September 26, 1966

Mr. Theodor Nemec
Secretariat
Czechoslovak Pugwas Committee
Parizska 11
Prague 11 Czechoslovakia

My dear Mr. Nemec:

I was sorry to miss you in Prague but you certainly
deserved a vacation.

I, too, enjoyed our cooperation in Sopot and I think
if the parliamentary situation had permitted it we would
have come up with something useful.

Even though you were not present at Prague your
office did wonders in organization. We were made to
feel at home and everything was handled with extraordinary
efficiency.

Thank you finally for the book you left at my hotel
and for the doll your secretary brought to the airport.

Warm regards.

Henry A. Klausinger

Sincerely yours,

Warm regards.

and for the call your secretary brought to the airport.

Thank you finally for the book you left at my hotel.

efficiency.

feel at home and everything was handled with extraordinary
office did wonders in organization. We were made to

if the parliamentary situation had permitted it we would
I, too, enjoyed our cooperation in Robot and I think

deserved a vacation.

My dear Mr. Nemec:

Prague 11 Czechoslovakia
Paris 11 Czechoslovak Republic
Secretariat
Mr. Theodor Nemeč

September 28, 1966

List of pictures
==================

1) Hotel Esplanade

2) Arrival of the participants

3) Plenary Session

4) Plenary Session

5) Plenary Session

6) Meeting on Scientific Co-operation

7) Study Group on European Security

8) Study Group on European Security

9) Continuing Committee

10) Plenary Session in presence of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Professor Dr.J. Hájek

11) Discussion of the Pugwash Meetings participants with the Minister of Foreign Affairs Professor Dr.J. Hájek

12) General Secretary of the Pugwash Movement Professor J. Rotblat, Chairman of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences Academician F. Sorm and Mr.T. Němec in discussion

13) Discussion among Professor R.Leclercq, Dr.A. Snejdárek and Academician F. Sorm

14) Reception given by the Chairman of the Municipal Council of Mariánské Lázně

15) Sight-seeing of the Castle of Kynžvart

16) Barbecue in the park of the Kynžvart Castle

17) Barbecue in the park of the Kynžvart Castle

18) At the Rudolph Spring in Mariánské Lázně

19) Excursion to the mine "Svornost" (Concord), Jáchymov

20) Radioactive spring "Běhounek", Jáchymov

21) Town Hall wine-cellar in Jáchymov

22) Academician I.Málek and Professor J.Rotblat in the Town Hall wine-cellar in Jáchymov

23) Entertainment in the Hotel Esplanade

24) Signatures on the "memorial plate" in the china factory in Březová

25) Professor J. Rotblat and Mrs. Barnaby

26) Conference participants in front of the Hotel Esplanade

Photo by Jiří Flechatý

SEP 27 1968

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
LABORATORY FOR NUCLEAR SCIENCE

CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS 02139
Room 26-425

26 September 1968

To: H. Brown, C. Djerassi, P. Doty, H. Glass, H. Kissinger, F. Long, M. Meselson, S. Muller, A. Rich, J. Ruina, M. Shulman, J. Wiesner

From: B. T. Feld

Thanks to the efforts of Marian Long, we have been able to arrange
for the two daughters of Theodor Nemec to spend this year in Ithaca. Nemec
and his wife continue for another year at SIPRI, at the end of which time he
will be in a better position to decide what to do next. A group of us, who
discussed it with the Nemecs in Nice, offered to raise the money for the
transportation of the girls. The total fare is $1270. If we could each
contribute $100, this would cover it.

If you can help, please make out your check to the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences (which has advanced the fare) and send it to me.

P.S. Nemec would prefer to keep this matter confidential for the time being.

September 30, 1968

Mr. Theodor Nemec
SIPRI
Sveavagen 166
113 46 Stockholm
SWEDEN

Dear Theodor:

I need hardly tell you how shocked I have been by events in
Czechoslovakia. I thought your statement at the Pugwash
Conference beautifully summed up the problems. There
isn't much any of us can do except to let you know that we
are thinking of you.

You may have seen Governor Rockefeller's statement con-
demning the Soviet invasion. If not, I shall send you a copy.

I have wanted to write to my friends in Czechoslovakia but
I did not know whether it would make matters worse. At any
rate, will you tell them for me that I think of them with great
warmth and that I am at their disposal if I can be of any help.
You can be sure that many of us are working in ways not
always publicized to improve things.

Do let me know how you are and what you think.

Henry A. Kissinger

Henry V. Kraiinder.

Sincerely yours,

Warm regards.

I always appreciate to improve things.

You can be sure that many of us are working in ways not
warslih and that I am at their disposal if I can be of any help.
I did not know whether it would make matters worse. At any
I have wanted to write to my friends in Czechoslovakia but
demining the Soviet invasion. If not, I shall send you a copy.

are thinking of you.

I am very much sorry to hear of you and I know that we
 Conference beautifully amused the people. There
 Czechoslovakia. I thought your statement at the Pudovak
 I need hardly tell you how shocked I have been by events in

Dear Theodor:

SMEDEN
113 46 Stockholm
Sveaväden 166
SIPRI
Mr. Theodore Nemeč

September 30, 1968

SIPRI

INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR PEACE
AND CONFLICT RESEARCH

Chairman: Prof. Gunnar Myrdal
Director: Mr. Robert Neild
Ass. Director: Mr. Jan Mårtenson

Sveavägen 166
11346 Stockholm

SWEDEN

Telephone: 34 96 00
Cables: Peaceresearch

17th October 1968

PERSONAL

Prof. Henry Kissinger
Center for International Affairs
Harvard University

Dear Henry,

I am very grateful for your kind letter of 30th Sept.
I know that you and other good people in the States share with us
our feelings. It was quite a nightmare - values have become un-values,
friends have turned into foes but fortunately new friends have arisen.

Thank you for your nice words about the Pugwash paper. It was quite
a difficult task to speak the truth and at the same time not to do harm
to my people at home. The Soviets were extremely kind when I came to Nice,
ladies enwrapping me in their kindness. Millionshchikov said how very
sorry they were, what a tragedy it was both for the Czechoslovak and
Soviet peoples, but they just had to do it in order to save our state
and socialism. I had the feeling that he sincerely believed it. The
worst were Khvostov and Aboltin, which could have been expected. Others were
much nicer. Artzimovitch called it an act of gangsters, please just for
your information, Yemelyanov was also kind, Kapitza as well. The young
economist Sokolov was bad, and what surprised me most was Igor Pochitalin.
Misha Bruk was conspicuously open in condemning the occupation.

Our Czech friends in Prague accepted the report of the Pugwash
conference very positively, that it was just the sort of compromise they
needed at the moment. The report, the remarks by Long, Feld etc. and
my introductory paper were translated in Prague and published among our
Academy scientists.

I feel I have also to tell you that our common friends Sorm, Malek
and others behaved at the critical moment very bravely. They intend
to stay in Czechoslovakia. Snejdarek also returned to Prague. He has been
under fire by the Soviets before the occupation. As a matter of fact
his Institute as a whole was slandered by Neues Deutschland that it had
entered upon the road of collaboration with imperialism, above all West
German imperialism. I am informed by some friends that Snejdarek has
changed his line in the recent days, let us hope it is only a tactical
maneuuvre. Hajdu and Liska are both in Western Germany for one year.

Our greatest concern in the Academy is to get back as many good
people who left (who of course feel able to return) the country. If you
can help in this respect, I should be very grateful. For the moment we
are satisfied that no arrests have been made. But who knows.

in private

SIPRI

Personal, contd.

I shall go to Prague on 6th November for a few days and shall convey your wishes. Each of them feels stronger when they know that there are friends ready to help them in an emergency.

As regards myself, I feel it my duty to return to my country when my contract expires here in the end of the next year. However, it is likely to be otherwise, if a police reggime were instituted in my country. I somehow do not believe that to happen. I have always felt it was far more efficient to work from within than from without.

Frank Long, Feld, Djerassi, Doty, Brown and Muller have helped me with my two eldest daughters, they are now in Ithaca 14850, 212 Fall Creek Drive, telephone (607) 272-7943 in the family of Mr Richard S. Gilbert for one year, primarily to learn English quickly, so that I have freedom of option of what to do with them after a year. I must say that I am very grateful to our U.S. colleagues.

Susan Libichova is in Vienna, and I understand. Lapter is coming to the Institute here in the end of the year.

I wish to thank you for everything you do in support of my people. We shall never forget who were our friends during the critical days.

Yours warmly,

Nemec
OCT 24 1968

280 Newton Street
Brookline Station, Boston, Massachusetts 02146
Telephone 522-2400

23 October 1968

From: B. T. Feld

Re: Nemec girls

You will be pleased to know that, thanks to your help, the Nemec girls (Eugenie and Viktoria -- ages 13 and 15, respectively), are now settled in Ithaca. Their address: c/o Rev. Richard S. Gilbert, 212 Fall Creek Drive, Ithaca, N.Y. 14850.

Theodor is extremely grateful and asks me to express this gratitude to you all, which I prefer to do in his own words: "After having gone through the nightmare, when values became un-values, when friends turned into foes, it is consoling to know that there are people who are ready to extend a helpful hand. It is a very invigorating feeling, and certainly for me it is an encouragement to continue on the road I took in the fifties. We shall never forget who were our real friends during those tragic days."

Theodor Nemeč
Czechoslovakia

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

I am the only participant from Czechoslovakia in this group - and indeed, at this Conference. I am facing an impossible task. I speak to you as a Czechoslovakian, as a sincere friend of the Soviet Union, as a convinced socialist, as a friend of Pugwash, and finally as someone who believes in certain moral principles. Moreover, I must not do anything to upset the present course of development towards normal relations between my country and the Soviet Union.

We are a small central European country, whose geographic situation endows it with the least happy of all characteristics - strategic significance. Since the post-war years we have been members of the East European system; we are part of it in economic, military and political terms. All the countries of that system had in the beginning an almost identical structure based on a single model of socialism.

However, within Czechoslovakia were certain specific conditions. Czechoslovakia, when it entered the socialist epoch, was already a highly developed state both industrially and politically of all socialist countries, it had the longest and deepest democratic tradition and the most direct experience of democracy - even though it had been a bourgeois democracy. This bourgeois democracy had failed because it was unable to solve three basic problems; the problem of social justice, the problems of coexistence of two nations within one state, and the problems of the provision of security for the state within a reliable system of alliances.

So long as only one socialist state existed, it seemed natural to assume that there was only one road to socialism, namely that demonstrated by the first socialist state which succeeded through heroism of its revolutionaries and by the toil and blood of its people, a people besieged by enemies for many decades. However, after the second world war, when many other states chose the socialist road, it became apparent that socialism had to be developed according to the needs and traditions of each particular country. It was this adaptation that we were trying to achieve in Czechoslovakia.

The direction which we took in January, on the basis of a resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, was not taken because of the feeling of grandeur, or in the attempt to irritate our friends, but was taken as a historical necessity. We faced two alternatives; to continue as before and thus to discredit socialism in the eyes of the people, or to attempt to lead our socialist revolution into a new and higher phase of development. The overwhelming majority of the people of our small country were convinced that the development before the fatal night were in the interest of socialism not only in Czechoslovakia but indeed all over the world.

Even if this process had been wholly uncontrolled - which it was not - it is inconceivable that it could have led either to the weakening of our alliance with the Soviet Union, or to a return to the private ownership of property. It is inconceivable that we should forget the achievements of the years from 1945 to 1947. It is inconceivable that we could forget that it was because of our alliance with the Soviet Union that our frontier territories were returned to us. Further, our socialism, besides being internationalist in nature, was also an expression of our nationalism, and an expression of a national instinct for self-preservation. So it was quite impossible, under any circumstances, to think of Czechoslovakia moving out of the socialist camp. During the whole eight months since January, in spite of complete freedom of the press, not a single voice was raised in any paper or periodical in Czechoslovakia which suggested any change in Czechoslovakia's international orientation, or any adulteration of its socialist structure.

I want, therefore, to stress very strongly three points about the situation in Czechoslovakia before August 21st. First, there was no foreign instigation of the process. This is an absurd suggestion. Secondly, there was no real danger of counterrevolution, in any of the various senses that are put upon that word. Thirdly, there was absolutely no possibility of Czechoslovakia leaving the Warsaw alliance. These are the three facts about the position in Czechoslovakia in August of this year, which I want to emphasize.

Now I want you to understand that, under the circumstances I mentioned in my preface, I shall deliberately abstain from commenting in the events that have taken place since the night of the 21st of August. Rather, I would like now to go to Pugwash.

The important thing about this Conference is the opportuni-
ties which it has provided for private and personal contacts. I
have found that almost all the people with whom I talked have
tried to be helpful, have shown understanding and concern, and have
shown a desire to minimize the damage and to rectify matters.

I cannot say that I am looking forward to the discussion
of the exact details of what happened in Czechoslovakia. It is
bound to include half-facts and half-truths which cannot be verified.
I would very much prefer the discussion to concentrate on the
principles which underlie, not only in this question, but the
other questions which we have been discussing in this Group;
the inadmissibility of the use of force in disputes, and the inad-
missibility of armed intervention in the internal affairs of other
sovereign states.