1968 - Mark Kurlansky [179]
Thousands fled the country, and many who were outside decided not to return. ›erník encouraged immigration. Soon the borders would be closed, and he explained that he could not guarantee even his own safety, let alone anyone else’s. A month after the invasion, fifty thousand Czechoslovaks were out of the country out of a population of about fourteen million. About ten thousand of them had already applied for refugee status in other countries. A number of Czechoslovakians were caught out of the country on their first summer vacation abroad. Many had to wait more than twenty years before they could enter or leave again.
Meanwhile the Czechoslovakian Writers Union, one of the institutions that pushed Dubek hard for reform when he first came to power in January, was urging its members not to go into exile and if they were outside of the country to come back before the borders closed. Pavel Kohout, playwright and novelist, had been shuttling back and forth between Prague and Frankfurt, where his new novel was being published, seeking out Czech writers and persuading them to return to rebuild the writers union as a dissident center. Kohout contacted several members at the Frankfurt Book Fair that was attacked by Daniel Cohn-Bendit. The book fair in 1968 had an unusually high number of Czech writers for the same reason the Lincoln Center Film Festival was suddenly packed with Czechoslovakian directors. Supporting Czech art became an act of political defiance, and many of the artists were still—no one was sure for how much longer—available for travel.
Youth were joining the Communist Party at an unprecedented rate with the intention of taking it over and directing it. In the month following the invasion, 7,199 people joined, and according to official figures, 63.8 percent, two out of three, were less than thirty years old. This seemed certain to have an impact on a Party that had been largely middle-aged and elderly.
The Soviet troops were tucked quietly out of sight, but they were there. When Czech youth staged a demonstration in late September, the Soviets had only to threaten the Czech police that if they did not break up the march, the Soviet troops would be brought out. The police stopped the march.
Youth were also forming Dubek clubs around the country, most of which attracted hundreds of members who collected and discussed his speeches.
In the fall of 1968 Dubek sent a letter to the Czechoslovakian Olympic team in Mexico City. He said that if the team was not as successful as they hoped, “don’t hang your heads: What will not succeed today, may succeed tomorrow.”
CHAPTER 18
THE GHASTLY STRAIN
OF A SMILE
One is not born, but rather becomes a woman. No biological, psychological or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature.
—SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR, The Second Sex, 1949
I think this has been the unknown heart of a woman’s problem in America for a long time, this lack of a private image. Public images that defy reason and have very little to do with women themselves have the power to shape too much of their lives. These images would not have such power, if women were not suffering a crisis of identity.
—BETTY FRIEDAN, The Feminine Mystique, 1963
Take a memo, Mr. Smith: Like every other oppressed people rising up today, we’re out for our freedom—by any means necessary.
—ROBIN MORGAN, “Take a Memo, Mr. Smith,” Win