Two experienced U.S. observers reported last week on two eastern European nations—both in the Russian sphere, both struggling to create a new life.
East & West. Columnist Dorothy Thompson, visiting Prague with her Czech husband, Painter Maxim Kopf, found Czechoslovakia facing “eastward [toward Russia] in economic ideas and westward [toward the democracies] in politics.” She wrote:
“What the Czech people really want is . . . planned socialist economy and political freedom. The entire country has moved to the left. . . . The large industrial concerns are not popular. . . . The Communists . . . are at the moment in the leading role and are extremely dynamic.
“I am convinced Communism on the Russian model is not expressive of the Czech people. … It is likely to wane rather than wax unless directly or indirectly assisted by force and chicane. . . . The Czechs do not want a totalitarian state.”
What the once internationalist Czechs do want: “Czechoslovakia for Czechoslovakians.” The Sudeten treachery, the Munich agreement, German encroachment and finally six years of German occupation have “burned with corrosive fire into the Czech soul and turned . . . their European patriotism into flaming nationalism.”
Last week, while Correspondent Thompson bounded about Prague, President Eduard Benes sent his Premier Zdenek Fierlinger, War Minister Ludvik Svoboda.
Foreign Trade Minister Hubert Ripka to Moscow. Most accounts assumed that their major interest was in Poland’s current quarrel with Czechoslovakia over the border area of Teschen.
But Russian news reports suggested that another development of immense importance to Czechoslovakia was up for discussion in Moscow: the Communist. Social Democratic and People’s Socialist parties had formed a Czech “National Bloc” on the familiar “National Front” pattern of other countries in Russia’s sphere. Czech labor unions, professional workers and technicians, farmers, and intellectuals were to be united in centrally controlled organizations allied with the “National Bloc.” If liberation was bringing freedom to the Czechs, it was of a kind unknown to them before the old freedom collapsed.
New Order, Old Style. Correspondent Leigh White, no stranger to the Balkans, visited Bucharest last spring. Last week he reported his impressions of Rumania in the Saturday Evening Post. Among them:
¶ Russia had used “terrorist tactics” to install a “highly unrepresentative” government of its own choosing.
¶ Freedom of expression was a farce.
¶ Oil producers were unable to meet the demands of Russia because of the slowness of the Soviet-operated railroads. For each delay the quota of oil demanded was raised. The oil producers thought that the squeeze was planned.
¶ Premier Peter Groza, a chunky, wealthy man addicted to pastel tweeds and spats, relied heavily on Soviet Vice Commissar for Foreign Affairs Andrei Vishinsky.
Said Juliu Maniu, aged leader of the Peasant Party: “The only difference between the Russian and the German occupation is that when the Germans were here we had a Rumanian dictator. Now. instead of Antonescu. we have Vishinsky.”
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