organisation CSUV.
Mueller was a leading opponent of the bureaucratic regime and its domInation of the official youth organis ation, the CSM, from his carliest ycars as a student. In April 1964 he came under attack for an article, The Party and Us, in which he opposed the Communist Party's suppression of the aspirations of the youth.
As a result of this and subsequent activities he was expelled from the CSM and the Prague Engineering Faculty in December 1966 and drafted into the army.
RE-INSTATED A year later, the Novotny regime fell apart, and a new leadership team under Alexander Dubcek was clected. Trying to gain a popular base, the Dubicek reformers, loosened the bureaucratic strangichold over the uss organisations, Mueller was reastated, and the CSM Icaders attempled to take the steam out of the student movement by adopting some of Mueller's carlier proposals.
However, the CSM was very rapidly bypassed by the mass of students. In 1968 it was replaced by a new student organisation, the SVS. Mueller specessfully fought against attempts to tie the SVS to the control of the Party.
After the occupation of the country by 600,000 Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968, there was no shortage of voices calling for recognition of the new reality and urging moderation' in every sphere. Mueller's voice, however, was not amongst these. The Communist Party faces a decisive test next weekend on its attitude towands the repression of dissidents in Eastern Europe, The National Union of Students' conference in Margate will then be discussing a report prepared by the CP-dominated NUS executive on its relations with the Czech student Al the last NUS conference, delegates foiled an attempt by the executive to whitewash CSUV, which was set up by the Kremlin's puppet regime in the wake of the Russian invasion of Crechoslavakia in 1968. Its new reporl coincides with an international campaign to free former Czech student leader Jini Mueller, jailed for 5½ years in 1972, Delegates will undoubtedly want to know what action the NUS executive proposes to take on the case.
In the autumn of 1968, Mueller was instrumental in forging a series of accords between the SVS and leading trade unions, calling for the withdrawal of foreign troops, an and to the compromises with Moscow, and the setting up of workers councils, When the SVS was banned in June 1969, a number of strikes Jiri Mueller-jailed for his long struggle against bureaucratic regime in Czechoslovakia were called in Prague.
EXPELLED By the spring of 1970, the Husak regime was strong enough to expel Mueller once again from the university. A hurriedly orginised petition demanding his release evoked a massive response from the Prague students.
Forced to take a job as a travelling salesman, he continued to oppose the "normalisation' in the name of the struggle for socialist democracy.
On 29 November 1971, he was arrested together with the former Cl leader, Jaroslav Sabata, and accused of producing a leatiel, reminding Crochoslovak citizens of their constitutional right to abstai from the farcical elections prepared by the regime and to strike out the namo of the single, officil "candidate" This was charauterised as subversive activity against the established socialist state and society? for which all the defendants were sentenced to terms of imprisonment.
Mueller, like his co-defendants, relused to recant and pointed to. "the fundamental difference between political activity directed against the policies pursued by those at present in power, and activity which is anti socialist and anti-social in nature' His own activity he proudly declared to be "based on socialism, but., app osed to a regime created as a result of the invasion of Czechoslovakia'. CAMPAIGN and many other communists and socialists in Czechoslovakia calls for vigorous action in the student and labour movement to force an end to the repression.
A defence campaign has heen launched in this country by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, focussing on the cuses of Mueller and Sabata. With the support of the International Marxist Group a series of meetings are heing orpinbed around the country at which Croch exiles - meluding Jan Kavan, a close collaborator of Mueller both before and after the invasion he speaking.
Furthermore, the Committee lo Defend Czechoslovak Socialists will be orginising a public mecting at Margate during the NUS conference. The question is NUS leadership stand on this issue? The imprisonment of liri Mueller will propaganda where does the FOUNDATION