38
PRAGUE
state that the developments had shown that the political standpoint of
the young people, and their doubts about the quality of the relationship
between the U.S.S.R. and Czechoslovakia, were basically correct.
The Czechoslovak youth today is one of the most politically-minded
in the world, as the resolutions it passed and the positions it adopted,
particularly last autumn, this spring and at the present time, show.
Actions organized by them testify to an unusually mature, responsible
and thoughtful approach to the issues at hand. This, of course, does
not mean that all young people in Czechoslovakia are carrying old wise
heads on their shoulders; they are merely products of their time, a
time in which they have witnessed the rise and a fall of so many
Personalities, Ideals and Ideas that they are necessarily skeptical of Pro–
grams. From the first, they've tried
to
think for themselves, and form
their own program - an anti-program program, a program based on
open-mindedness, not on a closed political conception. They are now in
the process of probing and experimenting, and in their anxiety to avoid
repeating their fathers' pattern, will probably keep on probing for a
long time - which is all to the good. They are looking for values, from
the present and from the past; they are returning to the classics and
ignoring the "interpretations" - they are turning to the cultural values
created by the Czechoslovak nation over the past years, regardless of the
praise or censure accorded them by present-day politicians.
Czech youth rightly understands that Czech history contains many
answers to today's questions. The past 1000 years have shown the nation
alternating between relatively short periods of freedom and longer periods
of subjugation and struggle against both foreign and domestic dictator–
ships; and Czech politicians have frequently been faced with a choice
between compromising and fighting. Too often compromise was a
synonym for a capitulation which would bring the nation to the verge
of extinction. The fathers of Czech policy stated that between aggres–
sive Germany and Tsarist Russia the Czechs could not survive as a
free and political nation without strong allies. They sought an ally in
the Habsburg monarchy. After the First World War, reliance was placed
on the Western powers, primarily France; after the Second, the policy
makers turned to the East. Since the nineteenth century, Czech politicians
have been using the smallness of their country as an excuse for the
smallness of their political conceptions, and even potentially great
politicians have failed to rise above the situation at a time of crisis.
The philosopher Karel Kosik has posed the question: will the nation
withstand pressure, or "will it give way and cease to be a historical sub-
