Revolution 1989 (60 page)

On the morning of Wednesday 22 November Jakeš decided that he would call out the People’s Militia to attack the demonstrators. This was the Party’s private, part-time army, 20,000-strong, recruited from ultra-loyalists, mostly factory workers who were paid considerable extra money for voluntary duty at weekends and a few evenings a month. They were not officially part of the army or the state security service, but it was always thought they would come to the aid of the Communists in the last resort. The militia refused. Štpán tried to rally workers and militia against the students at a big steel plant in the Prague suburbs. ‘We do not intend to be dictated to by children,’ he declared. ‘We are not children,’ they roared back. Civic Forum called a general strike for Monday 27 November, but, in the typically Czech way, only for two hours, between midday and 2 p.m. It was designed to be a symbolic test of strength. When it became clear that almost every Czech worker intended to join the strike, the old guard’s will evaporated. Marián alfa, the Deputy Prime Minister, sat listening to the hardliners, flabbergasted by their lack of realism and common sense, and by their indecision: ‘The whole police and security apparatus was at our disposal. The key factor was that nobody appeared with the guts, instinct, character, call it what you will, to use force, or to convince others that it was appropriate.’
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Jakeš had heard in direct terms from a senior figure in the Kremlin that he could not expect help from Soviet forces, or any political support, to stay in power. Gorbachev had dispatched Valeri Musatov, an influential figure as head of the Communist Party’s international department, to Prague with orders to watch events. The Kremlin wanted accurate information because, as Musatov said, the Soviet Ambassador in Prague, Viktor Lomakin, was a deeply conservative figure who had no contacts among Communist reformers, let alone among the opposition. ‘He spoke only to what used to be called “healthy sources”, which was not of great use to us in these circumstances, ’ Musatov said. On the other hand Musatov, in an unprecedented move for a senior Soviet official, went to a Civic Forum meeting at the Magic Lantern. That was seen as a great blow against the regime in the Czech Party and to Jakeš personally. The hardliners, in effect, raised the white flag on the evening of 22 November, when Defence Minister Václavík declared on television that ‘the army will not fight the people. We will not become involved.’ The reason was obvious: the soldiers would not have obeyed their senior officers if ordered to fire on unarmed civilians.

Each night the demonstrations continued to grow. People were now going for amusement as well as political fervour, even though temperatures in Prague were well below freezing in the evenings and a nasty influenza bug, which most people called ‘revolution flu’, was going around the city. As Party control was losing its grip, state-owned television grew more daring. For the first time, it televised the Wednesday demonstration live, though such glasnost was short-lived. The next morning police raided the office, sacked the senior management and installed a flunkey of Jakes, Deputy Prime Minister Matej Lucan, as director. Staff demanded that coverage of the demonstrations continue, though. A strange half-censorship was agreed on. The protests were screened, live but for a limited time, when the screens would go blank and dance music would be played for a short while before the broadcast of the demonstration would start again. Not that it made a great deal of difference. As in East Germany, most Czechs could receive foreign broadcasts and even if they could not easily understand the language, people grasped what was happening.

The most emotional of the demonstrations was that Friday evening, a week after the students had been beaten. There was a crowd estimated at around half a million. Suddenly, without any announcement, a stooping, grandfatherly-looking gentleman with a kindly, beaming face, still rather good-looking for sixty-eight years old, appeared from a balcony above the square. For some moments few people realised who the man could be. Then they saw that it was Alexander Dubek, who had that morning arrived in Prague from Bratislava. The cheers were deafening: ‘Dubek na hrad, Dubek na hrad’ (‘Dubek to the Castle’ - meaning ‘Dubek for President’). The hero of the Prague Spring enjoyed his moment of vindication. He embraced the other man on the balcony receiving cheers of his own, Václav Havel. It was an intoxicating evening of high drama. Dubek spoke as though the last two decades had not existed, about socialism with a human face. ‘Twenty years ago we tried to reform socialism, to make it better,’ he said. ‘In those days the army and police stood with the people and I am sure it will be so again today.’ There was resounding applause, but slightly more muted than before. ‘We hadn’t thought he’d still be a Communist,’ said Ondej Soukup. ‘It wasn’t a disappointment so much, he was a hero because he stood up to the Russians. But by then we were not Communists, and we didn’t want to hear people telling us how great communism could be if only the circumstances were right.’
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That is what Dubek persisted in saying for the rest of the evening. An hour after appearing before the crowds, Dubek and Havel spoke at a press conference at the Magic Lantern. The former leader of the Czech Communist Party looked as though he had stepped out of a black-and-white photograph, as one observer commented. He spoke about the ‘reformability of socialism - as long as we depart from everything that is wrong with it’. Havel appeared uncomfortable, as did most of the Civic Forum activists. ‘Socialism is a word that has lost its meaning in our country,’ Havel said. ‘I identify socialism with men like Mr Jakes.’ Seconds later a young man in jeans and sweater went on to the stage to whisper a message to Havel and Dubek, who smiled at each other. The news had just been announced that Jakeš and the entire leadership of the Communist Party had resigned. The applause was deafening. A bottle of Sekt appeared from somewhere. Dubek and Havel embraced and Havel raised a toast - ‘Long live a free Czechoslovakia’. They downed the wine in one gulp. There was not a dry eye in the house.
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Senior StB officers and the moderates in the Party leadership were desperate to make a deal with the opposition. Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec, sixty-three, the best-known of the Communist reformers, was the man who negotiated the end of Czech communism with Havel. They knew they could not save the regime, and in any case they had not believed the ideology they had been spouting for many years. Adamec was a careerist first, a cynic second and a Communist third, though he had never been a brute. He and his associates wanted to save themselves, in particular from possible prosecution after the opposition took over. At first the talks were secret - Adamec did not want his colleagues to know he was meeting Civic Forum. Havel wished to negotiate openly only when he knew he was dealing with the right man and when he was certain an agreement could be reached. Havel used an emissary, the composer Michael Kocáb, one of his friends, who had met Adamec socially a few times and knew some members of his family. Kocáb, a tall, rangy thirty-five-year-old, was Czechoslovakia’s biggest rock star. He had not been overtly political, but he had found ways to show the public how he felt about the regime, while staying just within the law and outside prison. ‘Both sides knew from the start that it was time to talk, but wanted to work out some basic ground rules first,’ Kocáb said. The initial, confidential, meeting was the day after Civic Forum was formed on 20 November. ‘It was amazing that it needed a musician to oil the wheels in this way, but this is Czechoslovakia. The moment Havel knew they were ready to talk seriously, he knew it was the end for the Communists. But he had to know they were serious. Adamec wanted to continue playing a role in Czech politics, and talking with Havel was the only way he could.’
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Kocáb met the reform Communists secretly several times. He set up the first official talks on Sunday 26 November, which began with some hilarious formality. Havel and Adamec, both grinning nervously, sat opposite each other at a crowded table in a packed, smoke-filled room. They then both rose at the same time, with the same thought. ‘Hello, we haven’t met, my name is Havel.’ ‘No we haven’t. Mine’s Adamec.’ Over the next several days of hard bargaining a peaceful transfer of power was negotiated, while vast crowds occupied the streets of Prague. Within two weeks, the Communists promised free elections the following spring, gave up their ‘leading role’ and much of their wealth and Husák had resigned the presidency.

Adamec tried to salvage something of his career but failed lamentably. Because the crowds had become so immense, demonstrations were moved from Wenceslas Square to Letná Park, outside the city centre. Adamec appeared at the first of these, on the evening before the talks commenced. He had spun himself as a great reformer and people were cheering him loudly before he began to speak. In his first sentence he declared that the government accepted the demands of Civic Forum and he was applauded wildly. But then came the ifs and buts. In fact he promised nothing and started speaking in Marxist-Leninist jargon. He was booed off-stage and had to be spirited away for his own safety.

Havel had no official role but, in effect, the new government announced on 7 December was picked by him. The Interior Minister was the Slovak dissident and civil rights campaigner Ján arnogursk, now in charge of the secret police, who until a few days earlier had been their guest in custody. The janitor, Jií Dienstbier, was made Foreign Minister. The Prime Minister, though, was the Communist Deputy Premier Marián alfa. Havel explained that Czechoslovakia needed a few people in government who had run things, as well as a few intellectuals. ‘alfa can get things done,’ he said, when colleagues appeared doubtful. Havel easily defeated Dubek for the presidency. There was never, in fact, a real contest. When, in early December, Civic Forum tacticians began to consider potential candidates, there was barely a debate. The Trotskyite Petr Uhl and the Conservative Catholic Václav Benda both said the same thing, almost at the same time: ‘It might as well be Václav.’ Dubek was widely respected, but he was sounding increasingly out of date. He became Speaker of Parliament. Havel had guided the revolution and the immediate transformation almost as though he were giving stage directions.
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FORTY-EIGHT

Timioara, Romania, Sunday 17 December 1989

 

ROMANIA COULD NOT REMAIN forever immune. Ceauescu had done his best to isolate the country from the rest of the world. But even there people had heard that the Berlin Wall had fallen and that neighbouring countries had toppled their Communist regimes in a dizzying few months of revolution. Covertly, Romanians could tune into the BBC or Radio Free Europe and hear Czechs, East Germans and Bulgarians discuss the merits of democracy and describe their former rulers as corrupt thugs. Yet Ceauescu appeared to be carrying on as though nothing had happened. At the end of November he had been unanimously re-elected Romanian Communist Party leader for another term, as he had so often before. The occasion was marked by the usual rituals. He stumbled his way through a dreary three-hour speech which was interrupted thirty-four times when the audience ‘spontaneously’ rose in rhythmic applause lasting several minutes. The loudest cheers erupted when he said that ‘Socialism has a long future. It will die only when pears fall from apple trees.’ Ceauescu still controlled all the forces of repression that had kept him in power for a quarter of a century. He seemed still to be unassailable. Unlike his peers in Berlin, Prague and Sofia he had the will and the authority to fight and kill for his position. Yet when the end came, the most powerful and feared dictatorship in Europe collapsed within five days.
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Seldom can a revolution have begun in a bleaker place. The Transylvanian city of Timioara had a tiny medieval centre, which had once been pretty but was crumbling away, and a few fine baroque buildings from the period before 1919, when it was a Hungarian city called Temesvár. Now it comprised mainly hideous new apartment blocks for a quarter of a million inhabitants, so badly constructed they were already falling apart. Like all Romanian towns it was unremittingly poor and heavily polluted, from nearby chemical and engineering works and agriculture that spewed dangerous fertiliser into the water supply. A canal which might once have been charming ran through the town. Now it was filthy and smelly and children were warned not to play anywhere near it. Around a third of the town’s population came from the Hungarian minority. Despite traditional hostilities that ran deep, and Ceauescu’s attempts to suppress Hungarian culture and heritage, on the whole the two communities rubbed along reasonably well together and suffered together.

A shy but inspirational pastor lit the spark. László Tökés, a tall, dark-haired thirty-seven-year-old, had a diffident and quiet manner that hid a steely determination. He had been the priest in charge of the Hungarian Reformed Church in Timioara since January 1987. For a long time considered a troublemaker by the regime and by the Church hierarchy, which like all the religious organisations in Romania had collaborated closely with the Communists for decades, Tökés had been removed from his previous parish in Dej. The authorities, spiritual and secular, thought he was showing too much overt support for the Hungarian minority’s cultural demands, such as education in Hungarian for their children. He was given the post in Timioara on a probationary basis and told to steer clear of politics.

The parish had fallen on hard times. The congregation had dwindled to little more than a handful. Tökés blamed his predecessor, Leo Leuker, whom he called ‘a Red Priest’ for collaborating with the regime. Quickly, he established a reputation as a powerful preacher and the church began to fill with new or returning congregants, impressed by their pastor. He was in regular conflict with his bishops. Oddly, on one occasion, his offence was to quote from the Book of Daniel: ‘To you it is commanded, O people, nations, and languages, That at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the golden image that Nebu- chadnezzar the King hath set up: And whoso falleth not down and worshippeth shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace.’ His superiors thought it could be taken by the congregation as a criticism of Ceauescu and they gave him a warning.