AUSTERITIES FOR CZECHS AND PUNISHMENTS FOR THE POLICE

Grey River Argus, 9 August 1948, Page 5

AUSTERITIES FOR CZECHS AND PUNISHMENTS FOR THE POLICE

(Rec. 9.55) LONDON, August 8 Reuter’s correspondent at Prague reports: More than one thousand Prague policemen, including one hundred officers, has been punished for failure to check the anti-Govern-ment demonstrations during the SoKol Festival in July. This is reliably reported. The punishments have included fines, reduction of privileges and the loss of seniority. Purge commissions are busy now throughout the country weeding out the Sokol leaders who are held responsible for the demonst rat ions. A central planning committee has issued a preview of a proposed fiveyear plan and has warned the Czechoslovaks to expect another five years of onlv partiallv-lessened austerities This plan aims at increasing the agricultural and industrial production, by fifty per cent. The plan comes into force at the end of October, if the present two-year plan is then completed. CZECHOSLOVAKIA’S TRANSITION Regime Faces Economic Problems (From Sydney Brookes, Reuter’s Correspondent) (By Airmail) PRAGUE Czechoslovakia’s Communist Government has reached the end ot the first phase of its development. It has gained power. It is now. entering upon the second phase, during which its position must be consolidated ana its policies justified. The Regime has already surmounted several hurdles. It has put into force its new constitution, carried through its elections, solved the question of the Presidency, and put behind it the difficult period of the eleventh Sokol Festival. But great new problems are looming ahead. It is generally accepted that Czechoslovakia presents a special problem for Communism. For the first time, Communism holds power in an already highly developed social organism. . Czechoslovakia is highly industrialised. Her production outstrips her supplies of raw materials and she is largely dependent on her export-im-port trade, most of it still with Western countries. When Communists took over, Czechoslovakia was socially well developed. Her standard of education was above normal. Her peasantry, although by no means fully efficient, was a sten or two above their neighbours. Czechoslovakia had a strong Bourgeoisie, which read Western books, liked Western music, and judged its art and drama by Western standards. It was obvious that Communism could achieve no lasting ideological success unless it quickly proved an economic success. In these circumstances, the ouestion arose whether Communism could afford to carry its purges and prejudices too far, whether it. might not be necessary for Communism to make some sort of pact with the surviving middle-class —to try to persuade and educate rather than punish and coerce the remaining opposition. Declarations from Government and party leaders have indicated that the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia understands these special difficulties. Since the end of the war, the country has lost many thousands of skilled technicians, craftsmen, administrators, and agriculturists through the expulsion of the German population of what was known as Sudetenland.

Since February, which brought the Action Committees to their work of purging the national life, the country has lost more skill. Party'leaders have themselves acknowledged that the Action Committees often exceeded requirements. Personal prejudice was brought into denunciations. Capable adnfinistrators and useful workmen were deprived of their goods and their livelihoods for the worst of reasons at a time when the national economy needed all the impetus which skill and energy could put behind jt. In addition to the Action Committees, Works Councils and Works Committees in factories abused the unchecked power which the political changes had placed in their hands. Stores were rifled, as if the nation’s reserves, so summarily taken over from their previous owners, were booty to be distributed among the successful revolutionaries. “Good Communists” secured supplies of flour, grain, other foodstuffs, cloth, and footwear. “Unreliable elements,” in many hundreds of cases, lost all their property, had thenbank accounts blocked, and were then subjected to demands for payment of tax on the businesses they no longer possessed. Theft, graft, corruption, nepotism, developed even among the ranks of the “faithful. !The Prime Minister himself, M. Antonin Zapotockv, a ha,rd-headed Trade Unionist, with a knowledge of production requirements learned the hard way, has been forced to denounce workers’ leaders and the workers themselves for misusing funds, for unjustified denunciations of fellow workers. For malingering and general laziness, for failing to report inefficiency among Trade Union leaders, for watching their

own selfish interests instead of the interests of the State. If Communism in Czechoslovakia went too far and too fast it was obvious that the party could be left with little more than the nuritv of doctrine —cold comfort when party and people alike wanted meat, eggs, butter, Belgian copper, Scandinavian iron, Egyptian cotton and plenty of dollar sand pounds sterling. The party line was quite clear about the use of land —it must come understate control, it should be collectivised,