Dubcek Honored at Funeral Rites

BRATISLAVA, Czechoslovakia —  The people of Czechoslovakia paid their last respects Saturday to Alexander Dubcek, whose 1968 bid to reform communism is admired in an age when the communist system is passing into history.

The 70-year-old Dubcek died Nov. 7, six weeks after his chauffeur-driven car skidded off a rain-slick highway en route to Prague for a meeting of the federal Parliament.

It was his brave attempt to reshape communism while party leader in 1968 for which Czechoslovaks honored him. The period of hope and vigor known as the “Prague Spring,” and Dubcek’s struggle to create “socialism with a human face,” was crushed by a Soviet-led invasion.

“I feel very touched by him because he suffered a lot for us,” said one tearful mourner, a middle-aged chemist who gave her name as Maria. “I feel connected with him from my youth.”

Even Dubcek’s opponents in the fight over whether Czechoslovakia should split into two nations paid homage to the man.

“Alexander Dubcek in his life became part of our history,” said Slovak Premier Vladimir Meciar, a supporter of independence for Slovakia, which will take place Jan. 1.

Dubcek was kicked out of the Communist Party in 1969 and went into seclusion in the 1970s and ‘80s. But he re-emerged during the 1989 revolution and served in the symbolic post of president of the Parliament until June.

Thousands waited two hours or more in blustery weather to pass by Dubcek’s flag-draped coffin as it lay in state Friday at the National Theater in Bratislava, soon to be the capital of independent Slovakia, the poorer, more rural, eastern third of Czechoslovakia.

Mourners also filled the theater square during the funeral Saturday. Inside the gilded hall, the stage was blanketed with wreaths.

But the backdrop to the funeral was the tension surrounding the division of Czechoslovakia.

Dubcek had spurned the Slovak nationalists’ offer to be a figurehead for Slovakia, although his international prestige could have brought needed credibility and a moderating influence. His Social Democrat party failed to win enough seats in June elections for a place in the Slovak Parliament, and there was bitterness among pro-independence leaders that Dubcek did not fight for national rights.

Nonetheless, Slovak politicians took pains in their eulogies to portray Dubcek as a Slovak hero.

Former Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel, a Czech who also opposed the breakup, attended the funeral. But there was no sign of Vaclav Klaus, the Czech premier with whom Meciar is negotiating the division.