Soviet takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1968 witnessed by John McCarthy; Letter to Les Earnest dated Nov. 1, 1968

Nov. 1, 1968

Vienna



Dear Les,	

	I had quite an interesting visit to Czechoslovakia.  First 
there were two days in Prague, then a car trip to Bratislava, 
then a visit to their Institute of Technical Cybernetics, then a 
long weekend in the Tatra mountains (Monday was a holiday, the 
50th anniversary of Czechoslovakia), and then they drove me to 
Vienna where I have been IMB ing.  Details:

	I was met at Prague airport (saw about 5 big Russian 
helicopters) by Ivan Plander from above mentioned Bratislava 
Institute.  No questions, no baggage inspection from customs.  4 
hours late on account of London fog so direct to hotel.  
Travelog concerned August; here is Wencislaus square where 
demonstration held, one or more students shot, see bullet scars 
on museum building, see flowers in front of statue in square, 
see burned out radio building.  Next day visited Institute of 
Technical Information losers.  Met Culik and Bechvar from 
mathematical institute; they were very smart but work on 
semi-losing problems (complexity of Turing machines), dinner in 
former monastery, talked politics till 10, then on my initiative 
to rick music club full of teenager’s college students.  That 
day a disk jockey played mostly American soul, no West Coast 
music, some British.  Very slick pattern.  He told me he knew 
and liked West Coast stuff but didn’t consider it danceable 
enough for this club.  He gets most of his records on trips to 
West by cadging them from record company sales executive.  No 
light show though some were advertised on posters as well as 
live bands with English names but apparently either local or 
from West Germany.

	On the way to Bratislava we found ourselves scooting in and out 
of Russian truck convoys heading east. The way is incredibly 
full of detours, all two lane and at one point we got lost along 
with several Russian trucks and a car from Holland.  Our driver 
found his way back, don’t know about others.  At one point, 
all vehicles were stopped by some bottlenecks ahead and Petras, 
director of Slovak institute got into conversation with Russian 
officer who complained about postal service because his aunt who 
lived in western Czechoslovakia had not answered his letters.  
The Slovaks could think of another reason why his letters were 
unanswered.

	The Institute of Technical Cybernetics in Bratislava is on the 
whole a non-loser.  Its projects look like they might succeed 
and would be useful if they did.  They are designing a 17-bit 
computer for process control and possibly time sharing to be 
built out of Czech TTL.  If D. Pools wants an adventure, they 
would be glad to have help.

	Czechoslovak scientific institutions have cut all their 
contacts with the Russians and other Eastern countries that 
invalid them.  They are eager for scientific connections with 
the West.  Petras even asked could they got subcontracts to do 
programming or hardware design.  This might be worth thinking 
about for programming firms or outfits like III because wages 
and overhead are low and the cream of talent might be available 
for skimming.

	The trip to Totras took 3 days, one each way driving over very 
bad roads.  Once there the trails and would and rocks looked 
exactly like Sierras.  In fact once when the trail bent right 
over a wooden bridge, I half expected to see lower Yosemite 
falls, but the falls were only 20 as high.  We went on a 
telepherique to the peaks above the clouds, a single span of 15 
miles.  It is interesting to see the cables disappear above into 
the clouds.  The top was nice, signs in many languages, but with 
some of the Russian signs removed.

	There were still large numbers of anti-Russian signs in Slovak 
and Russian on roads, fences and buildings.  For example,

Иван иди домой – Ivan go home

Ленин проснись; Брежнев сошел с ума 
- Lenin awoke; Brezhnev has gone crazy

Отец освобожден; сын оккупаны [sic]- 
Father liberated; son occupied



	Most prevalent of all, however, were signs in praise of Dubeek 
and Svoboda, and their pictures were everywhere.

	So far the Russians have achieved the opposite of their purpose 
in occupying Czechoslovakia.  The people here were their friends 
but now consider the Russians enemies.  At the Inst. Tech. Cyb., 
they preferred to translate sentence by sentence than to have me 
talk Russian.  Gvodjak, Ruzena’s boss, took me to dinner in a 
restaurant with his wife who doesn’t speak English.  When I 
offered to speak Russian, he said: “not in a public place”.  
He is dean of the faculty at the university and has to watch his 
position.  He said there would be no trouble in extending 
Ruzena’s leave.

	One of the computer designers there had spent two months in 
Novosibirsk in May-June studying time sharing with Ershov.  He 
told me that two weeks after the invasion he received a phone 
call from Novosibirsk asking him what was the truth about the 
invasion.  Since the Russian had to call three times, this 
obviously required some courage.

	The Czechoslovaks still have personal freedom except for 
freedom of the press.  Apparently, no zone but the top leaders 
was arrested either by the Russians or Czechs, and Plander had 
no difficulty in driving me to Vienna in the Institute car.  
However, they worry about the Russian’s possible next move.  
Since the Russian’s failure was essentially the inability to 
find collaborators, it seems to me that if they want to continue 
they must create a success gradient according to collaboration 
but they certainly have not done it yet.  They have not got the 
Czechoslovaks to admit that counter-revolutionaries existed.  If 
their existence were admitted, someone would have to be 
arrested, and this would destroy the trust between people and 
government.

	Zemanck at IBIM in Vienna is the world’s best host.  I gave a 
lecture on Zohar’s results and did some consulting.  They are 
the best group in computer science in IBM.

	When I turned on the radio in my hotel room in Vienna, the 
first thing I heard was, “ Und nun wir haben die West Coast 
gruppa Blue Cheer mit der.  Summer Time Blues.” On the whole, 
it was a very good program with two Blue Cheer pieces, the 
Jefferson Airplane Greasy Heart, some Beatles, Otis Redding, 
Wilson Pickett, etc.  The third channel of Austrian radio seems 
to play only American and British stuff, some of it quite bad.

	Today at 11:50 Am , I go on to Moscow.

	Semack gave me a report by C.H. Lindsay of Manchester called 
“Algol. 68 with less tears” which is almost completely 
comprehensible.  It’s really quite a good language, and I 
think I will probably leave Novosibirsk in time to go to the 
meeting in Munich Dec 16-20 to see if Algol 68 can be saved from 
the syntax of its inventor.

	I am getting very eager to get back to Stanford as I have lots 
of new enterprises in mind.  Please write me in Novosibirsk 
about the state of the project at all.

	You can show this letter to people but don’t post it on a 
bulletin board or allow any part of it to be quoted in print.



Best Regards

John