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For better or worse, Czechoslovakia last week was deep in the throes of revolution. It was not an upheaval in the old style of blood and barricades. It was in Europe's new style—a revolution by law. Its objective was nothing less than to build a political and ideological bridge between the East and West, to prove that socialism can be more democratic than totalitarian.
So far, it was a revolution by decree. Neither the revolution nor the revolutionary government had yet been subject to the test of direct, secret elections. Last week there were elections of a sort in Czechoslovakia. But they had been arranged by the only four parties permitted to function. They were conducted at party meetings. The vote was by public acclamation; the purpose was to choose electors who in turn would choose members of a Provisional Parliament. The seats in this Parliament had already been allotted by the controlling parties.
On the basis of this balloting, the Socialists and Communists claimed 72% of the electorate's support. That claim would be proved, or disproved, only when Czechoslovaks got the secret, direct elections which the Provisional Parliament was commissioned to prepare. In American eyes this was neither freedom nor the promise of freedom. But Americans had not shared—they could hardly imagine—the Czech experience in the occupation years. In Czechoslovakia, as in all Europe, men in 1945 accepted or even welcomed measures which they would have abhorred in the democratic past.
Windows on the Future. From the windows of his paneled office, wiry, weathered President Eduard Benes could look across the historic Moldau, beyond the towers and spires of the golden capital, toward the rolling, cherished "Czech lands." For three decades, in the underground, in exile and in this office, he had labored to shape those lands and their people into a state.
He had helped bring the Czechs and the Slovaks out of Habsburg domination, transform the country into Central Europe's prosperous bastion of democracy. He had not despaired when the Nazi blackout descended on his 10,000,000 Slav countrymen. Now he was helping them turn on the lights again. But they were different lights, and what was emerging into view was not yet clear.
Eduard Benes calls his plan for Czechoslovakia "synthesis"—a word he loves. A shrewd master of simplicity, he explains his country's "middleclass revolution" in notably simple terms: "We are giving property to the propertyless. Others who have too many possessions are being scaled down. Everyone, however, will not be on the same level. Instead, the middle class will be a broad band within which there will be plenty of room for private enterprise and initiative alongside state control and socialism."
As Benes well knows, revolutions are never as simple as that. Synthesized or not, they pose the basic question: is the state to be the master or the servant of the people? And if the state is king, can the citizen be free? A lifelong democrat, Eduard Benes would probably answer such questions with another: what if, as in Britain and now in Czechoslovakia, free men choose to limit their freedom?