Page:NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE SURVEY 18; CZECHOSLOVAKIA; GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110010-2.pdf/47

 APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110010-2

Both before and after the brief period of Dubcek's rule, however, it has been the practice of Communist regimes to seize on instances of illegal dissident activity to allege a subversive threat. This has been done at various times for propaganda purposes, to support vigilance campaigns, to exploit for foreign or domestic policy purposes, or as a pretext for preventive action against political opponents both in and outside the party.

Armed resistance against the Communist regime—what little there has been—has been centered in the mountainous northeastern corner of Slovakia, which borders on the U.S.S.R. and Poland. Between 1950 and 1956, bands of Poles, Slovaks, and Ukrainian "partisans" moved freely across the frontiers, engaging in sporadic acts of sabotage and armed clashes with the police; they were subject to periodic mop-up operations. Most of these resistance groups were eliminated or disbanded, although the regime in subsequent years occasionally voiced concern over renewed guerrilla activity. Other resistance groups, organized from remnants of prewar Czechoslovak political parties, were active along the Moravian-Polish frontier. But their opposition was confined largely to circulating antiregime tracts, and only infrequently did they resort to violence. Most of these groups ultimately became subservient to the Communists, although some reportedly attempted to maintain contact with "revisionist" elements within the lower levels of the Communist Party apparatus.

Between 1948 and 1968 there were individuals or groups in nearly all sections of the country who were tried for subversive activities such as sabotage, dissemination of antistate literature, and rioting. In 1963, for instance, an antiregime demonstration during the May Day festivities in Prague was attributed to a group of youths belonging to an organization called the "Lone Star." Some underground organizations, such as a student group called the "White Rose" and several loosely organized workers' groups in Bohemia, circulated anti-Communist literature in schools and factories.

The Husak regime has shown no less sensitivity to threats of "subversion" than its pre-1968 predecessors. In 1970 the government announced it had uncovered a number of alleged underground movements and had arrested several individuals for "antistate" activity. In January of 1970 the police claimed to have surfaced a "Trotskyite" group which had conducted a nationwide campaign of creating public dissidence. In August several members of a "teenage group of terrorists" called Caiman were convicted of promoting armed sedition and attacks against government officials and facilities. An organization calling itself the Czechoslovak Citizens Socialist Movement purportedly distributed a "manifesto" to certain Western journalists and Dubcek supporters calling for a return to the ideas of the "Prague Spring."

Allegations of organized subversive activity have also been leveled by the regime at formerly prominent liberals, former party officials, and intellectuals associated with Dubcek's reform movement. While many of these persons clearly engaged in illegal antiregime activity, the charges of organized subversion were exploited largely by conservative party elements against Husak who had pledged that no punitive action would be taken against reformists for activities during the Dubcek period.

The largest series of trials in which subversion was a prominent charge occurred in late summer of 1972, when over 50 second-rank ex-reformers were sentenced for acts—all of them falling into the 1970-72 period—that included incitement and clandestine activity. Specifically, the defendants were accused of producing and disseminating antiregime and anti-Soviet printed matter, maintaining contacts with exiles hostile to the regime, urging the population to boycott the November 1971 elections, and forming subversive groups that sought "to overthrow socialism in Czechoslovakia and to dissolve Czechoslovakia's ties with the socialist countries and the U.S.S.R. in particular." It was perhaps symptomatic of the general desire of the public to hold itself aloof from any potentially disruptive developments that the trials were largely ignored by the masses despite accompanying regime propaganda designed to further discredit Dubcek's followers and underscore the futility of their actions.

F. Maintenance of internal security (S)

1. Police

The maintenance of public order and safety in Czechoslovakia, as in the other East European bloc countries, has involved the extension of regulatory police activity far beyond traditional Western limits. The regular, uniformed police is both organizationally and functionally only a component of an integrated system of security and intelligence agencies under party control, closely cooperating among themselves—despite occasional frictions—and having at their disposal the full resources of the state, including fully militarized components. With the exception of the collection of foreign military intelligence, which is under the purview of the Ministry of National Defense, the entire internal security, intelligence,

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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110010-2