A Bit of Maneuvering

For a few ominous days last week, it looked as though the Soviet army was about to invade Czechoslovakia and smash the reforming regime of Party Boss Alexander Dubček. Out of War saw crackled the news that a column of Russian troops was moving from the Polish city of Cracow toward the Czechoslovak border, and Western military attachés and diplomats were suddenly forbidden to travel outside the capital. Another Soviet force was reported heading from Dresden in East Germany toward Czechoslovakia, whose swift-paced "democratization" has lately alarmed Moscow and hard-lining members of the Eastern bloc.

Increasingly at liberty to speak their own minds, Czechoslovak newspaper and radio columnists fueled the scare. "For God's sake," a Radio Prague commentator addressed Moscow, "don't repeat the tragic experience of Yugoslavia and Hungary." Práce, the trade-union newspaper, editorialized that "any sort of military intervention represents such an adventurist policy that it is unbelievable that any member or responsible body such as the Soviet Central Committee could take it into consideration."

Sundering the Bloc. Práce was most likely correct. Any Soviet attack on Czechoslovakia à la Hungary 1956 would have horrendous repercussions for the Kremlin's foreign policy. It would shatter the carefully cultivated détente Russia has been building with Western Europe. It would sunder the Communist bloc, nearly all of whose members have embraced "polycentrism" as the correct philosophy for relations between Communist countries and Russia. It would make impossible the conference of Communist parties that Russia hopes to convene this year. Nor would it be a military Cakewalk. Since Russian troops left in 1945, Czechoslovakia has built a 175,000-man army and an air force of 850 planes. Its population is strongly behind Dubček's government and increasingly anti-Soviet.

For the time being, at least, the Soviets seemed merely to be putting on a show of force across the borders of Czechoslovakia in order to pressure Dubcek into slowing the pace of liberalization. Radio Prague announced belatedly that the troop movements were part of Warsaw Pact maneuvers and that the Czechoslovak government had been notified in advance that they were to take place. But the hard-liners were clearly trying to put heat on Dubček.

After his earlier visit to Moscow, Pravda had pointedly published Dubček's own report on the meeting: "The Soviet comrades expressed anxiety that the democratization in our country should not be exploited against socialism." And Dubček had no sooner departed than the Kremlin summoned the leaders of East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria to Moscow for a quick discussion about what to do about the Czechoslovaks. Their problems are real. Every fresh liberalization emanating from Prague adds to the discontent in other Communist nations, whose people would like the taste of a little Dubčekism themselves.