PRAXIS SUPPRESSED
YUGOSLAVIA The magazine Praxis, which for many years has been the principal intellectual pole for Yugoslav Marxists, has been suddenly banned by the ruling bureaucracy. Thus is manifested the increasingly repressive course of the Yugoslav regime, whose repression is more and more directed against the left. Praxis had been published since 1965 by the philosophy department of the University of Zagreb. Among its editors were some of the most talented of the country's younger Marxists, as well as some old decorated fighters of the Yugoslav Communist party who had been in the vanguard of the partisan war during the Nazi occupation. The editors of the review are resolute advocates of self-management and irreconcilable opponents of both Stalinist bureaucratic centralism and probourgeois and procapitalist tendencies. They had especially fought against the renaissance of Croation nationalism, long before the leaders of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY, the CP) became concerned about this phenomenon. But the editors of Praxis refused to be unconditional apologists for all the deformations, injurious to the interests of the workers and of socialism, whose emergence the Yugoslav bureaucratic regime had stimulated or tolerated. Like the eighf critical professors of the University of Belgrade who were fired by the authorities in flagrant violation of the principles of self-management, the editors of Praxis particularly denounced the evils of the "socialist market economy, " the rise of social inequality and material privilege, the abuses of power and the corruption of the ruling bureaucracy, and the return of unemployment and the weakening of self-management as a consequence of the bureaucracy's monopolization of power. It is this courageous fight for which the group in power is attacking Praxis. Neither the Praxis editors nor the Belgrade professors share Trotskyist political positions. The accusations to this effect that were made against Praxis during the last plenum of the Central Committee of the LCY were devoid of all foundation, and the leaders of the LCY are perfectly well aware of this. But revolutionary Marxists, faithful to the principles of international proletarian solidarity and of the broadest socialist democracy, support and will continue to support the fight of the professors and students of Belgrade and Zagreb against all violations of socialist legality, against any return to administrative and repressive measures aimed at cutting off ideological debate, against any suppression of political currents that are clearly part of the struggle to build socialism. The experience of Praxis confirms what the Fourth International has ceaselessly asserted for years: Real workers self-management requires that workers concils and the congress of workers councils exercise power - not only political power, but also economic power, not only power in the factories but also power in the local areas, regions, and the country as a whole. Real workers self-management requires the broadest socialist democracy and the end of the monopoly of power by a single political group, for any such group can only be a transmission belt for the interests and appetites of a privileged bureaucracy fundamentally hostile to self-management.
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FREE IVAN DEJMAL!
Editeur responsable: René Groslambert, 34 rue Nothomb, 1040 - Bruxelles Imprimerie spéciale de l'editeur.
CZECHOSLOVAKIA Onc of the favorite claims of the Czechoslovak governe ent, which rules in the shadow of Soviet tanks, is that it owes its victory over "opportunists" and "other revisionists" solely to the use of methods that belong to the realm of political persuasion. But the reality is that in addition to the Soviet occupation army, which still numbers nearly 100,000 troops arr represents a quite decisive "argument, " there are many other instruments available to the rulers in defending their power. While the number of people imprisoned and sentenced festifies to the efficiency of the repressive apparatus, the manner in which this apparatus goes about disposing of opponents is equally significant. The case of Ivan Dejmal, 28 years old and now in prison and in danger, is a case in point. It is true that this is not the first time he has been in jail, for the machine was set in motion against him in 1970 as well. In that year, shortly after finishing his studies at the Agricultural Studies Institute, he was arrested and charged with be longing to the "Movement of Revolutionary Youth. "The arrest of those whom the Czechoslovok government called the "Trotskyist group of Petr Uhl and Company" was the prelude to the series of trials of the "normalization" period. Like all his codefendants, Dejmal was held in preventive detention under incredible conditions for a year and a half, but this did not keep him from conducting himself courageously in face of all the psychological and physical pressure put on him by the examining magistrates of the secret police. The secret police wanted td prove that the Movement of Revolutionary Youth had been aiming at "creating political crises. " The Czechoslovak press, taken over by the "normalizers, " spared no effort in spreading this propaganda, going so far as to assert that "like Troisky, his inheritors (that is, the defendants) receive subsidies that run into the millions, that go beyond the mears of individuals, and that the FBl and CIA must certainly know When Deimal came before the judges, he did everything he could not to go along with the prefabricated farce that was his trial. His conduct generated such rage among the personnel of the repressive bodies that after the expiration of his two-year sentence, and in spite of his bad physical condition (he has difficulties with his liver and suffers from the aftereffects of jaundice), Ivan Dejmal was drafted info the army. Since he hod just come out of prison, he was not considered a soldier like all others, but a "political" who had to be watched constantly.
Harassed at every step by restrictions of all kinds and constantly surrounded by a swarm of informers, 48
Ivan Dejmal could not stand it any longer. During the summer of 1974 he tried to kil! himself. The psychological pressure, consciously orchestrated by the secret police, appeared to have attained its goal. After several weeks of "treatment" in the psychiatric department of the Prague military hospital (in which the conditions were nearly identical to those in prison), Ivan Dejmal was sent back to his unit, It took only a week for the secret police to send him back to prison. This time the charge carries a maximum penalty of three years in jail: damaging the morale of the troops. The police vendetta against Dejmal is easily comprehended when it is remembered that he is one of the thirty former political prisoners of the normalization period who signed a courageous manifesto dec laring solidarity with Chilean workers and democrats. (See INPRECOR, No. 9, October 3, 1974.) This manifesto, which was wide ly distributed by the international press and was even handed out clandestinely in Chile itself, vehemently criticized the Czechoslovak authorities, whose official and hypocritical concern for the victims of repression in Chile has been no barrier to the "dynamism of trade between Czechoslovakia and the fascist Chilean junta and the refusal of Czechoslovakia to grant asylum to Chilean refugees. " The manifesto concluded by asserting that the real friends of the Chilean resistance are those who have been repressed by the regime for acting in accordance with their socialist convictions — in Czechoslovakia. Of course, this manifesto was not published in the official Czechoslovak press; in fact, it drew blows from the secret police against its signatories. It was not long before four of them were arrested. Three of them are now out on bail, although the prosecutions against them are continuing. Only Deimal remains in prison. According to the latest information, his trial was said to have been scheduled to begin early in February but was reportedly postponed. It may be held at any time and could result in a heavy sentence. But what must be feared above all, even more than the possible sentence itself, is the psychologica! pressure exerted by the police methods that Ivan Dejmal will have to face alone, Without solidarity from progressive and democratic public opinion, any hope of saving Ivan Dejmal's. life is small. Very small. After all, he would not be the first politica! prisoner in the 1970s to "choose freedom" while remaining in Czechoslovakia - by killing himself. He must be saved! FREE IVAN