"Day of Shame"

The instructions are clear and simple. Do not use public transport on Aug. 21. Do not patronize shops or buy newspapers. Stay away from cinemas, restaurants and nightclubs. Decorate gravestones and national monuments. Wear black arm bands. At the stroke of noon, stop working, walking, driving and every other activity for precisely five minutes.

In thousands of clandestine leaflets, Czechoslovakia's resistance leaders are instructing their countrymen on how to observe the first anniversary of the Soviet invasion. Since an estimated 75,000 Soviet troops are still inside their country, the underground leaders have prudently counseled against massive demonstrations. Instead, they intend to turn the observance into a dignified national "day of shame."

Ominous Visitor. It will also be a national day of tension. The government is making its own preparations for suppressing any defiant outbursts. In the first blatantly political arrests since the invasion, police have detained at least 50 persons for printing or distributing "antisocialist" leaflets. Czechoslovakia's Communist Party has issued stern warnings against "provocations." An ominous visitor has arrived in Prague. He is Soviet General Aleksei Epishev, chief political commissar of the Russian army and a member of the Soviet Central Committee, whose job it is to repress political dissent.

Thousands of Soviet and Czechoslovak troops are scheduled on the anniversary date to be on "maneuvers" around Prague and other large cities, obviously poised to intervene in the event that demonstrations get out of control.

Meanwhile, Czechoslovakia's two top leaders, Party Boss Gustav Husak and President Ludvik Svoboda, are on "vacation" in the Crimea, where they have met with Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev and President Nikolai Podgorny. In all likelihood, the Russians openly pressed Husak to sign a statement formally approving the invasion; so far, he has stopped just short of doing that. But undoubtedly, they added a final warning that Moscow has ordered Aug. 21 to be a cool day.

Hail of Stones. Despite the underground call for a show of only passive resistance, there is a danger that the anniversary may turn into something considerably more violent. Potentially, it is the most explosive time in Czechoslovakia since the invasion itself. After the Moscow-dictated dismissal of the liberal Alexander Dubcek last April, the nation gradually sank into the depths of despair and sullenness. The factory workers who a year ago volunteered for weekend "Dubcek shifts" without pay, in order to boost production, are today blatantly loafing on the job and pilfering supplies. The slowdown has made a mockery of practically every state-prescribed quota. By the end of April, for example, only 11% of this year's construction targets had been completed. There is a shortage of many consumer goods. In a rare bit of candor for Czechoslovakia's tightly supervised press, the weekly Tribuna reported last week that in a recent poll, 69.7% of the young people interviewed saw the future pessimistically.

The stronghold of the resistance movement is in the labor unions, whose liberal leaders have not been so susceptible to purges as other groups. When a Soviet delegation recently visited the Avia factory complex in Prague, it was received with a hail of stones thrown by workers.

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