Czechs Cheer Gorbachev as a Symbol of Hope, Reform

More than 150,000 people turned out Thursday to cheer Mikhail S. Gorbachev as the Kremlin leader brought his campaign for economic and political changes to the country where Soviet tanks crushed a home-grown reform movement 19 years ago.

In an atmosphere of cautious hope and open curiosity, tens of thousands waved from balconies, cheered from crowded sidewalks and climbed onto lampposts for a glimpse of the man whom many called a symbol of hope for change in their own country as well as in the Soviet Union.

“The working people believe in him,” said Jana Hruskova, a Russian-language student who shook hands with Gorbachev as he arrived for talks with Czechoslovak leader Gustav Husak at the Hradcany Castle overlooking the city.

She said one young man called out from the crowd, “Misha (the Russian equivalent for Mike), stay here with us!”

But, she said, Gorbachev replied: “There is no need to stay here. I see that we will be friends forever.” Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, were in Prague on the first day of a three-day visit to an ally whose leadership was installed after Soviet troops and other Warsaw Pact forces ousted the reformist government headed by Alexander Dubcek.

It was Dubcek--now retired in the provincial town of Bratislava--who introduced the 1968 reforms that became known as “socialism with a human face.”

Those reforms included increased democratization, replacement of Stalinist-era Communist Party functionaries and greater independence from party control for the media, the government’s bureaucracy, courts, trade unions and economic enterprises.

While Gorbachev’s goals of economic reconstruction, democratization and glasnost , or openness, are remarkably similar to those that the Soviet Union denounced as “counterrevolutionary” in 1968, there was no official talk here of a new “Prague Spring.”

‘Our Only Hope’

But those who turned out to greet the Soviet leader did not miss the irony of the situation. “These have been 20 dead years,” a middle-aged waiter said. “He is our only hope.”

Protected by a ring of security men and uniformed police who pushed back the surging crowds when he visited a shopping area, Gorbachev drew a laugh when he waved to a knot of cheering women and said, “I see the women are for perestroika (reconstruction). The men aren’t all behind it yet.”

Addressing the crowd, he called on young people to get involved in his drive to make the socialist countries more efficient, saying, “It’s up to the younger generation to do it.”

Earlier, he told another group that he has “full confidence” in the Czechoslovak Communist Party leadership headed by the 74-year-old Husak.

While members of the crowd that greeted Gorbachev at the 16th-Century castle were there by invitation, the throngs who welcomed him in the downtown shopping district came on their own.

“This is spontaneous, unprecedented,” a retired engineer said. “There is a genuine enthusiasm of the people. What Gorbachev wants to change in the Soviet Union, it’s necessary to change here too.”

Enthusiastic Response

The enthusiastic response to Gorbachev’s visit was “greater than we expected,” said Deputy Mayor Josef Hajek, who estimated the crowds at over 150,000. Speaking at a state dinner Thursday night, Husak praised the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for “blazing a new trail by its bold ideas, profound reforms and resolute deeds.”

Gorbachev responded, “We understand your efforts . . . to remove shortcomings and speed up economic development.”

While the Czechoslovak leadership has brought its rhetoric into line with that of the Soviet Communist Party, officials acknowledge that little has yet been done to restructure the country’s stagnant economy.

Economists believe that Gorbachev and his aides will be pushing Czechoslovakia for “intensification” of its economic links to the Soviet Union, which already receives more than 45% of this country’s exports. While the Soviets do not appear to want a shake-up of the Czechoslovak leadership, the demands for greater economic performance are expected to have political side effects as the country’s strictly planned economy is relaxed in order to adapt more easily to changing conditions.

“Economic changes are closely connected with political changes,” said Jan Klacek, an economist at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. “The appointment of managers and staff in charge of economic development at the enterprise level here has been controlled in a very direct way by (Communist) party organs. This should necessarily be changed whenever reform is started, which can only lead to a rather deep change in the political system.”

Prosperous Before the War

According to one former official under Dubcek, Gorbachev’s reforms may have a better chance of success in Czechoslovakia, which was a prosperous democracy before World War II, than they do in the Soviet Union.

“When the way to democratization was opened here (in 1968), the memories of democratic forms and methods were so deeply rooted that immediately and in a very peaceful way the structures of Stalinism went to sleep,” said former Foreign Minister Jiri Hajek.

“I don’t think that Russian society has the same roots.”

On the other hand, Hajek said, “there is no power strong enough to do to the Soviet Union what the Soviet Union did to Czechoslovakia 19 years ago.”

Hajek, 74, said he and other former Communists from the Czechoslovak party’s discredited liberal wing do not expect vindication as a result of the rise of the reform-minded Gorbachev.

If the party should offer to return his membership card, he said, “I think I would think it over, but . . . I’m old enough to know that people my age should be retired.”

Belongs to Charter 77

Hajek is a member of the human rights organization called Charter 77, a group of about 200 activists that unites disaffected Marxists with writers, artists and church people who also consider themselves dissidents.

Although the group is small, its positions are widely known in Czechoslovakia through the broadcasts of Western radio stations.

Members of the group said they see little sign that the Prague regime intends to follow Gorbachev’s lead in loosening control over the activities of writers and artists.

But they said there has been some small movement from the bottom up, citing an open letter that criticized an official art show as shallow and lacking in talent.

Members of a local theater artist’s group have also been promised subsidies and exhibitions after heated discussions with cultural officials, they said, something that would have been unheard of a few years ago.

Vaclav Havel, a playwright whose works are frequently produced in the West, said that despite the mixture of hope and defiance prompted by the rise of Gorbachev, many Czechs are careful not to be overly enthusiastic.

“We tried it once and we had 20 years of trouble for it,” he said. “To do it a second time may be more difficult.”