THE threat of a sp:ead of the 'Polish disease' is a nightmare which haunts the stalinist bureaucracies Europe.
Challenge (20 August) the Husak regime in Czechoslovakia, the Soviets invaded that country in 1968, is preparing a massive show-trial of 19 supporters of Charter T7, human rights movement.
The afraid. On 14 June a new body announced its existence: the Preparatory Committee of Free Trade Unions in Czechoslovakia.
'Above all', said the first statement from the Committee, 'we wish to defend the right of our working people, their inof Eastern As was reported in Socialist put in power after the Czech prominent Stalinists have reason to be the tion of terests and demands, voiced at various times, during personal discussions, at meetings, in tactories and elsewhere.' The majority of those arrested are cultural AACECS academics. The Husak regime is well aware of the important role played by Polish intellectuals (Committee to Defend the Workers) in the events leading up to Gdansk 1980.
In East Germany also the regime is reacting harshly against any demonstrasupport among East German their criticisms and the around KOR been workers for Poland's Solidarity.
According to a recent report of the West Berlin based Human Rights Working Group there has been intense discussion in the factories and work-places of East Germany in recent months around question of the democratisation of the state-controlled union in the GDR, the Free German Trade Union (FDGB).
In the past two months alone the report says that seven workers have arrested in four big plants in Eastern Germany for publicly expressing their support for Solidarity. Zeiss-Jena works Union machine-tool factory in enborg and chemical workers in Rudolstadr.
Another worker by do as the Poles had done.
10,000 marks to Solidarity. (Based on Press and Labour Europe).
in Thuringen, the Gera, at the steelworks Maxhutte in Unterwellat the Wilhelm Pieck the name Detlef Abramson was imprisoned last autumn for ten months after he stated publicly that the East Germans should In January of this year a doctor by the name of Wilhelm Koch was imprisoned by the East German authorities for 4 years for having contributed the sum of information Palach Focus on Eastern