Czechoslovakia Foreign Relations Ussr

A growing sense of urgency over putting democratic structures in place emerged here Friday, apparently spurred by concern that events in the Soviet Union may spin out of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's control. "All the information I have, and also my instincts, tell me that the times are such that we must work quickly," President Vaclav Havel told the Slovak National Council in Bratislava.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Friday praised the 1968 reform movement in Czechoslovakia as a politically correct attempt to "democratize and humanize" socialism, and he criticized the Warsaw Pact invasion that ended it as wrong.

This nation's Communist leaders, trying to avoid total collapse of their once-dominant party, approved an "action program" Friday that labels the 1968 invasion by Warsaw Pact forces as "unjustified" and the decision behind it as wrong. The program was promptly criticized as failing to go far enough in its assessment of the invasion or in its proposals for democratizing the party.

As hard-line communism in Czechoslovakia went into its death throes last week, an eerie quiet fell over Mlada Boleslav, an industrial town just northeast of Prague. Soviet troops, stationed here since 1968, simply disappeared. "They went inside and stayed there for days," Oldrich Kubala, an editor at the regional newspaper Zar (Light), told a visitor.

Faced with an opposition ultimatum, Czechoslovakia's Communist prime minister promised Tuesday to form a new coalition government, including an unspecified number of non-Communists, by next Sunday.

Liberal Soviet lawmakers, watching the popular demand for political and economic reforms swell in Czechoslovakia, said here Monday that the time has come for Moscow to declare that the Warsaw Pact's suppression of the 1968 "Prague Spring" was wrong and a setback for socialism. At a news conference prior to this week's visit to Italy of President Mikhail S.

Twenty-one years ago, the Soviet Union sent its troops into Czechoslovakia to install an orthodox Communist leadership in place of the liberal reformers and their "Prague Spring." The gains of socialism, Moscow declared, would always be defended everywhere. When that Soviet-installed leadership was swept from office over the weekend, still clinging to communism's old and rigid doctrines, the Soviet Union reacted with quiet approval.

The father of Soviet communism, V. I. Lenin, once remarked that Germans are so obedient that if a mob of them ever tried to storm a railroad station, they'd all buy tickets first. But if obedience characterizes the Germans, it is a remarkable civility that characterizes the Czechoslovaks. For amid all the turmoil and excitement of Czechoslovakia's recent political reawakening, those pressing for change have maintained an unusual sense of consideration for their fellow citizens.

U.S. specialists say they believe that Czechoslovakia's leadership changes Friday were encouraged by the Soviet Union, perhaps in an effort to clear away the last remaining trouble spot in Eastern Europe before the Dec. 2-3 summit meeting in Malta. Over the past few weeks, the Soviet Union has demonstrated in a number of ways its interest in political change in Prague, Eastern European specialists said.

The hard-line Czechoslovak regime cracked under the weight of mass public dissent Friday after one of the most extraordinary days in the country's postwar history. It was a day that saw the downfall of repressive Communist leader Milos Jakes and the rise of an obscure Politburo member, Karel Urbanek, 48.