false
illusions,
a
struggle
of
party
honour
against
petty
vanity,
a
struggle
of
daring
innovations
against
comfortable
con-
servatism.
In this
struggle,
which
may
be
characterized as
a
great
process
of
1
No.
4,
April,
1963,
pp.
385-397.
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