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they will not be easy to resolve, but the opposition will be using
familiar methods known around the world.
One aspect of the parallel you made does not apply : the
parallel with the situation of Lenin before the 1917 Revolution.
There is no need for any group, be it emigre or a Western political
group, to bring class consciousness from the outside into
Czechoslovakia. People become aware of their interest as
members of a specific political class very clearly and very fast. The
history of the opposition movement, and the history of all postwar
Czechoslovakian politics, proves that there is absolutely no need
to import class consciousness from the outside. The role of groups
such as ours, which are politically active outside the country, is a
different one.
It
is really aimed at the West, to show that events
which are happening in the East are relevant to the West, and to
supply factual information not available through Czech
governmental agencies. This is what I am trying to do at Palach
Press. We are able to be in contact with the movement there
practically once a week. In fact, our greatest difficulty is a problem
that on paper looks easy, that is, how to channel effectively this
information into the Western media and to Western political
organizations.
Mason:
It
seemed to me that you implied that there are strong ideo–
logical motivations in the West for misunderstanding the char–
acter of the opposition struggles that are now going on in Eastern
Europe. Perhaps there is an unholy alliance between the political
establishment in Western countries and the institutional Left in
many of the same countries to encourage public indifference or
confusion about the Eastern European opposition. For example,
often in the Western media we are presented with televised
pictures and newspaper photographs that reinforce the impression
that the Eastern European opposition has the same counter–
cultural, extrapolitical character as the Western counterculture
did in the 1960s. I'm thinking here of pictures of the "plastic
people" which make us think we're looking at an album cover for
Sergeant Pepper's Lonelyhearts Club Band. We tend to dismiss
the counterculture. It wasn't a real opposition, a political
opposition, but something that could be absorbed as a marketing
strategy.
Kavan:
Let me start with the image you offered of the unholy alliance
of the Western Left and the Western establishment.
If
one just
looks at practical effects, one could easily suspect that there is such
