PRAGUE
but the basis of the Union, self-governing student organizations loosely
associated within the organization, has been preserved.
The students' aim is to create a democracy from the bottom, a
democracy of producers; to create a system based on the conscious ability
of the individual to exercise permanent control over society; to ap–
proach more nearly the old ideal, in that one's economic freedom
would be enhanced by his spiritual freedom. This year's eight-month
experiment has, in the eyes of the students, removed the Utopian tinge
from these ideas and has given them the courage to take a stand
against those in power.
Their three-day protest sit-in was the first step and it can be called
successful. The students proved that they are capable of organizing a
mass protest, of controlling their most violent feelings and moods and
of preserving discipline and dignity under very complicated conditions.
They succeeded
in
establishing close contacts with the workers of all
the large factories, who, in turn, supported the students' ten-point
declaration almost unanimously. The factories supplied the students
daily with food and money. Several hundred young workers organized
sympathy strikes in support of the students; the majority of older
workers hesitated however, to take such a serious step as a general
strike only because they thought the time was not yet ripe for it. Yet
all factories blew their sirens one morning for fifteen minutes to show
very clearly that they are on the students' side. And people in the
factories are saying that although compromise may sometimes be neces–
sary, limits must be drawn, that retreat
is
one thing and betrayal an–
other, that their politicians are probably the best loved in the world,
but that love demands fidelity and that if they keep on marking time
they shall only dig a grave for themselves.
The students don't want to wait any longer: to remain silent in
the face of a policy they no longer consider theirs would be to make a
mockery of the very moral scruples and principles on which their new
society must be based, a society where "genuine human relations be–
tween free beings" will be a matter of course. Their present attitude
is reflected in the resolution adopted by an assembly of students and
staff of the Philosophical faculty on the fiftieth anniversary of the
foundation of an independent Czechoslovakia:
... [W]e regard the political reality of the present situation, that is
the permanent presence of Soviet troops, as illegal in the sense that it
is a violation of our Constitution, the United Nations' charter and
the Warsaw Pact. No other term but occupation can be used to
