The New York Review Abroad (37 page)

In any case, the question now is: What on earth are they to say in the negotiations with Adamec tomorrow? And who should be on the delegation? The Student. The Worker (Petr Miller). Ján Carnogurský, a lawyer and leading Slovak Catholic activist, just released from prison. Václav Malý. Perhaps Komárek? “On whose side?” someone asks. For Komárek is still a Party member. At this point Havel slips away off stage. He has to go and collect the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade awarded weeks before. (Four days ago he had to slip away to collect the Olof Palme Prize.)

7.30 PM. The press conference. Answers are delivered with great assurance to questions the Forum leaders have only just asked themselves, in this same room, a few minutes before. No matter. Make it up as you go along. Petr Miller says the strike committees still exist and will be maintained. Not only will the workers make up the time lost by the strike, they’ll also work two free Saturdays—in the week when Czechoslovakia has free elections. Will there be a Green party? “This country needs all parties to be green,” says Dienstbier. Well done, Jirí. Spoken like a foreign minister again. But now he has to dash. His boilers need stoking.

Day Twelve (Tuesday, November 28). At half past one a government minister, one Marián Calfa, gives the first account of the negotiations between the government/National Front team under Adamec and the Forum delegation under Havel. The meeting started in an “excited” atmosphere, he says. But then it settled down and ended in a “positive” spirit. The prime minister promised, by Sunday, December 3, to propose a new government based on “a broad coalition,” a government of experts. The government will propose to the Federal Assembly that the clauses about the leading role of the Party, the
closed, subordinate nature of the National Front, and Marxism-Leninism as the basis of education, should be removed from the constitution. The prime minister also promised that the City Council would provide the Forum with all necessary facilities.

According to people on the Forum side, Adamec actually blew his top on being confronted with the Forum’s demands—a short digest of those raised by the students and the people over the last week. He called them “an ultimatum.” After a break, Petr Miller once again defused the situation with some straight talking.

4 PM. Plenum. Perhaps two hundred people in the auditorium. Havel and other delegation members on stage. The main subject: the Forum’s version of the meeting. As well as the three points accepted by the government, the demand was made that all political prisoners should be released by December 10 (UN Human Rights Day), and there was an expression of satisfaction at the establishment of a parliamentary commission to investigate the police and security forces’ violence on November 17. The draft, read out by Radim Palouš, includes five more points. Of these the most immediately dramatic is the announcement that the Forum leaders are writing to President Husák, calling upon him to resign by December 10. The prime minister has until the end of the year to make clear the way in which his new government will create the legal conditions for free elections, freedom of assembly, association, speech, and press, the end of state control over the churches, etc. In addition, the People’s Militia, the Party’s private army, must be dissolved and all political organizations removed from the workplace (as in Hungary). If not, they will demand the prime minister’s resignation, too.

After the draft is read, Havel says, “Now I leave you to discuss it,” and scuttles off backstage, through the Minotaur’s hole. In the course of a rather confused discussion, Petr Pithart sharply points out that
they have not actually said anything about the composition of the new government. What about the crucial levers of power, the interior and defense ministries for example? From the platform comes the slightly sheepish reply: yes, but we can’t really say something here that we didn’t mention there. Somehow, in the rush and muddle, that point didn’t get made. Ah well. Once again, Petr Miller ends the intellectual havering: let’s accept it now, he says, we can always elaborate later.

Press conference. The final version of the communiqué—as edited by the two hundred!—is read out. So is the text of a letter to the Soviet authorities about the reassessment of 1968. This, they report, was accepted “with pleasure” by the Soviet embassy, who promised that it would promptly be sent to Moscow, by telex. Asked about the negotiations, Havel says they were complicated, fast, dramatic, and please don’t expect all the details here. Altogether, he pleads to be left alone by the press. All questions to him, he says, he will gladly answer at an all-day press conference—after the revolution.

Day Thirteen (Wednesday, November 29). Television broadcasts the speech of the new Party secretary, Karel Urbánek, attempting to rally the faithful at an emergency
aktiv
in the Palace of Culture. He adopts a fighting tone. We will not sell out to foreign capital like the Poles! We cannot concede to demands to dissolve the People’s Militia! (On Saturday, they will do just that.) The audience chants “Urbánek, Urbánek!” and “Long Live the KSC!” in the rhythms of the crowd on Wenceslas Square.

Then the Federal Assembly, the official parliament. The women with putty faces, cheap perms, and schoolmistress voices. The men in cheap suits, with hair swept straight back from sweaty fore-heads. The physiognomy of power for the last forty years. But at the end of the day they all vote “yes” to the prime minister’s proposal, as agreed yesterday with the Forum, to delete the leading role of the Party from
the constitution, and remove Marxism-Leninism as the basis of education. For years, for a life-time in some cases, they have been preaching Marxism-Leninism and the leading role of the Party. But not a single deputy votes against the change. Turn your coat, just like that.

4 PM. Plenum, in the auditorium. Havel and a delegation have hurried off to Bratislava, to speak in the Slovak National Theatre. It is vital not to let the authorities divide Slovaks against Czechs, as they have done so often in the past. Yesterday’s communiqué about the meeting with the government underlined that this was a negotiation by the Civic Forum
and
the Public Against Violence (PAV), the sister organization in Slovakia. And the first item of today’s communiqué records their joint resolution:

The common objective of the CF and the PAV is the changing of Czechoslovakia into a democratic federation, in which Czechs and Slovaks, together with other nationalities, will live in mutual friendship and understanding.

There are rocks ahead here. For the issue is not just democracy as such; it is also the degree of self-government to be enjoyed by the two nation(alitie)s within the federal state.

But before anyone can discuss this, a group of students come on stage, dressed comically as young pioneers: white blouses, red bows, the girls’ hair in pigtails. It is the students’ Committee for a More Joyful Strike. We have come, they say, to cheer you up—and to make sure that you don’t turn into another politburo. Then they hand out little circular mirrors to each member of the plenum.

Back to business. Point three reads:

The prime minister in yesterday’s negotiations with the CF said that he wished to discuss with us the members of the new cabinet. The CF does not aspire to any ministerial post, but would like to suggest to the prime minister that the minister of national defense be a
civilian who has not compromised himself and is a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, while the minister of the interior be a person who has not compromised himself, is a civilian and is not a member of the Party. This suggestion was given to the prime minister in the course of this morning.

In fact the suggestion came, drafted by Havel, from his dressing room to the “crisis staff” dressing room, and was agreed on within a few minutes. A little afterthought: Oh, and by the way, you can’t have the interior ministry any more!

Who wants to speak at the press conference? No takers. People have to be press-ganged to face the press.

Should we talk about this as a revolution? someone asks. For, after all, “in our linguistic context” the word “revolution” has a clear subtext of violence. A “peaceful revolution” sounds like a contradiction in terms. A rather academic point, you might think. But actually a great deal of what is happening is precisely about words: about finding new, clear, true words rather than the old, prefabricated, mendacious phrases under which they have lived for so long. The drafting committees try to ensure that from the outset the Forum’s statements are in a new, plain language. Alas, they do not always succeed. The communiqués, with their repetition of abbreviations—CF and PAV—soon begin to sound a little like the old officialese.

7:30 PM. Press conference. The communiqué. News of the Federal Assembly vote. Václav Klaus smilingly reports a press interview with the deposed Party leader, Miloš Jakeš, in which he said that the Forum is well organized. “I’m sorry to say,” Klaus comments, “that even on this point we can’t agree with him.” The issue of academics sacked after 1969. We are already drawing up a list of those who should be reinstated, says a student leader. But how would they find places for them? “I can assure you that we have quite enough very incompetent professors.…”