Prague’s Revolution Adds an ‘Excuse Me’

The father of Soviet communism, V. I. Lenin, once remarked that Germans are so obedient that if a mob of them ever tried to storm a railroad station, they’d all buy tickets first.

But if obedience characterizes the Germans, it is a remarkable civility that characterizes the Czechoslovaks.

For amid all the turmoil and excitement of Czechoslovakia’s recent political reawakening, those pressing for change have maintained an unusual sense of consideration for their fellow citizens.

It is the polite revolution.

It is a movement whose foot soldiers in the streets--mainly students--throw flowers, not rocks, and light candles to display their protest. Even in the jostling crush of the massive protests in central Wenceslas Square, anyone stepping on another’s toes follows immediately with profuse apologies.

At Wednesday’s rally, for example, one-fifth of a million people quickly and quietly parted when a speaker asked that an ambulance be let through.

And when a toddler in her mother’s arms screamed that she had dropped her toy, the crowd quickly shuffled backward, creating a small circle of space around mother and child that eventually revealed a small white plastic car.

The following day’s rally was interrupted by an announcement that a 10-year-old boy named Honza could not find his mother. The Czechoslovak revolution paused briefly as the crowd chanted, “Be brave, Honza, be brave.”

The only genuine anger among the large crowds occurred when three Western reporters attempting to make their way through the mass of humanity gave up and tried a shortcut through a flower bed. They were roundly cursed.

Some claim such civility and abhorrence for violence lies in the national character. Czechoslovaks, in fact, argue that it was one of their own who first outlined the tactic of passive resistance, saying that Russian writer Leo Tolstoy developed his ideas from a 15th-Century Czechoslovak reformist named Petr Chelcicky.

India’s spiritual leader Mohandas K. (Mahatma) Gandhi and, later, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. used similar tactics to bring about political change.

Shortly before police closed in on students Nov. 17, brutally suppressing a demonstration in a move that ignited this week’s massive rallies, the students sang “We Shall Overcome.”

But the genteel overlay to the current reform movement stems also from its leadership.

The Czechoslovak opposition movement was formed in a playwright’s apartment and launched in an art gallery, and its first action was announced at the Czechoslovak National Theatre in Prague--by an actor to an audience expecting a children’s matinee.

Initial backing also came from actors for the first general strike against a Communist government in Czechoslovakia, which is planned for Monday.

At a packed news conference of the opposition Civic Forum on Thursday, the main figures introduced included two actresses, two students, a playwright, a Roman Catholic priest and a music critic.

One diplomat jokingly refers to the opposition as a “literocracy” in which the stiffest competition, if it ever comes to power, would be for the Ministry of Culture.

The signators of Charter 77, the country’s first opposition group, formed more than a decade ago, were predominantly writers, actors and poets. Its composition stands in marked contrast to the opposition against Communist rule in Poland that first emerged from the Gdansk shipyards under the leadership of a shipyard electrician, Lech Walesa.

Until last week, a major criticism of the Czechoslovak opposition has been that in its previous years of struggle it had failed to broaden its support beyond the intellectual elite. This failure is one reason the opposition has had such difficulty in mobilizing manual workers to support Monday’s strike call.

The opposition ranks also are a sharp contrast to the more earthy manner of the Communist leadership.

A secretly tape-recorded informal talk by party leader Milos Jakes to party workers showed a man whose Czech was the equivalent of English sprinkled with “ain’t” instead of “am not” and “duh” instead of “the.” The tape was widely circulated.

Perhaps because of their highbrow nature, many of the anti-government slogans carry a special twist. In a reference to Jakes’ earthy language, one opposition banner read, in effect, “We’re in Favor, Ya Know, of Dis Thing Demogracy.”

Another banner carried to a massive rally in the city’s main Wenceslas Square simply read, “We Want a Government With a Higher IQ.”

Meanwhile, it is the massive public revulsion at the police violence at the Nov. 17 demonstration that has been the principal catalyst of the crisis that eventually overwhelmed the Communist hard-liners. It was a catalyst that required no deaths.

When it was learned that a young student named Martin Smid, initially believed to have died from police beatings, had in fact survived, one diplomat commented wryly that the Czechoslovak revolution was so nonviolent that even its martyr didn’t have to die.