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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.slovak-l
Date:         Fri, 31 Jul 1992 09:08:43 DST
From:         Jan Szelepcsenyi <janszel@POSEN.MFF.UNIBA.CS>
Subject:      PRAGUE CENTRALISM
X-To:         SLOVAK-L@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu
X-cc:         Robert Szelepcsenyi <robert@posen.mff.uniba.cs>

Mr Kucera in replying the article of Paul Mego on 24 July
writes:

>	Ironically, the longest practioner of Communist
>	"democratic centralism" by far (20) years was Gustav
>	Husak, a Slovak. Just one of the ironies of a confused
>	history.


I feel it important to remember a news (sorry, if you already
noticed it):

Before Mr  Havel - after  resigning on the  presidency - left
the Prague  castle, he received an  interesting present by Mr
Jeltsin, handed  out by a  special ambassador: it  was the so
called "invitation  letter", in which five  CPs leaders asked
Mr  Breshnyev  for  "help"  against  the "counter-revolution"
started in January, 1968. The letter was signed by Mr Kolder,
Jindra, Svestka, Kapek and Bilak.  Only Mr Bilak is a Slovak,
the  others  were  Czechs.  Mr  Bilak  is  alive,  the  other
signatories  are  already  died.  As  the  last died Mr Kapek
committing suicide after the velvet revolution.

Mr Bilak denies resolutely the authenticity of his signature.
"It  was necessary  to have  among the  signatories a  Slovak
name, too!", told Mr Bilak to TV journalists interviewing him
in  the  front  of  his  family  house  in Bratislava. He was
immediately  accused  for  "criminal  delicts  against  peace
between nations". A late  attempt of the velvet revolutionist
to put the  attention of the people to  the main offenders of
our contemporary political and social misery...

I spoke Mr Husak twice before the invasion of the Soviet army
and once after the invasion. In spite of the hard prosecution
which I was  exposed during the time of  normalization I have
to confirm, that his main political aims by my opinion were -

1.  BEFORE  the  invasion:  the  creation  of a federation of
Czechs  and  Slovaks  as  two  nations  with equal rights (of
course,  the constitution  from 1968  was a  fragment of  his
original attempts),
2.  AFTER  the  invasion:  to  prevent  the  use of political
justice  against  the  reformers.  (A  prosecutor  told me in
1970, that in  full accordance with the existing  laws it was
possible  to sentence  about 1000  reformers to  death. As it
often happened in the history  of Czechs and Slovaks we would
have lost the intellectual corn of the nation.)

I'm afraid of heading the  danger of simplifying the history.
The  history is  never black  and white,  and the persons and
personalities are  not only positive  or negative shaped.  It
doesn't lead to nothing to  look for a "main offender". Every
of  the politicians  is first  of all  a product  of the time
being,  is  an  incorporation  of  the  prevailing ideas. His
personal  contribution is  his style,  the way  of acting, of
using  the  power.  Every  attempt  to  cross  over the given
borders is  finishing with a  defeat. Mr Havel  is the newest
example of this rule. All  the people, including the senators
of the old  as well new parliament admired  or loved him, but
non of  his main juridical initiatives  were accepted. He had
to play the role of a living  symbol, to be the firm plate of
Czecho-Slovakia for abroad and nothing else.

An author expressed it in  varying the classical proverb "The
truth wins" (Veritas vincit) in an modern aphorism:

                 "WHAT'S WINNING IS TRUTH!"

Acceptable, isn't it?


--
Jan Szelepcsenyi                        	Telephone: + 42 7 220863
janszel@posen.mff.uniba.cs              	Address  : ul. A. Mraza 4
                                                	   821 03 Bratislava
							   Czechoslovakia
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