Shared Anxiety

An unusual expression of fears

"I am eighteen ... I do not want to I die," said the letter to the editor. Another asked, "What kind of life awaits us?" The words were not new, nor was the fear that prompted them: the stationing of new nuclear missiles in Europe. The forum, however, was different. The letters were printed not in West European newspapers, but in Czechoslovakia's official Communist daily, Rude Pravo. Despite their ambiguous phrasing, they seemed to convey thinly masked criticism of recently announced Soviet plans to station new tactical nuclear weapons in Czechoslovakia and East Germany if NATO begins to install new missiles in Western Europe. Deployment of the U.S.-made weapons is scheduled to start next month if the U.S. and the Soviet Union do not reach an agreement in Geneva to limit intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe.

The letters were not an admission by the party-controlled press that Czechoslovakia, a staunch Moscow ally, opposes the new Soviet missiles. But in their combination of idealism and bitter frustration over the arms race, they revealed that some East Europeans share the anxiety of many of their Western neighbors over the failure of the superpowers to agree on curbs for medium-range nuclear weapons.

Whether genuine or fabricated by party propagandists, the letters display undisguised fear. They suggest that the Czechoslovak regime is well aware of the tensions caused by the planned missile deployment, and that it is using its newspaper columns as a safety valve for volatile emotions. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.