Turnover in Prague

The removal of Gustav Husak, the hard-line Czechoslovak Communist who was installed in power at the points of Soviet bayonets almost 20 years ago, obviously reflects the wishes of Soviet General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev. There is ample evidence that Gorbachev found Husak out of step with the reformist policies that are now being pushed by the Kremlin. However, it is not at all clear that Milos Jakes, Husak’s successor, is really capable of leadership in the Gorbachev image.

Not that he won’t try.

Jakes is the archetypical Communist Party apparatchik --anxious to please whoever is in power. When Alexander Dubcek tried to inaugurate a more liberal form of communism in Czechoslovakia in 1968, Jakes worked faithfully to carry out the Dubcek policy of rehabilitating victims of Stalinism. When Soviet tanks crushed the Prague spring, removed Dubcek and reinstalled rigid Soviet-style communism, Jakes oversaw the expulsion of more than 450,000 party members who were considered to be too loyal to Dubcek. Now Jakes, presumably still willing to do as he is told, has been tapped to lead Czechoslovakia into a new era of Gorbachev-style reform.

The Czechoslovak economy, once one of the most productive and efficient in Eastern Europe, seriously deteriorated during the Husak era--making it a less valuable trading partner for Moscow. If the country is again to become a world-class producer of consumer and industrial goods, it needs a strong dose of the very sort of economic and social reforms that Gorbachev is pursuing--against much bureaucratic opposition--in the Soviet Union.

In an ironic twist of history, the same Czechoslovaks who have bitterly resented Soviet dominance since the late 1940s are now hoping that Gorbachev will impose his reformist goals on the Prague regime. To the degree that Jakes tries to do that, the people will be rooting for him.

However, the same kind of resistance to change that exists in the Soviet Union is deeply entrenched in Czechoslovakia. There is really nothing in Jakes’ background to suggest that--anxious as he may be to please the new man in Moscow--he has the courage, imagination and political skills to do the job that Gorbachev and his own people want him to do.