World: Toward a Collective Test of Wills

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All week the gleaming black Chaika limousine of the Russian ambassador sped back and forth across the bridges over Prague's Vltava River —the little Soviet flag on the fender discreetly removed. As fast as Soviet Ambassador Stepan Chervonenko delivered messages from the Kremlin to government and party offices in Prague, the Czechoslovaks worked feverishly at drafting replies. Then the Czechoslovak party Presidium met to prepare point-by-point answers to a barrage of Russian demands expected at a historic summit conference this week in Czechoslovakia with the Soviet Politburo.

The Moscow Politburo's decision to go to Czechoslovakia becalmed temporarily a storm that has darkened the skies of all Eastern Europe. It was nearly as surprising a concession for the Russians to make as it would have been for John F. Kennedy and his Cabinet to have journeyed to Havana for talks during the Cuban missile crisis. Never in the Soviet Union's 50-year history has the entire party leadership traveled abroad. The Russians had at first peremptorily insisted that the Czechoslovaks come to the Soviet Union.

However generous Russia's gesture, the Czechoslovaks were still very much under pressure—and not likely to welcome their guests with any brass bands. The Russians' mission is nothing less than to force the Czechoslovaks to forsake the democratic reforms that Party Boss Alexander Dubček has brought to the country over the past seven months. Moscow claims that the liberalization is paving the way for subversion and counterrevolution and weakening a keystone in the entire Warsaw Defense Pact structure. The Russian talks with Prague's leaders may well determine whether democracy will have any future in Eastern Europe—and whether the Czechoslovaks will have to defend their new society against the unleashed fury of Russian tanks and troops.