Loading...
Village Squire, 1978-04, Page 39PROFILE An old television show Naked City once said that there were seven million stories in New York city, one for every person, that lived there. People don't have to be important in the broad scheme of things to have interesting stories to tell. You and your next door neighbour have interesting lives too. Profile is a new series of articles based on ordinary people in western Ontario who have interesting stories to tell. The Prague Spring brought brief freedom Today Jan Bajer and his wife operate one of Stratford's more interesting small shops The Balladeer. But 10 years ago Jan probably hadn't even heard of Stratford. had never met the woman who is today his wife and knew 'little abqut Canada. He was engrossed in revolutionary changes that were going on in his native land of Czechoslovakia. The story began in what is known as the "Prague Spring" when, after 20 years of hard -fisted Communist rule in the country. suddenly a mysterious softening of government attitudes took place. Under Alexander Dubcek's government, new moderate forces began to remold the country. The government, Jan says, realized the tensions that had built up in the country under years of oppression since the Communists had masterminded a takeover of the democractic country in 1948. They began to ease up on the strict censorship that had been imposed in the years before. Jan, for instance. was a theatre director in one of the smaller centres of the country and before one of his plays could be shown to the public, it would have to be seen by a censor and given the special okay. There were no live radio or television shows because everything had to be recorded and approved before it could go on air. The same was true, of course, for the written words. There were ways of getting around the restrictions, particularly for those working in theatres, Jan recalls. Even a classic play such as Hamlet could be turned into a political play by skillful emphasis by the actors on particular words. When an actor would quote the famous speech "there's something rotten in the state of Denmark" the audience would break into applause. They knew it wasn't only Denmark that was rotten. Still free speech was far from a fact of life when the Dubcek government began to ease up restrictions. That February, 20 years to the month from the Communist takeover, things were becoming more open in the country. Jan was in a small town directing theatre when he received a call from a friend who worked at Radio Prague. He knew something was going on, he said, but outside of Prague people weren't sure just what was happening. Jan's friend urged him to come to Prague, to Radio Prague because those at the station were looking for some people they could trust. Hethen became a director of Radio Prague. "We suddenly noticed one thing," Jan says about the time after he joined Radio Prague. "On the top level there was this cubicle...and everything was going through the hands of this person and nobody even knew the name. It was almost like Kafka. You knew that there was somebody who was censoring everything that was transmitted so that everything that ‘..as put in front of the public had to be approved by this joker. And suddenly we noticed something: less and less people '.ere sending things upstairs to be appro\ed. More and more there were live ur:unnmissions... It ‘..as a dramatic time. Jan recalls. Once he had a victim of the former oppression a man : ho had been in prison since 1948 and %. as released in 1968 who was in the studio ion a live shop: with a man ‘..ho had been a guard in that prison. The newly freed man would say things like "do you remember when you kicked me" and the guard would say "well I had to." "It was a dreadful -experience and very exciting," Jan says. "More exciting than any play ever written because that was live". It was a very dramatic thing because suddenly after years of oppression you could do these kinds of things. Jan recalls. After years of people being afraid to talk even to their friends or neighbours for fear that they might be informers, suddenly people were able to talk freely even on radio, and to confront people who had been government informers. The events made the Soviet Union leadership very nervous. They had vivid memories of the Hungarian revolt 12 years earlier and were afraid the same kind of thing could happen in Prague. Their suspicions weren't eased any, Jan says, when they asked for a meeting with the new Czech leadership and were told that they should come to Czechoslovakia rather than the other way around as had been the case for so many years. The Czech leaders knew the kind of pressures that could be exerted in Moscow, Jan says, so they didn't want to meet there. The meeting finally took place on a railway car parked on the border between the two countries. It was a slap in the face for the giant Soviet Union to have to come to meet tiny Czechoslovakia on netral territory, Jan says, looking back. The nervous Russians began to send signals of their displeasure at the Czech developments. The threat was there all the time that if the liberalization continued, they would have to use force to control it. That summer the Warsaw Pact armies took part in maneuvers, very conveniently on Czech territory. It wasn't unusual but it was significant and it became more significant when the maneuvers were supposed to have ended but the troops remained in Czechoslovakia. Czech leaders were concerned and asked that the troops leave, Jan recalls but there were always excuses to slow down the withdrawal. Radio Prague became the main sources of news for the outside world as to what was happening, Jan remembers. Agencies such as Reuters would ask the people at Radio Prague what was going on in the country. Things were moving so fast after censorship was reduced in January and February that organizations like Voice of America couldn't really keep up with the changes. The changes had other effects. Supporters of the old regime, including judges who had sentenced people to prison on false charges because they were enemies of the government realized that things were changing and that under the new sentiment of the country they were not going to be regarded highly. Many began to show up dead, apparently from suicides. The Russians accused the media of a witch-hunt against former leaders. The Russians feared that it was the beginning of another Hungary but Jan says he thinks they misjudged the Czech people who are not the militant kind of people who would turn to violence. The Russians made it known, Jan says, that they were more worried about the territory than they were about the Czech people. Czecholsovakia was the only Eastern Bloc countries to border on a western Democracy with a few miles of border with West Germany. The Russians wanted to make sure the country stayed strongly Communist more than they cared about the future of 14,000,000 Czechs. Perhaps, Jan says, if the pace of reform had been slower, it wouldn't have brought on Russian concern so much but the country was like steam under pressure. Once the valve was opened at all, once censorship was relaxed, it blew wide open. The morning of August 20 brought the VILLAGE SQUIRE/APRIL 1978. PG. 37.