‘Prague Spring’ Victims Have a Day in the Sun

This nation’s tragic past greeted its hopeful future Friday in a massive political seance in Wenceslas Square here, and the medium was an old Communist reformer who has spent most of his time lately tending trees.

“The move to freedom was started 20 years ago by Alexander Dubcek, who will speak to you now,” said the moderator, and the crowd of about 300,000 exploded in a roar of approval.

It was Dubcek’s first public appearance in the Czechoslovak capital since he was deposed as Communist Party chief after the Soviet-led invasion that ended his attempt to build “socialism with a human face” during the so-called “Prague Spring” of 1968.

“Socialism with a human face lives in our new generation,” the once-disgraced former leader told his countrymen Friday. In response, they chanted: “Dubcek to the castle”--a reference to the Hradcany royal castle, which is home to the country’s head of state.

Dubcek’s appearance alone would have given Friday’s demonstration the most powerful historical cast of any since the revolution sweeping across Eastern Europe first burst through two decades of apathy here a little more than a week ago.

But there were many other reminders of 1968 as people long blacklisted for their earlier political activism reappeared on a fifth-floor balcony overlooking the historic square.

Singer Marta Kubisova brought tears to the eyes of thousands as she performed an emotional lament to lost freedom that has become an underground classic here. After Dubcek returned from virtual house arrest in Moscow following the invasion, she made the mistake of publicly placing her necklace around his neck in a show of appreciation for what he had tried to do. The gesture cost her a career.

“The lost government of you, our people, will one day return to you,” according to her song. “People, it will return.”

Vera Caslavska, an Olympic champion gymnast, was “humiliated for many years” after giving her medals as a tribute to Dubcek. On Friday she called on the generation of 1968 to help the generation of 1989.

Their parents had worried while students led the latest challenge to the Communist system, Caslavska said, adding, “Now it is our duty that we help them.”

Also at Friday’s rally were a blacklisted actress, Vlasta Chramostova, and a former television newscaster, Kamila Mouckova, whose accounts of the invasion meant her face had to be banned from the screen.

In addition, one speaker was a worker from the big Praga manufacturing plant who recalled that in 1968 it was 98 employees of the facility who signed a petition asking for the Soviets to come save Czechoslovak socialism. The hard-line Communist regime that took over after Dubcek honored the 98 with a plaque that still hangs at the plant, the worker said.

But he promised to rousing cheers that on Monday, during a planned national protest strike, “We will take it down!”

While many--perhaps even a majority--on the streets here Friday were either too young to remember or were not even born at the time of the “Prague Spring,” the older ones admitted to a sense of deja vu.

“I never believed I could live to see it,” Eva Sinkova, 50, marveled as she stood among the chanting, flag-waving throngs. She said she thought her generation was lost when the Soviet tanks came in 1968. Ironically, she added that “if it weren’t for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, this would never have happened.”

Sinkova, a technician in a poultry factory in Dobris, about 25 miles from Prague, said she has only one wish: “If I could live another 10 years in freedom, that would be enough.”

But even the young know about Dubcek, despite the fact he was made a virtual non-person by his successors and banished to a job as a forestry clerk in Bratislava.

“He was for the rights of people,” said Jaromir Pacal, an 18-year-old factory apprentice. “He holds the same opinions as the student apprentices and workers at my plant,” he added, saying that he learned about Dubcek from his parents and from listening to foreign radio broadcasts.

“He’s No. 1--he’s good,” chimed in Pacal’s friend and fellow apprentice, Josef Polesny, 17.

“If once there was light among our people, why should there be darkness again?” Dubcek told the crowd Friday. “Once already, we have witnessed the dawn. Let us act so that the dawn turns into daylight . . . a free Czechoslovakia.”

In the massive crowd, which covered the square while listening to Dubcek and the other speakers over loudspeakers, were banners proclaiming “40 Years Is Enough” and, in a reference to Poland’s pioneering democratic movement, “NZSS Solidarnosc-Praga.”

The crowd was so large that Civic Forum, the umbrella opposition group that organizes the daily Wenceslas Square demonstrations, announced that Friday’s version would start 15 minutes earlier than usual because “there are already so many people here.” At least a quarter of the city’s population eventually showed up.

They jangled keys and rang bells in a symbolic farewell to the Communist Party leadership, which they only later heard had in fact been forced by their actions to resign. They wore or waved the Czechoslovak tricolor--the red, blue and white national flag, which in this country is a form of protest against a government imposed for more than two decades by a foreign power.

“I don’t want to live in a cage,” read the sign one bearded young man wore around his neck.

Perhaps the most popular appearance of the evening, after those of Dubcek and Civic Forum leader Vaclav Havel, was Ivan Hasek, the captain of the national soccer team. Thousands of fans among Friday’s protesters had been crossing their fingers for the good luck of the team, Hasek said, declaring: “Now we keep our fingers crossed for you.”