Report on the Prisoners

Safely out of Czechoslovakia and the reach of the Communist Secret Police, who were about to arrest him on a trumped-up charge of espionage (TIME, June 19), Correspondent Dana Adams Schmidt sat down to his typewriter in Vienna and began a new series of dispatches to the New York Times. Out of the range of Prague's Communist censors, he wrote at length and in detail. His dispatches, published in the Times last week, gave a sharp picture of the tragedy that enveloped Czechoslovakia 28 months ago when the Communists seized control.

"The most characteristic thing about a police state is that people 'disappear,' " wrote Reporter Schmidt. "It is difficult for the casual visitor [to understand that] when he enters the office of a business associate the desk in the corner is empty because the secretary who occupied it was arrested last week, or that the girl at the opposite desk is the police spy who denounced her, and who will shortly make a report to the police on the visitor's conversation with the manager.

"You have to stay around and get to know people before you feel the situation --feel sick and weak when you learn someone you know has been arrested, nauseated by a note summoning you to a police station, angered every time you see one of those unmistakable men in brown leather coats [the STB--Czechoslovak Secret Police] . . .[The police] are rarely brutal. But I know or know of persons who have been beaten, persons who have been questioned for 24 hours . . . where the sound of other people being beaten in the next room could be heard."

A Sieve a Week. Power in Czechoslovakia rests in the hands of a small, inscrutable inner circle of Communists, who get their orders from the offices of the Cominform in Bucharest or directly from Moscow. Most notable member of this inner circle is Rudolf Slansky, secretary general of the party. Other members, according to the Times's Schmidt, are Bedrich Gemmder, contactman for the Cominform Defense Minister Dr. Alexej Cepicka, and National Security Minister Ladislav Kopriva. But Schmidt suspects it does not include President Klement Gottwald, chairman of the Communist Party, or Prime Minister Antonin Zapotocky. (While both men seem to hold undisputed authority, it has been rumored that Moscow does not completely trust them.) The entire population is covered by a secret police network, fed by informers among the party members. Chief object of police persecution is the middle class, about 20,000 to 30,000 of whom are now in forced labor camps. New camps are now being built.

"You can walk through Prague's Wenceslas Square," says Schmidt, "and see ... on nine-tenths of the shops ... the sign 'Narodni Podnik' which means National Enterprise." Nearly 100% of industry, wholesale trade and export-import trade, and 80% of shops have been communalized. Although this economic concentration in the hands of the government is capable of generating great power, Communists are finding that compared with the selective precision of private enterprise, nationalized enterprise on such a scale is often a blunt instrument. Thus Rude Pravo, central Communist Party organ, complained recently that so many sieves were being delivered to ironmongers that every family in the country would have had to buy one weekly for a year to get rid of them.

Collectivization of agriculture has been pushed against stiff opposition from the peasants. Usual Communist procedure is to start an agricultural cooperative among the poorer peasants of a village. The others are denounced as "village rich," badgered by inspectors, have their machinery confiscated until they submit.

How to Keep Friends. Czechoslovakia does have nearly full employment, and its standard of living is now the highest of any country in the Communist world. All basic foodstuffs, except meat and butter, are unrationed, and clothing coupons are being more generously released. But in the "free market," prices are still 50 to 500% above rationed goods.

Even though social security benefits now cover nearly all contingencies from birth to funerals, Schmidt found strong indications that the country's industrial workers are dissatisfied with their lot. They have even staged several brief strikes, although strikes are illegal in the People's democracy. Writes Schmidt wryly: "[They] have observed, however, that while in the old days they could damn or even strike against their boss, now that they are working for themselves, that sort of thing is dealt with ... as sabotage."

Although Czechoslovakia's comparatively high standard of living depends on its foreign trade, the Russians are trying to sever all of Czechoslovakia's trade with the West. Czech exporters must accept whatever economic deals the Russians offer. Czechs often have to sell their goods to the Russians below cost and the wares which the Russians force Czechoslovakia to buy are often unsuited to Czech needs. Some Czechs feel that the Russians want to force the Czechoslovak standard of living down to Russia's level. Even some

Czech Communist leaders are critical of Russia--in private conversations. But in public all Communists pay devout homage to Russia. From time to time they are brought up to the mark by Russian hints, such as the remark Marshal Nicolai Bulganin pointedly dropped during last month's celebration of "Liberation Day." Said the marshal: "Even the slightest questioning of Russian friendship leads inevitably to deviationism and Titoism."

Resistance in the Mind. The Communists have won few new converts, Schmidt believes. "The overwhelming majority of Czechs profoundly hate Communism . . . [This includes] almost all peasants, almost all of the old middle class, and a good many workers . . . But the Czechoslovaks' resistance is mostly in their minds. The Communists have compromised but not conquered their minds . . . Of active resistance--with all due respect to a heroic few--there is little . . .

"Perhaps the most dramatic aspect of the situation has been the subjection of the Roman Catholic Church . . . Last year the bishops and their clergymen still spoke their minds in sermons and pastoral letters and circulars. This year they are silent ... The bishops are prisoners under police surveillance . . . About 300 of the clergy are in prison . . ."

Concludes Schmidt: "The people of Czechoslovakia today stand as prisoners in a Communist camp. Their sense of national identity and honor, their sense of the value of political freedom and their revulsion against alien rule is strong. But not so strong as the instinct for individual self-preservation ... On the whole, their position is about what it was under the Nazis."

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