1968 - Mark Kurlansky [39]
Decades after the Tet Offensive special Cronkite said, “I did it because I thought it was the journalistically responsible thing to do at that moment. It was an egotistical thing for us to do . . . it was egotistical for me to do and for CBS to permit me to do.” When again would a broadcast star submit himself to Cronkite’s brand of self-criticism?
CHAPTER 4
TO BREATHE IN
A POLISH EAR
I want to rule as Thou dost—always, secretly.
—ADAM MICKIEWICZ, Dziady, or Forefathers’ Eve, 1832
The communication of opposites, which characterizes the commercial and political style, is one of the many ways in which discourse and communication make themselves immune against the expression of protest and refusal.
—HERBERT MARCUSE, One-Dimensional Man, 1964
NO ONE was more surprised to discover a student movement in “the happiest barracks in the Soviet camp” than the students themselves. Happy barracks is perverse Polish humor. It was not that the Poles were happy, but that they had managed to secure from the Soviets certain rights, such as freedom to travel, that had been denied in other Eastern European countries. They were certainly happier than the citizens of Novotny´’s Czechoslovakia. The Polish government would even sell $5 in hard currency to a Pole who wished to go abroad.
By 1968, the belief that the Soviet bloc was crumbling had been widespread in Western academic circles for a number of years. In the summer of 1964, a group of economics and business experts offered a series of seminars in Moscow, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia on the disintegrating bloc. Clark Kerr, president of the University of California at Berkeley, participated, sensing trouble in the communist world, but without the slightest notion that he would return to campus in the fall to face the first important student uprising in the West.
Now many thought the hour had arrived for the Eastern bloc. When Dubek came to power in Czechoslovakia and Brezhnev rushed to Prague, experienced Soviet watchers were quick to recall October 1956, when Nikita Khrushchev rushed to Warsaw faced with the onetime disgraced Władysław Gomułka, now managing a political comeback and overwhelmingly popular. Despite Khrushchev’s intervention, Gomułka came to power, and this Polish defiance had been all the encouragement needed for the Hungarians to rise up against Moscow. Was Brezhnev’s unsuccessful rush to Prague a prelude to uprisings in the Soviet bloc?
This was Moscow’s great fear. They had newly rebellious Romania to worry about, and Tito’s Yugoslavia. Even Fidel Castro’s Cuba had been causing them trouble. In the midst of Soviet difficulties with Romania, a February meeting of world Communist Parties in Budapest was boycotted by Cuba, which was in the midst of an anti-Soviet purge in its government. In January the Cuban Communist Party had “discovered” a pro-Soviet “microfaction” in its midst and prosecuted and convicted nine pro-Soviet Cuban officials for being “traitors to the Revolution.” One Cuban official was sentenced to fifteen years in prison, eight were given twelve-year sentences, and twenty-six others received two-to-ten-year sentences.
But while Poles had a reputation in Eastern Europe for rebelliousness, Poland was not high on Moscow’s lengthening list of worries for 1968. Gomułka, though at sixty-three he had outlasted Khrushchev, had lost some of his popular appeal. He understood that he had to balance Polish nationalism with Moscow relations and avoid the kind of debacle Hungary suffered in 1956. But the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary and the accompanying world condemnation had been difficult for the Soviets as well. Gomułka understood that the Kremlin had weaknesses and there were chances for concessions. The Soviet economy had been performing badly, and the Soviets could