PAR TIS A N I: EV lEW
555
Rudolf Battek, former deputy to the Czech National Council, deputy
chairman of KAN (Association of Committed Non-Party Persons ) in
1968,
\\·ho signed the Ten-Point Manifesto protesting against the Rus–
sian occupation and the post-invasion policies
(3Y2
years) .
At the time of writing forty-seven persons have been sentenced in
nine separate trials since July
17.
(Apart from these, hundreds of in–
dividuals are already serving sentences for "minor political offenses.")
Journalists Jiri Hochman and Vladimir Nepras still 3\.vait trial, having
been too ill to attend court.
The aim of the trials explains why the best known defendants,
the ones most hated by those in power no\\·, have been give n heavier
sentences than less known persons charged \\·ith the same offenses.
Leftist parties ah\·ays subject heretics to more severe treatment than
other opponents, and Communists penalize even the slightest hint of
real or potentially independent thought among their members. The
Russian-staged purges of the fifties took their most vicious form in
Czechoslovakia because that country's Communist party had a long
tradition of mass support and therefore threatened to be less depen–
dent on SO\·iet power. In the fifties \\·ardens incited the other prisoners
to beat up jailed Communists ; today it is reported that some crim–
inals have been promised reduced sentences " if the Red General [Gen–
eral Vaclav Prchlik, sentenced to three years in
1971
for criticizing the
Warsaw Pact at a press conference in
1968J
does not sun·ive."
The CSCP is 3\\·are that the greatest threat to its hegemony is
from those \\·ho attack it in its
0\\"11
language, using its official ideology
against it.
If
the defendants were free to express their vie\\·s, they might
have rallied a ll Czechs and Slovaks committed to socialism. Having no
ideological counter-arguments, the Party has to jail all those who pos–
sess both courage and socialist com·ictions.
Reports from Prague stress that the accused defended themselves
\·igorously. Muller turned his closing statement in his own defense into
an indictment of the regime and its rule by force; Sabata exclaimed
"\Ve are humanists; \\·e are Communists in opposition, you are not
Communists" : Hi.ibl defended his acti\'ity on theoretical Marxist
grounds. Tesar, Muller and Jarosla\' Jira , fonner secretary of the SVS
(Union of Bohemian and Mora\·ian Students ) asserted that their ac–
ti\·ity had not been directed aga inst the State and had been in the in–
terests of socialism.
On taking po\\·er, Husak set about methodically to compress the
nation into a compact, dutiful mass. At least one-third of the party
members \\·ere expelled. Hundreds of thousands of intellectuals, trade
