THE ARSENAL OF RESISTANCE

FROM the outset, the Czechoslovaks' remarkable campaign of passive resistance was aimed straight at their oppressors' vulnerabilities--their sense of direction, their stomachs and their morale. The tactics were laid down in one of the many variations of "the ten commandments of resistance" that went up on walls all over town: "We have not learned anything, we don't know anything, we don't have anything, we don't give anything, we can't do anything, we don't sell anything, we don't help, we don't understand, we don't betray." The tenth was printed in large letters: "We will not forget anything." The "commandments" proved to be captive Czechoslovakia's secret weapon against the Russian invaders.

Clicking Shutters. The backbone of resistance was Czechoslovak radio, which managed to stay on the air by wit and engineering wizardry. Middle-of-the-night calls went out to nearly all station personnel when the invasion started, and announcers managed to talk their way past Soviet lines even after the studios were surrounded. Vera Stovickova, one of the best-known voices of Prague Radio, got past Russian guards by claiming that she was a charwoman. Others slipped out of the studios with vital transmitting equipment, which was soon wired up to put "Radio Free Czechoslovakia" on the air from a downtown Prague apartment. Because single transmitters are easy to track, engineers bounced their signal to transmitters at new locations every quarter hour, some of them supplied by the Czechoslovakian army. The underground radio network was such a total success that President Svoboda had to broadcast official statements through it last week; the Russian-occupied regular studios remained deserted and unused.

The clandestine voices not only kept Czechoslovaks and the world abreast of Russia's occupation; they also called most of the interference plays. When an announcer urged his countrymen to take pictures of the Russian invaders "for later documentation," a small army of Prague amateur photographers started clicking their shutters at the Russians. After Villiam Salgovic, an anti-Dubcek conservative, rounded up 40 security agents to run errands for the Soviets, an underground station broadcast all of their license-plate numbers. A truck driver who recognized one plate bore down on the car and rammed it against a brick wall with his two-ton trailer rig.

Czechoslovakia's national television network also juggled its beams from one location to another, always keeping one jump ahead of Soviet search parties. At one point, announcers were broadcasting from the city planetarium in the Moravian city of Brno. Crowed an engineer: "The Russians have plenty of tanks, but tanks cannot detect signals." Having learned just that, the Soviet commander in Moravia became so incensed at the persistent television coverage that he threatened to level the town if the station stayed on the air. Technicians thereupon switched off, temporarily. Meanwhile, cameramen were stuffing Bolex gear under their raincoats to shoot some of the most daring footage ever taken of the Red army at work. By week's end, just minutes ahead of Soviet secret police, the underground TV crew fled across the border to Austria.

How Far to Moscow? In the countryside, Czechoslovak farmers tore down or changed the direction of every road sign they could find, even coordinated a circular route that put one Polish division back at its own border after traveling 36 miles. Lost tank commanders were greeted by a forest of new road signs that read: "To Moscow: 2,000 kilometers." In Bohemia, gypsies dismantled tank antennas while townspeople engaged the crews in friendly conversation. When Russian security officers started arriving in Prague to round up well-known liberals, residents daubed their house numbers with paint and switched virtually every street marker in the city.

The Russian troops brought very little food with them, and Czechoslovaks were in no mood to ease their hunger pangs. Grocers and restaurant operators consistently refused to sell or give them anything, and farmers hid their stock. At one point, the underground radio gleefully announced that the average Russian tank crew's daily ration consisted of "six potatoes and some fat." It is small wonder that, after sitting down to that kind of mess, one trio of noncoms decided to raid a grove of apple trees near downtown Prague. Unfortunately for their appetites, the trees happened to be growing behind the U.S. embassy. The soldiers were chased off the grounds, like errant schoolboys, by U.S. Marine Corps guards.

The strategy of Czechoslovakia's passive resistance was summed up by a sign painted in downtown Prague: "Hate intelligently." As their morale started to ebb last week with each new sign that Russia had regained sway over their lives, Czechoslovaks were hating even more, but much of their sly resistance was gone. Like the underground TV crews, some of the leaders of defiance were on the run, and even the underground radio stations had given up broadcasting tips on how to make life miserable for the Russians. One station devoted 45 minutes to a reading on the life of Jan Hus, a 15th century religious reformer who was betrayed while dealing with his enemies on a safe-conduct pass. Arrested and tortured, intoned the commentator, Jan Hus refused to deny "his truth" and went to the stake crying, "Jesus, our Savior, have mercy on me and my country."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.