"Our Time Has Come"

By William R. Doerner

"Dubcek! Dubcek!" Who ever expected to see the day when Alexander Dubcek, the man who first tried to give East European Communism a "human face," would return to Prague so triumphantly, or be welcomed so deliriously? Yet day after day, as the leaden skies of late autumn began turning to dusk, the crowds beneath the statue of St. Wenceslas in downtown Prague kept growing, in size and in confidence. By late last week they had swelled into the largest protests in Czechoslovakia's history: a half million chanting, shouting, horn- honking people, all bent on ousting the repressive rule of Communist Party leader Milos Jakes. They achieved their primary objective in just eight days.

On Friday, Jakes and all 13 other members of the ruling Politburo resigned en masse, admitting that they had taken insufficient measures to bring about democratic reform in the country. Within hours Jakes was replaced by Karel Urbanek, 48, party leader of the Czech republic. Urbanek played no role whatsoever in the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the principal condition set by opposition forces for the choice of a new party leader. But his views on reform are far from clear, and some observers saw him as a - transition figure. Jubilation over Jakes' departure was further tempered by the reappointment of several hard-liners to a new nine-member Politburo and by the resignation of Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec, widely regarded as a moderate.

Political maneuvering will clearly go on for some time. A number of opposition leaders are already demanding the return of Adamec, whom they view as the key to bringing Czechoslovakia such reforms as interim power sharing with the opposition, creation of a multiparty system and curbs on police powers. By week's end Dubcek was calling for still more change. Addressing a vast throng on Saturday in Letna Plain, a parade area overlooking Prague, he said the Politburo shuffle alone "did not meet the demands of the people." The government, he added, is "telling us that the street is not the place for things to be solved, but I say the street was and is the place. The voice of the street must be heard."

Czechoslovakia now joins the astonishing avalanche of change that is overtaking Eastern Europe. Poland was the first to move, electing a non- Communist government in August. In the past six weeks, upheavals have taken place in the Hungarian, East German and Bulgarian Communist parties. Nor were events in Prague the only remarkable developments that took place last week.

In East Germany new party leader Egon Krenz mounted a campaign to live down his long association with his discredited predecessor, Erich Honecker, who is under investigation for suspected abuses of power. Struggling to hang on to his job as the party prepares for a seminal congress on Dec. 15, Krenz announced that he favored rescinding the country's constitutional guarantee of a "leading role" for the Communist Party, opening the possibility of multiparty rule.

In Moscow Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who touched off the wave of change with his two-pronged program of glasnost and perestroika, greeted Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the first non-Communist East European leader to take power since World War II. Only six months ago, Mazowiecki, who was imprisoned for a year following the declaration of martial law in 1981, was denied a visa to visit the Soviet Union. Gorbachev seemed to realize the ironies involved when Mazowiecki was ushered into the Soviet President's Kremlin study. "It may appear strange to some that I wish you success," Gorbachev said. "But we are interested that the governments and people who are close to us also have success."

One East bloc leader stood out, however, for his refusal to get in step with reform: Rumania's Nicolae Ceausescu. At an old-fashioned Stalinist party congress, he gave no sign that he was willing to open Rumania to even a zephyr of change, much less a full-blown wind. In his opening speech, Ceausescu said the Communist Party "cannot surrender its historical mission to another political force."

The tumult in Czechoslovakia was more than two decades in the making, a very belated -- but all the more heartfelt -- reaction to the brutal suppression of Prague's experiment with democracy in the spring of 1968. Two weeks ago, club- wielding police reminded Czechoslovaks of that bitter crackdown when they waded into a demonstration of 15,000 young antiregime marchers near Wenceslas Square, injuring hundreds. Popular anger at being victimized once again by calculated police violence quickly spread.

On Sunday fledgling opposition groups banded together under the name Civic Forum to call for a mass protest. Night after night, huge crowds turned out -- blue-jeaned students, matrons in furs and young couples pushing baby carriages, waving red-white-and-blue Czechoslovak flags, carrying banners and shouting "Svobodu ((Freedom))!" Many of the chants that went up from the throng were unabashedly direct: "Jakes for the garbage!"

As the week progressed, bulletins indicating a mounting ground swell of support flowed into the Forum's makeshift press center. First came announcements of a nationwide university strike and a shutdown of entertainment. Then plans were laid for a two-hour general strike to show that the country's traditionally phlegmatic workers were siding with the opposition.

The spirit proved contagious. The staff of the Socialist party daily Svobodne Slovo (Free Word), which has been a mockery of its own name since 1968, announced that it would no longer spout the official line and would become an independent journal. Workers at the state television network threatened to close down operations unless coverage of the demonstrations was both prominent and fair. Sure enough, while still hardly objective, nightly broadcasts began carrying film clips from Wenceslas Square and shots of Catholic Primate Frantisek Cardinal Tomasek meeting with Prague's party boss.

The nightly demonstrations went on unhindered as hundreds of plainclothes police, easily identifiable in their trademark polyester raincoats, watched but did not interfere. And while the possibility remained alive that the cornered regime might still try to quell the mounting protest movement with violence, the crowds grew noticeably more self-confident as the week progressed. Said a Czech journalist who had reported on the Prague Spring: "In 1968 it was a slim hope for change battling against overwhelming odds. Today this is the voice of the whole people when their time has come."

Nothing dramatized the wonder of that turnaround more than the public reappearance of Alexander Dubcek, the architect of the Prague Spring who was yanked from power in the wake of the Warsaw Pact invasion and has spent the years since then as a virtual nonperson. Now 68 and living in the city of Bratislava, Dubcek first sent a personal message to the crowds in Wenceslas Square expressing support for "all the demands of the Civic Forum, especially the resignation of all officials linked to the Soviet invasion." Then, even as a bitterly divided Central Committee was meeting to defuse the crisis on Friday, Dubcek turned up in person. From a balcony overlooking Wenceslas Square, he addressed the enormous crowd, recalling the rallying cry of his reform movement more than two decades ago. "The ideal of socialism with a human face," said Dubcek, "lives on in a new generation."

The Forum's principal demand was for the resignation of the half a dozen Politburo members who served as quislings in the wake of the 1968 invasion. Jakes was on the list for having presided over the purge of some 500,000 reformist members within the Communist Party during the following year. Also targeted: President Gustav Husak, who succeeded Dubcek as party leader in 1969. In addition, the Forum's manifesto calls for the resignation of Prague party leader Miroslav Stepan and Interior Minister Frantisek Kincl as the two officials most responsible for the police violence two weeks ago, and for a full investigation into the incident.

Ironically, one of the principal causes of Jakes' downfall was Moscow, his longtime backer. With the rest of Eastern Europe finally pursuing perestroika- style reforms, Gorbachev had no desire to set off for Malta with Czechoslovakia in turmoil -- or in the throes of a new crackdown. The Soviet leadership made its position plain in tense meetings with Czech leaders. Moscow's message: resolve the situation, and do it before the Malta meeting.

Gorbachev may also have come to regard the official Soviet defense of the 1968 invasion as an important "blank spot" in his country's history and feel increasingly obliged to denounce it. Had he done so while Jakes and his cronies were still in power, Gorbachev might have undermined their sole claim to legitimacy. There seems ample reason to believe the Soviet leader was preparing to do precisely that, not because he was hankering to interfere in Czech affairs but because he saw such a denunciation as a necessary measure to set the history books straight.

Referring to Moscow's evident relief at the dramatic turn in Prague, playwright Vaclav Havel, leader of Czechoslovakia's human rights movement, said wryly, "We cannot rule out the situation that all occupiers of this country will have renounced the occupation, and only the occupied will still stand behind it." Added Havel, who is known for his absurdist dramas: "It is like something out of my own plays."

Czechoslovakia's seething frustrations were rooted partly in a faltering economy. By East bloc standards, the country is relatively prosperous, with ample supplies of basic foodstuffs and fewer housing woes than its neighbors. But Czechoslovakia 50 years ago boasted one of Europe's strongest economies, and many residents compare their living standards not with those of East bloc neighbors but with those of the West. By that measure, Czechoslovaks concluded that their economy was backward.

Far more important than economic dissatisfaction, however, was political anger. Czechoslovakia has Eastern Europe's strongest democratic tradition, and its modern supporters argued that the country was being left behind by new experiments in Poland, Hungary and even East Germany. But if tradition served as a goad to some, it was lack of a historical memory that helped spur on others. The generation of Czechoslovaks now coming of age did not experience the trauma of the invasion -- and the fear of provoking a new crackdown. Said Martin Mejstrik, a leader of the university strike: "Our parents are still frightened. We are also frightened sometimes, but we have less to lose."

Czechoslovakia also had men like Havel, who has waged a long and frustrating battle against the Communist regime, serving more than four years in jail for his pains. If anyone had suggested two weeks ago that a mass movement to overthrow Jakes would be led by him and his artistic and literary confreres, Havel would have been the first to laugh. But as the most prominent figure in Prague's rapidly coalescing opposition, Havel has rocketed to near cult status. "I am a writer and human rights activist, not a politician," insisted Havel. But as a Western diplomat in Prague put it, "Unlikely but true, he's the Lech Walesa of Prague."

Havel and his fellow intellectuals led Czechoslovakia's peaceful revolution in part because no one else was prepared to. Purges following the 1968 invasion wiped out all potential reformers within the party, and a continued hard line kept any progressive new party figures from emerging. The government also used Czechoslovakia's relative prosperity to buy off the workers, who proved reluctant, if not downright timid, about demanding change. Last week the workers listened to men like Havel and agreed to join in. Said a truck driver: "They showed us not to be afraid." That coalition of intellectuals, students and workers turned out to be an unstoppable force.

With reporting by David Aikman and Kenneth W. Banta/Prague and Paul Hofheinz/Moscow