against Obzory and asked for its suspension as its writing has proved harmful to the Soviet-Czechoslovak alliance. Rudé Právo then proceeded to feature the Soviet intervention prominently in several of its subsequent issues, all the while denouncing the ChristianDemocratic weekly and describing "workers' indignation." This set the stage for Communist manipulation of upward pressures so that, on March 1, the Communist press was able to print a page 1 heading, "Workers Protest Against Obzory," with the column depicting the adoptions of anti-Obzory resolutions by workers' meetings in three of the largest Czech industrial plants. The Czechoslovak Government did not suspend the weekly despite Communist pressures; suspension did come on the day of the Communist putsch, the weekly's offices were taken over, and its funds confiscated.

Nové Prúdy, a monthly which was later made into a biweekly, was financed by the Slovak Democratic Party. Because of its strong anti-Communist orientation, the magazine enjoyed a wide readership not only in Slovakia, but in the Czech lands as well. It too became a target of Slovak, and allstate, Communist attacks, particularly on account of its expositions of Communist excesses in economic, military, and police administration as well as for its pictorial supplement which featured Western, while excluding Russian, motifs.

Downward pressures were brought to bear on Nové Prúdy, and its editorial staff and policy were subjected to Communist onslaughts on the floor and in the Cultural Committee of the Czechoslovak Parliament. The Soviet Consulate in Bratislava registered several protests against the magazine's orientation. Following the Soviet Ambassador's interventions, Nové Prúdy was put on the agenda of the Czechoslovak Cabinet which acted to transfer the matter into the informal policy machinery of the National Front coalition. By way of preparing ground for the final disposition, the Minister of Information (through the instrumentality of the nationalized film industry) and the Minister of Defense (through the instrumentality of Obrana Lidu-the Army daily) filed a total of seven suits against the responsible editor of Nové Prúdy, asking that his parliamentary immunity be lifted and that he be subject to criminal prosectuion.

Within about a 2-month span which preceded the 1948 putsch, a number of Nové Prúdy issues were confiscated by Communist-dominated authorities because of the magazine's criticisms of excesses which the Communist-led Slovak Commissariat of the Interior perpetrated on leading members of the Slovak Democratic Party. During the critical 5-day putsch period, but ahead of the final Communist coup of February 25, Communist police entered the premises of Nové Prúdy, conducted a search, and sought to arrest Mr. J. Fuchs, the magazine's leading editor who was in fact apprehended at a subsequent occasion.

The cases of Obzory and Nové Prúdy may also serve to underscore another interesting aspect of Communist pressure: the use of court suits as a device for public, legal, and financial harassment of democratic papers. A related practice to which the Communists frequently resorted was the submission and request of long-winded, spaceconsuming press corrections which were sometimes running to a length of 1,000 words or thereabouts.

The Communist Party followed a consistent policy of weakening and restricting democratic papers' financial means. Even though

some aspects of this practice have already been mentioned, a brief listing of some of the major Communist efforts in this direction may perhaps be of use: (1) Forcing the democratic press to black-market purchases of newsprint at inflated prices; (2) forcing certain democratic publishing houses to costly purchases of printing plants and equipment, while Communist papers obtained the same under the "people's management" system; (3) fixing uniform prices, sales commissions, and classified space for all dailies regardless of production-cost differentials and advertising appeal; (4) endeavoring, through the device of paper rationing, to enforce dictated ceilings on newspaper circulation, disregarding the popularity and growth potential of individual papers; (5) utilization of court suits and press corrections; (6) the fact that the Soviet printing house which filled the wartime order of the London Czechoslovak government-in-exile for provisional currency (scripts) turned out one-third more money than ordered, and secretly retained this extra amount. This sum eventually wound up in the hands of Soviet Army and diplomatic officers, and in the coffers of the Czechoslovak and Slovak Communist Parties; and (7) the immediate postliberation occupation and seizure of abandoned Nazi and collaborator properties, including homes and enterprises which the Communists, assisted by Red Army and NKVD agents, had successfully performed. Negotiable and movable financial assets, such as cash, jewelry, furs, and other valuables, often went undeclared and are said to have landed in Communist pockets and treasuries of the Communist Party and of the Revolutionary Trade Union Movement's Central Council. All these factors are indicative of Communist practices, and they all were of direct benefit to Communist press as well as harmful to democratic forces and their press media.

The simultaneous operation, in their interaction, of the three pressure approaches amounted to a preplanned scheme and hopeful expectation on the part of the Communists that, given the conditioning factors which were present in the 1945-48 period, the democratic press (and indeed all democratic elements in general) would enter on a gradual but certain process of decay and submission-yielding to the Communist forces a majoritarian control of Czechoslovak affairs by what might be called legitimate, parliamentarian methods of transfer. The Communist hope had been in vain.

(5) COMMUNIST FAILURE AND THE COUP

Ever since the general elections of May 1946, which had given Czechoslovak Communists 38 percent of the total vote, the popular appeal of the Communist Party has ebbed. The change was barely perceptible at first; the democratic resurgence, however, was gaining momentum at a steady pace. Serious observers of the Czechoslovak scene appear to place Communist realization of the failure of the "parliamentary takeover" method at some time-point between July and November 1947; i.e., between the unanimous decision of the Czechoslovak Cabinet to participate in the Marshall plan (rescinded on immediate orders of Moscow) and the outcome of the Social Democratic Party Congress which rid this party of some, but not all, of its fellow-traveling ballast. Various factors have prompted Stalin and Czechoslovak Communists to bring matters to a head; at any rate, the decision for violent seizure was tantamount to admission

that peaceful means of infiltration and disruption had failed. The truth of this fact was but underlined by a finding of the Public Opinion Research Institute (connected with the Information Ministry) which estimated that Communist electoral strength would show a decrease of about 10 percent in the coming 1948 elections. The impending seizure of power came to be foreshadowed on December 3, 1947, in a speech that was delivered by the Minister of Information at a meeting of Communist university students: "As long as we have Rudé Právo, the main Communist daily, we do not actually need any universities* * *. He who works against the Communists is guilty of high treason you learn this from Rudé Právo and you will learn it at the university. You laugh at this now, but you will soon discover it has come to be true

* * * ""

The mutilated press freedom of 1945-48 did not facilitate Communist take-over in Czechoslovakia. The Communists therefore resorted to force to carry out the putsch. The political and legal system of those years-with its political parties, elections, meetings, and newspapers-obstructed Communist aims and ways, as a boulder which could only be removed by a violent coup.

The Communist apparatus and the Communist Minister of Information were able to harass the non-Communist and anti-Communist press, but they could not exclude its influence. A coup d'etat which would monopolize the entire press was a necessary prerequisite for the extinguishing of the freedom of the press. The only starting point for an assessment of the Czechoslovak case is provided by Communist press practices which followed the actual seizure of power. Earlier Communist practice cannot be precisely characterized as accomplished infiltration, but rather as a partial and preparatory seizure which cannot be repeated at any other place where those conditions which made the Czechoslovak putsch possible are not present. The existing press monopoly of a Communist "people's democratic" regime is all embracing and allows for no exceptions. All press is government press. It was only in rare instances, during the 14-year existence of this press, that anyone dared to criticize the Government in a newspaper, book, or pamphlet, regardless of what the occasion might have been.

No doubts prevail but that the Communists had planned to communize Czechoslovakia. To attain this end, they were in need of an efficient helper-a communized press which would have no competition. Had they been able to implement their plan in the immediate wake of Nazi defeat, they would have enthroned an exclusively Communist press without delay. They did not put their plan into effect for various reasons, both internal and external (substantial resistance of the nation; fears of Western reaction; etc.). They did not discard this plan, however; it was just postponed. They decided to prepare ground for its consummation through disruption, terror, and infiltration. They lost no time in employing these means at full speed. Their hopes were nonetheless in vain. They encountered insuperable resistance; they saw that infiltration was not working out as they had expected; democratic resistance was increasing and thus obstructing Communist infiltration plans; they therefore resorted to violence and the final coup. They have not gained additional helpers in the press, but a contrary process has set in, their opponents were growing stronger.

The 3 postwar years of representative government, however limited and perilous, will have left substantial effects on the long-run development and preservation of the spirit of democracy and freedom in the minds and hearts of the Czechoslovak people. Here, a large measure of merit rests with democratic newspapermen who had been kindling the flames of freedom against crushing odds and at great personal risks, and who had successfully resisted Communist infiltration and extortion.2

* See bibliography, appendix p. 99.

ESTONIA

THE REDS AND THE PRESS OF ESTONIA PRIOR TO OCCUPATION

By Harold Randsepp

A

In free Estonia I started working in the newspaper field in 1922. few years before the Soviet occupation I was elected to the managing board of the only active newspapermen's trade organization, Association of Estonian Journalists, and as a result I personally knew all the people working in the field in Estonia. I was removed from my job by the Soviet forces a week after the beginning of the Soviet occupation on June 28, 1940. During the occupation it was made. impossible for me to work as a journalist or in any related occupation. Therefore I became employed by the Central Union of Estonian Consumers Cooperatives as worker. I was employed there during the German occupation of Estonia. I was arrested by German forces in 1944, as a member of underground movement against the Nazis. I once again found my way back to journalism as a refugee in Germany in 1947. At the present time I am on the editorial staff of the Free Estonian Word, a weekly publication appearing in New York, and I am also the president of the Association of free Estonian journalists

in U.S.A.

Among the people who worked for the press at the time of the Estonian Republic none has ever been discovered to have been a Communist either openly or under cover. Even later, an intense observation of the workings of the press under Soviet occupation, has revealed no individual, from whose works it could be gathered that he had been, during the Estonian Republic, an undercover Communist with the task of secretly infiltrating the press with Communist propaganda.

The seizure of the free Estonian press by Soviet forces on the 21st of June, 1940, took place through the sheer forces of terrorism. At the time a large number of newspapermen were forced to resign from their jobs. Along with the loss of the jobs came the loss of their right to ever again work in this field. Some of them were arrested on the spot. A few of the journalists were kept on at their posts, but these only out of pure necessity, since the Soviet forces did not. have enough people with whom to replace them. But these who remained were kept under constant terror and control and they, too were only to stay for a short while to be replaced by Soviet citizens of Estonian background recruited by the Communist forces. The terrorism was so great that every journalist who was still employed as such knew that even the slightest error would lead him to prison or to a slave labor camp or even to death. It was this terrorism that made it possible for the Communists to still have the newspapers published during its occupation.