In Eastern Europe, Pact With Russians Raises Old Specters
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KARLOVY VARY, CZECH REPUBLIC -- As President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia and President Barack Obama prepare to arrive in Prague on Thursday to sign a landmark arms control treaty, Marcela Balounova, like many Czechs, remains haunted by her memories of 1968, when nearly one million Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia, ushering in a period of political repression.
"The Russians invaded us before and they are invading us again," Ms. Balounova, 50, said from her art gallery in this picturesque spa town, where Peter the Great first came for a treatment in 1711 and which has since become so popular with Russians that most signs offering luxury products and services -- from million-euro villas to colonic irrigation -- are in Russian. "I still remember crying when the Russians came here. And now here we are more than 40 years later and this place has become a Little Moscow."
For the United States, the signing of an arms reduction treaty with Russia in the heart of the former Eastern Bloc, one year after Mr. Obama laid out his vision in Prague for a world free of nuclear weapons, offers a symbolic opportunity to reset relations with Moscow.
But while the American-Russian deal to reduce the binding cap on deployed warheads by 30 percent has been hailed as a diplomatic triumph in Washington and Moscow, Ms. Balounova's sentiments reflect the growing concerns of many Czechs about Russia's motives and America's resolve in a region where history is never far from the surface.
Such alarm has been all the more pronounced in the Czech Republic, where many saw a capitulation to Moscow in Mr. Obama's decision last year to abandon the antimissile system proposed by his predecessor, George W. Bush, which would have been partly deployed in the Czech Republic. While Mr. Bush said the system's purpose was to shield Europe from Iranian missiles, many here saw it as a bulwark against a newly assertive Kremlin.
U.S. officials said Mr. Obama was eager to overcome anxieties about Russia and, at a dinner Thursday with 11 heads of state or government from the region, would urge them to discard outdated Cold War ideas.
First Published April 7, 2010 2:00 am
