World: DUB

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THE scene in the Czechoslovak city of Bratislava seemed an unlikely end to the long weeks of crisis and confrontation in Eastern Europe. As soon as the train arriving from the Soviet Union came to a stop, the leaders of the Kremlin bounced out of their coaches and began effusively embracing the leaders of Czechoslovakia. Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev planted smacking kisses on both the country's President, Ludvik Svoboda, and its First Party Secretary, Alexander Dubček. Then, to the surprise of all, Brezhnev suddenly grabbed the hands of Dubček and Svoboda and raised them overhead in a victory salute.

Judged by their ebullient mood, the Russians seemed to be celebrating a victory of their own. But the victory last week clearly went to the Czechoslovaks, who for weeks have been under brutal pressures from Moscow to abandon their program of democratic reforms. Earlier in the week, the largest delegation of the Soviet Politburo ever to travel abroad together went to the tiny railroad junction of Cierna nad Tisou in Czechoslovakia to try to force the regime in Prague to back down and reimpose many of the old restrictions on freedom that Dubček has removed. When the confrontation ended, however, the Czechoslovaks had successfully stared down the Russians, stuck to their reforms, and emerged with their program virtually intact.

"We promised you that we would stand firm," Dubček told his people in a radio message after the Cierna summit. "I will tell you frankly that you can be well satisfied with the results of this meeting. We have kept the promises that we gave you." In sympathetic Yugoslavia, Radio Belgrade announced that Dubček had "successfully defended more than he has had to concede." Describing the dimensions of the setback to Soviet foreign policy, the station said that the campaign of pressure against the Czechoslovaks was "a blasphemy, a heavy political blunder and a failure."

Quietly Forgetting. Dubček somehow convinced the Russians to quietly forget the demands made in a quasi-ultimatum issued last month after a meeting in Warsaw with their hard-lining allies. At Cierna, he successfully resisted Soviet insistence that he restore censorship and ban non-Communist political organizations. He rebuffed the Russian call for a permanent Soviet garrison in Czechoslovakia to defend the country's borders with West Germany. More important, he got the Russians to pull out at last thousands of troops that had come to Czechoslovakia in June for Warsaw Pact maneuvers and had never gone home. By the end of the week, Prague reported that the last units of Russian soldiers had finally left Czechoslovakia.

At the same time, Dubček went to great lengths to assure Moscow of Czechoslovakia's continued loyalty to the Communist bloc. He pledged, as he has in the past, that his country would not suddenly change its trade pattern and would remain solidly moored in the Communist economic community. He also declared that the party would use its influence to discourage anti-Socialist and anti-Soviet broadcasts and articles, and that he would require all political associations to function within the party-dominated National Front. All these, however, were minor concessions —the price of preserving Czechoslovakia's cherished new society.