Prague's Sullen Winter

The economy slows, cheating increases and weekends get longer

In Czechoslovakia, a country haunted by its past, one event in particular lingers in the national mind: the Soviet-led invasion by some 600,000 Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968. That show of force quickly snuffed out the budding reforms that came to be known as the "Prague Spring" and led to the replacement in April 1969 of Communist Chief Alexander Dubcek by Gustav Husak, a party official loyal to Moscow. Since then, Husak has sought to "normalize" life by striking an unwritten deal with his 15 million countrymen: do not stir up political trouble and, in exchange, enjoy a steadily improving standard of living. But as the country's economy has faltered, the nation has become apprehensive. This week, as Prague plays host to the annual summit meeting of the seven-member Warsaw Pact, Soviet Leader Yuri Andropov is expected to go to Czechoslovakia for his first trip outside the Soviet Union since taking over from Leonid Brezhnev. To assess the current mood, Bonn Correspondent John Moody traveled through Czechoslovakia. His report:

By 4 p.m., the winter night has stolen the shine from the Vltava River and turned the ornate sculptures on the venerable Charles Bridge into spooky, weather scarred night stalkers. On Na Prikope Street, a major artery, every third street lamp emits a ghostly glow, for most of the rest are turned off. Some side streets are completely dark.

The scene is not from Kafka but from contemporary Prague, where the Good King Wenceslas ruled in the 10th century, where Mozart first performed Don Giovanni, and where, on Aug. 20, 1968, Soviet tanks rumbled through the streets. It is a measure of the country's reliance on the Soviet Union that something as basic as the street lights in the country's capital are affected by Moscow's policies: two of three are dark because the Soviet Union last year cut oil deliveries to Czechoslovakia by 12%.

Gustav Husak, 69, had developed such close relations with Leonid Brezhnev that among East European leaders he alone was allowed to address the late Soviet leader in the familiar "tuy" form of Russian. Husak in effect has stifled political unrest partly by offering Czechs what is one of the highest standards of living in Eastern Europe. A similar bargain was struck in Hungary by Janos Kadar, who took over after the abortive revolution there in 1956. As a senior Western diplomat in Prague puts it: "Husak told Czechs, 'Keep your heads down politically or you'll get them knocked off again, like in '68. In return, we'll look the other way when you steal from factories to feather your own nests."

Until the late 1970s, the bargain held.

The economy grew at an average annual rate of 2%, while inflation was negligible. Food prices, in particular, brought smiles around the dining-room table. The cost of meat, for example, remained unchanged throughout the decade. Just as important, there was official head turning at petty thievery from factories and offices, at the high absenteeism among workers and at the lax enforcement of production codes. One Western diplomat remarked that Prague had achieved an old socialist dream of a shrinking work week, but not quite in the proper manner: all but the most city-bound citizens leave their jobs at noon on Friday, jamming the highways in their domestic-made Skoda sedans as they travel to their country homes for the weekend. They take Mondays off to recover.

But the good times are ending. The high cost of oil, the tightening of credit from the West and a soft market for such Czech products as textile machinery, glassware and leather goods have slowed the country's industrial output. There was almost no overall growth in national income in 1981. Last year it was up less than 1%. Officials are tight-lipped about Czechoslovakia's debt to the West, but a local economist privately puts the figure at about $3.8 billion, far less than Poland's estimated $25 billion, but up from approximately $3.1 billion in 1979. Although Communist-bloc nations like Czechoslovakia profess to have no unemployment at all, many workers hold jobs that require little more than showing up and punching a clock.

Amid the economic difficulties, the Czechoslovak government was forced to raise the prices of meat, milk and bread last February by as much as 150%, and this month more basic services are expected to go up in price. The price of top-quality pork, for example, has doubled (to $3.25 per lb.), while beef jumped from $2 to $5.45 per lb., making such routine dishes as beef and onion ragout a once-a-week luxury. With salaries averaging $300 a month, most Czechs still can afford to eat well. The problem is finding the groceries: over the past year beef and pork have become noticeably more scarce. In their place, frozen fish from Bulgaria is filling store shelves. Fish and onion ragout? There was no mad scramble to buy. As a popular joke puts it, "If God wanted Czechs to eat fish, he'd have given us a coastline."

The food supplies are bountiful when compared with those in the U.S.S.R., yet many citizens feel that the Czechoslovak Communist Party has broken its pledge by failing to ensure stable prices and no shortages. The popular response, so far at least, is to cheat a bit more, which could be an extraordinary feat in this economy. The Czechs were once famous throughout Europe for their strict orderliness and scrupulous honesty, but that reputation is now tarnished. Everyone cuts a corner here, steals something there. Lubomir, for example, is a 34-year-old boiler repairman in the city of Brno. His monthly salary is $350. He works about five hours on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. On Thursdays he sells on the black market spare parts that he has filched on the job. Then he spends a long weekend at his two-bedroom country house some 40 miles from Brno, returning to work on Tuesday. At a food-processing plant near Prague, a middle-level executive is responsible for overseeing the production of 2 million tons of canned meat a day. But his workers actually produce less than half that amount. So he lies; he marks down 2 1/2 million tons a day. He has no fear of being caught and punished. "That's my boss's problem," he says with a shrug. "He probably fiddles with his figures too."

So pervasive is this way of life that the Czechs themselves joke about it constantly. They even made a film about it titled Friday Is No Holiday. The movie shows workers plodding lazily through their jobs during most of the week. Then comes Friday, and suddenly the proletariat turns industrious. Some steal bricks to complete the lakeside cottage, others "borrow" pipes for a private plumbing job or barter for extra gasoline to make a weekend excursion. Released in 1978, the film drew packed houses in theaters across the country during its run. The boffo business was not surprising in a country where the most popular maxim among workers remains "If you aren't cheating, then you are cheating your own family."

Despite the posters hanging through out Prague to hail the 60th anniversary of the Soviet Union, the Czechs consider their relationship with Moscow to be one of accommodation, even resignation.

With Husak firmly in control and an estimated 80,000 Soviet troops still stationed in the country, the U.S.S.R. dominates Czech life both politically and militarily.

The biggest worry among party officials at the moment is figuring out what the Kremlin wants. "Andropov is as much a mystery to the Czechs as he is to us right now," says a Western diplomat. "They are waiting to see whether he wants blind loyalty or economic reform, or both."

With that kind of attitude, it is not surprising that Czechs have been unsympathetic, even hostile, to the aspirations of the Solidarity trade union in neighboring Poland. The Czechs have resented the fact that their goods, including food and oil, were apparently being shipped across the bor der to relieve shortages.

Traditionally, Czechs have thought of Poles as lazy and undisciplined; thus there was some feeling that they deserved their economic woes. And most Czechs assumed from their own experience that Solidarity was doomed from the start.

That is partly why no mass dissident movement has sprouted in Czechoslovakia since 1968. In addition, the Husak regime is notoriously vigorous in rooting out rebels. But perhaps the most important reason Czechoslovakia has remained placid lies in its history. Memory is a powerful teacher, and the pain of that August morning in 1968 has not disappeared.

"Czechs are not heroes," says Wolf Oschlies of the Federal Institute for East European and International Studies in Cologne. "They only fight when they think they have a chance of winning." Right now, they do not. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.