Leaders Slow to Recognize a Revolution

Weekends are sacred in Czechoslovakia, especially for the privileged.

So as the sun turned the few wispy clouds over Prague to pink on the crisp autumn Friday afternoon of Nov. 17, Communist Party leader Milos Jakes and most other members of the Politburo left for their country homes.

According to a source close to the party hierarchy, there had been an argument in the Politburo earlier in the week over whether to sanction a student demonstration that Friday afternoon. The demonstration was to commemorate the death of a Czechoslovak youth named Jan Opletal at the hands of Nazi occupation forces in 1939.

Jakes had reluctantly agreed to permit the demonstration, in part because he believed it might ease the pressure from Moscow, which had been urging the hard-line Czechoslovak leadership to let up in its repressive policies. It would be something to bring up the next time Moscow called for greater liberalization.

The demonstration came off on schedule, and the police took violent action against the students involved in it. It became the catalyst for a revolution, igniting a political firestorm that in a matter of days swept away Jakes and most of his hard-line colleagues and left the future of communism in Czechoslovakia open to question.

In the critical 48 hours that followed what came to be known as “the police massacre,” as shock waves of indignation echoed through the capital, some Communist leaders, Jakes among them, were in the countryside, oblivious to the crisis about to overwhelm them.

“Some members of the leadership didn’t know about the incident until Sunday afternoon,” a party official said later. “They were at their dachas ( country homes ) . Even Jakes.”

When the leaders returned to their offices Monday, they apparently failed completely to grasp the significance of what had happened. The government prepared a declaration supporting the police action.

“They still didn’t understand how important the police action had been in coalescing public opinion,” a source close to the hierarchy said.

As late as Tuesday afternoon, after a stunning show of public defiance that had gone on for two days in Prague’s Wenceslas Square, a party official described the Politburo as behaving like a person with cancer.

“They are denying it’s happening,” he said, “because there is no answer.”

The Czechoslovak leadership’s paralysis, its inability to recognize the significance of events as they unfolded, showed how isolated it had become after nearly two decades in power.

For years, they had placed their confidence in an informal but effective social contract. The people would remain quiet as long as the leadership provided the basics of life: well-stocked stores, access to a Skoda car and a country house. Czechoslovaks are among the world’s leading owners of second homes.

Thus, it was thought, the changes sweeping Eastern Europe could be all but ignored. The Poles and Hungarians were not Czechoslovaks; they were different. The first doubts were to come only last month with the collapse of East Germany’s hard-line regime.

“It’s not that these people are particularly bad as individuals,” a veteran Communist Party functionary said. “It’s that they got corrupt over time. These people are normal people.

“Nobody is hungry here; you become a victim of your own propaganda.”

On the fateful Friday afternoon, while many of Prague’s 1.2 million people left for a weekend in the country, few had any notion of what was to come--least of all the 7,000 or more students assembled at Charles University for the commemoration march.

But there were those who had fought a rear-guard action against the regime for years, and they were sure that the fall of East Germany’s Erich Honecker had created a new mood in Prague. There was a feeling that repressive communism might be vulnerable in Czechoslovakia, too, even though no one could guess what might happen.

Courage in Numbers

Six speakers were scheduled to address the students, including a member of the Socialist Union of Youth. The young people seemed to take courage from their numbers, and they jeered and whistled at the Union of Youth speaker.

They carried banners, including one that announced, “We Want Freedom for Christmas.” The atmosphere was light. There were no police in sight. There was laughter.

As the autumn light gave way to dusk, the students marched off toward Vysehrad Cemetery, where the martyr Opletal is buried. This called for a decision. The students had asked permission to march to Wenceslas Square, a traditional place of protest in Czechoslovak history, but the authorities, fearful of so large a group in the city center, had insisted on the cemetery instead.

The marchers approached the intersection where everyone knew that the decision had to be made: right, and just over a mile to the square, or left, and the cemetery.

They went left.

As they moved along, they saw the first of the many police officers they would see that evening. But there was no trouble. These were traffic officers, and they smiled and nodded at the students, who shouted, “Come, join us!”

By the time the students reached the cemetery, night had fallen. They walked through the narrow entrance and crowded onto two small hills that formed a natural amphitheater.

There they experienced one of the many changes of mood that characterized the evening. Something almost mystical swept through the crowd as they lighted candles, lifted their arms and sang the national anthem.

The students, now greater in number, marched off again, this time toward the square. They walked along the Vltava River, exchanging greetings with onlookers. As they passed the apartment of Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright, they called out, “Long live Havel!”

At 6:35 p.m., 2 1/2 hours after the speeches began at the university, they confronted the riot police for the first time. Both sides tensed.

The police, standing shoulder to shoulder across the road, stopped the students, who stood, then sat, then stood again, before turning to take another route, through Narodni Street, the main thoroughfare.

Police Move In

Here, after an uneasy, hourlong confrontation with a second line of riot police, the police made their move. Another line of riot police appeared behind the students, trapping them in the street with only one small alley as a way out.

Then they waded in.

The first charge, systematic, almost rhythmic, deteriorated into mayhem as the police beat and kicked anything that moved. Dogs were unleashed. Mace was used. In 20 minutes it was over.

The seeds of revolution had been sown.

Amid the blood and the occasional whimper that came afterward, few understood the enormity of what had happened.

At first, the students feared that the clash would bring protesters into the streets with sticks and crowbars, and that the government crackdown that would surely follow would result in a massacre. This fear haunted the first days of the revolution.

People in the hierarchy who had advocated sanctioning the demonstration were dismayed. According to a source close to the Central Committee, these people believed they had stuck their necks out for the students and that the students had abused the privilege.

Dissidents Meet

Only as Saturday dawned did dissident teacher Jan Urban learn what had happened. Recalling the many times he had been detained by the police near his home in times of political tension, Urban took no chances. He climbed to the roof of his apartment building and surreptitiously crossed the roofs of adjoining buildings to meet with dissident friends.

And as word of the clash spread through Prague, the dissidents planned their move.

“We understood immediately . . . that this could be a moment of change,” Urban said later. “It was the first demonstration in which riot police deliberately surrounded thousands of people. They didn’t give them a chance to escape. This was something completely new. It was butcher’s work. They made a mistake. They crossed the line, and people forgot about fear.”

By Sunday evening, the people who organized the opposition group Civic Forum had gathered in the Realisticke Theater in the Smichov District. It was a venue befitting a revolution led by intellectuals.

After several hours, they had agreed on a list of demands. The list, deliberately limited in order to draw maximum support, included formation of a commission to investigate the police action of Nov. 17, the freeing of all political prisoners and the resignation of eight senior members of the Communist hierarchy, including Jakes.

In addition to the dissidents, another important figure understood the meaning of the Nov. 17 police action. Jan Skoda, the veteran Socialist Party general secretary, threw his weight behind Civic Forum and its demands.

This was the first chink in the Communist armor, for the Socialists are one of the small, captive parties that form the Communist-dominated National Front. An Establishment figure had abandoned ship.

By the time Jakes and his Politburo colleagues were back at their desks Monday, the playwright Havel was preparing to announce the birth of Civic Forum to a group of reporters who had crowded into his living room.

“Civic Forum came into existence last night,” he said.

Revolution Is Born

Then he read the demands and called for a two-hour general strike the following Monday, Nov. 27.

The revolution was under way.

Student strike committees, which had been formed over the weekend, sprang to action. At the College of Performing Arts, on one of Prague’s ancient, narrow streets, a sound studio became a typing pool; 40 students listed student demands on ancient Olivetti portables.

In the succeeding days, these students, along with others at other colleges and universities, would use photocopiers and computers to spread the word. The walls of the city became a giant bulletin board. Student strike committees sent envoys to outlying cities to explain their cause.

As the government finally awakened to the severity of the situation, shop floors at factories around the country became a key battleground. People in the party understood that if the students could win worker support, the situation could become serious.

Initially, student delegations found the going rough.

But then the tide began to turn. At the Tesla Karlin television factory in suburban Prague, workers shouted down a Communist official and listened to the student representatives.

There were daily protests in Wenceslas Square, and as they grew, workers’ banners began to appear.

On Tuesday, Civic Forum achieved a major breakthrough. In the wake of Monday’s show of popular support in the square, Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec met with members of the group.

There was little substance to the meeting. He gave assurances that there would be no further violence. But more important, he agreed to meet with them again.

The first split in the Politburo was visible, although with little party support, for Adamec was clearly on his own.

As late as Tuesday, three days before his downfall and the day after more than 100,000 people had demonstrated for his ouster in Wenceslas Square, Jakes was still confident the storm would die out.

Still, he faced a dilemma. The failure of Honecker in East Germany to use “the Chinese solution”--a reference to the June massacre in Beijing’s Tian An Men Square--had been a shock.

Of all their Communist neighbors, the Czechoslovak leaders had identified most closely with Honecker. They reportedly had been assured by Honecker that he would never allow conditions to get out of hand. Now, suddenly, Honecker was gone.

And there was something else. With the Soviet-U.S. summit conference on the horizon, Moscow had on Nov. 7 delivered an informal but unmistakable message to Jakes, party sources said: Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev did not want any problems in Eastern Europe before his meeting with the American President.

If a violent crackdown was out, Jakes decided, intimidation was the answer. Tough statements warning of ominous consequences were published in the party newspaper Rude Pravo and repeated elsewhere.

During the night on Tuesday, the Czechoslovak leader played his trump card. He called units of the party’s praetorian guard, the People’s Militia, into the capital.

They came, 20,000 strong, from western Bohemia, a region where Jakes’ support was said to be strongest. They settled down on the outskirts of Prague. Members of the Bohemia sports club found 600 militiamen in their clubhouse when they arrived for morning training.

Threats Fail

Other units moved into factories, tearing down pro-strike posters and warning workers not to join the general strike.

As late as Wednesday evening, party sources close to Jakes told a confidante that the leadership was confident.

“The People’s Militia is in town,” the confidante was told. “They plan to occupy the television station. They’ve got it well in hand.”

Not so. In factories where the militia showed up, workers refused to work until the militiamen left.

Elsewhere, news of the mood in the streets and television reports of the demonstration began to reach the shop floor. The militia was forced to retreat.

By Thursday, after 150,000 to 200,000 people had jammed Wenceslas Square, Jakes’ support within the Communist Party visibly crumbled.

Rude Pravo criticized the leadership’s lack of flexibility and pointedly noted support for “the government of Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec,” Jakes’ principal opponent in the Politburo.

Others began to desert him.

Thursday evening, at a rally in Wenceslas Square, the air was charged with anticipation. The crowd chanted, “Milos, the game is over!” Twenty-four hours later, Jakes was gone, and so were a number of his hard-line colleagues.

But that was not enough for the opposition.

Saturday, more than 500,000 Czechs braved subfreezing temperatures to protest the continued presence of remaining hard-liners, including the Prague party boss, Miroslav Stepan--the man most closely associated with the Nov. 17 crackdown.

Under growing pressure to blunt the general strike, the party quickly reconvened its Central Committee and dumped both Stepan and the most prominent of the remaining hard-liners, trade union leader Miroslav Zavadil.

Monday, the regime was humiliated by the strike that brought the country to a virtual standstill for two hours, and by Tuesday it was in wholesale retreat.

Twelve brief days after the students gathered to protest at Charles University, the country’s prime minister was preparing a plan to build a coalition government and submit a draft amendment to the constitution that would dismantle the Communist Party’s monopoly on power.

Scrawled on a wall just off Wenceslas Square was a single word that summed up the events of those remarkable days for those who rose up:

“Victory!”