Czechoslovakia: Normalization, Almost

The Russian invaders have almost succeeded in "normalizing" Czechoslovakia to their satisfaction. Last week one of the few remaining and most popular of Alexander Duběek's reforms vanished when the government announced sweeping new controls on foreign travel. From now on, Czechoslovaks are prohibited from taking trips to the West "not conforming with state interests." So confident have the Russians become that they returned sovereignty over the country's airspace to the Czechoslovaks themselves. This means that Czechoslovak pilots will no longer need to obtain air clearance from Soviet officials for every flight. Moreover, Moscow summoned home its viceroy in Prague, First Deputy Foreign Minister Vasily Kuznetsov, apparently satisfied that his job is done for the time being.

The Realists. Part of the Russians' satisfaction stems from their success at confining Duběek's authority within a vastly altered party apparatus. Recently the Communist Party's Central Committee met for the first time since the invasion in plenary session and took measures that diffused the country's real leadership in an eight-man "executive committee."

Though still headed by Duběek, the committee is stacked in favor of the "realists," or those seemingly willing to compromise with the Russians.

Prominent among the realists is Lubomir Strougal, 44, a longtime associate and former Interior Minister of Stalinist Party Boss Antonin Novotny.

Though he went along with enough of Duběek's liberal plans to win a government post as Deputy Premier this year, Strougal shrewdly managed to drop out of sight after the invasion, obviously playing for time in his new choice of loyalties. Whether or not those loyalties now belong fully to the Russians, he fared very well at the Central Committee meeting. He not only won a seat on the new "supercommittee," but also became head of the new Czech party bureau, created as a separate party wing for the nation's Czech majority —a job that gives him a readymade political base. All in all, he now ranks as a possible successor to Duběek.

But for all the new Russian assurance —and the continuing presence of some 50,000 Soviet troops in the country-many Czechoslovaks remain unimpressed and openly rebellious. Some 100,000 students staged nationwide three-day sit-ins to protest some of the executive committee's Russian-imposed decisions. Workers supported the students' defiance with short work stoppages. Members of Czechoslovakia's eleven cultural associations met to declare "more urgently than before" their concern for the "preservation of the humane character of our socialist life."