Czechoslovakia

PRAGUE -- Czechoslovakia gave the appearance yesterday of a nation sliding step by step toward dissolution, but leading politicians stressed that the divorce proceedings are in their initial phases.The 74-year-old union between the Czech and Slovak peoples, who have increasingly been pulled apart in recent months, could end before the year does, according to a prescription laid out in talks that ended early yesterday.Politicians in Prague and Bratislava still insist upon discussing the breakup of their country in conditional terms, and there is clearly an element of brinkmanship in the negotiations between the Czechs and the Slovaks.

Lt. Col. Arthur Edward Makholm Sr., a career Army officer who fought in three wars, died of a heart attack March 26 at his Ellicott City home. He was 94. Colonel Makholm was born in Jersey City, N.J., and raised in Kearny, N.J., where he graduated from Kearny High School. He was working as a salesman in the linen and towel department of Macy's Herald Square store in New York City when he was drafted into the Army in early 1943. After graduating from Officer Candidate School and being commissioned a lieutenant, he was sent to Fort Devens, Mass.

GABCIKOVO, Czechoslovakia -- Like a bad hangover from 40 years of communism, an old exercise in comradely cooperation has become a headache in relations between Czechoslovakia and Hungary.The headache is the Gabcikovo-Nagymaros hydroelectric project on the Danube, and the conflict is simple: The Czechoslovak side wants it, and the Hungarians don't.The problem is that it's already mostly there.For 10 miles, a half-mile wide channel cuts straight through the Danube wetlands and the grain fields of south Slovakia.

Georges Selzer easily made his way through a crush of students eagerly departing John Carroll School in Bel Air for the day. Using a walker, he traveled quickly through the hallways, until he stood at a podium before a classroom of listeners. He held a stack of note cards. "I call them cheating cards," he said. "I'm 95, remember." A Holocaust survivor, Selzer had come to tell the students how many times he had cheated death. Since this was at least his 15th visit to the private Catholic school, many had heard his story.

Brno, Czechoslovakia -- We were sitting in one of the new, private cafes in central Brno, discussing openly the things that we had whispered about in the past, before the 1989 velvet revolution: freedom, the government, the impending Slovak-Czech split into two states, the likelihood of democracy taking root.But the bubble burst when I asked the waitress if the menu had anything beside meat on it, perhaps a salad. The response was a somewhat hostile "No! We never have salad." It seemed a flashback to the days of government-run restaurants, indifferent to the public.

DUKOVANY, Czechoslovakia -- With the division o Czechoslovakia into two countries scheduled for Jan. 1, both prospective nations are bracing for potentially grave problems arising from the fission of atoms.Under former Soviet custody, a united Czechoslovakia operated two large nuclear power plants with relatively few administrative snags or public opposition. The Russians supplied most of the hardware and nuclear fuel, and when the dangerously radioactive fuel was used up, it was simply sent back to the Soviet Union for reprocessing.

PRAGUE, Czechoslovakia -- The Liechtenstein mouse is roaring, and the squeak is irritating Czechoslovakian ears.The principality of Liechtenstein, a country so small it's often missing from maps of Europe, has no army, no heavy weapons, no airport, no jail and not very many taxes.But now, the prince of Liechtenstein snipes at Czechoslovakia from his tiny Alpine redoubt in a dispute that recalls Peter Sellers' classic film comedy "The Mouse That Roared." Mr. Sellers, as late-show aficionados all know, plays the leader of the Grand Duchy of Fenwick, who declares war on the United States so that his country can lose and get rich on U.S. foreign aid.His Serene Highness Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein doesn't need any help in getting rich.

PRAGUE, Czechoslovakia -- Like old friends grimly anticipating the birthday of a recently deceased companion, Czechs are gearing up to commemorate the founding of a country that died 10 months ago.Tomorrow, Czechs will mark the 75th anniversary of the birth of Czechoslovakia, even though the country ceased to exist Jan. 1 of this year. For lack of a better alternative, the Czech Republic will continue to observe Oct. 28 as its national day."It's a Czechoslovak tradition, but also a Czech one," said historian Josef Tomes.

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- It was supposed to be a trial that would offer a sweeping examination of the Communist past. It instead will probably be only an unsatisfying reckoning with three bitter, elderly men -- three former Communist leaders now charged with treason for their role in the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.Czech authorities decided this month that only these three will stand trial: Milos Jakes, secretary-general of the Czechoslovak Communist Party from 1987 to 1989; Jozef Lenart, a former prime minister; and Karel Hoffmann, once a member of the party's Central Committee.

"If we had all followed the path that Czechoslovakia began, avoiding distortions and extremes, I think . . . the world would be different, and it wouldn't be so hard to implement these changes now."Mikhail Gorbachev, on the death of Alexander Dubcek.London. -- Anything Mikhail Gorbachev says these days must be taken with a large grain of salt, for he is not settling gracefully into his historic role as the last president of the Soviet Union. He still dreams of a political comeback.Fresh predictions of disaster (including many by Mr. Gorbachev himself)

The Slow Moon By Elizabeth Cox Another Green World By Richard Grant Knopf / 384 pages / $24.95 Turning his attention from science fiction to a World War II thriller, Grant has produced a big, noisy ripsnorter of a novel. Chock-full of Nazis and besotted with the grand tradition of German literature, the book is an odd mix of cheesy cinematic effects and intellectual ruminations, of simple props - stolen documents, shiny leather boots - and high-toned literary evocations of love and loss.

Last week, we heard that No. 26 was so important to the Washington Redskins' Clinton Portis that he promised to pay $40,000 to a teammate to give it up. Portis certainly isn't the only athlete playing the numbers. Some math from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: In 1929, the New York Yankees and Cleveland Indians made numbers a regular part of their uniforms. Numbers matched spots in the batting order, so Babe Ruth got 3 and Lou Gehrig 4. The Philadelphia Athletics were the last team to go to numbers, holding out until 1937.

Paul G. Garrity, 66, the Boston judge whose historic rulings forced sweeping improvements in public housing conditions and a once filthy Boston Harbor, died of a heart attack Saturday in Boston. In 1979, he put the Boston Housing Authority, landlord to 50,000 residents, into receivership. Five years later, noting the improvements made in housing conditions in 67 projects, he ended the receivership. In 1983, he handed down a 10-page finding of fact charging that the Metropolitan District Commission and Boston Water and Sewer Commission were responsible for pollution in Boston Harbor.

When Lillian Sonberg and other Czechoslovakians were recruited 65 years ago to teach Marylanders how to make Bata shoes at the company's Belcamp plant, farmland along U.S. 40 stretched to the horizon. It was 1939, a time when people left their doors unlocked and placed money on the dining table for the milkman to pick up Friday mornings. Now the Bata plant -- once the largest private employer in Harford County -- is just about demolished. The last remnant of Bata's existence -- a five-story building used for assembling parts -- was bought by Clark Turner Cos. last week for part of its Water's Edge development, a $150 million luxury waterfront community on 200 acres along the Bush River.

ON OCT. 27, 1989, the police in communist Czechoslovakia hauled in a red-headed, chain-smoking, truth-speaking playwright whom they viewed as a threat to the regime. Less than two months later, that playwright was elected president of what had by that time become an ex-communist country. "History has accelerated," Vaclav Havel told a joint session of the U.S. Congress that winter. Mr. Havel -- who entered office as a rumpled dissident, fond of rock music and of making himself intolerable to authority -- stepped down on Sunday.

Today in history: Nov. 20In 1789, New Jersey became the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights.In 1910, revolution broke out in Mexico, led by Francisco I. Madero.In 1925, Robert F. Kennedy was born in Brookline, Mass.In 1945, 24 Nazi leaders went on trial before an international war crimes tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany.In 1947, Britain's future queen, Princess Elizabeth, married Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh, in a ceremony broadcast worldwide from Westminster Abbey.In 1959, the United Nations issued its "Declaration of the Rights of the Child."

PRAGUE, Czechoslovakia -- Bell Atlantic and US West are expected to sign a $60 million deal with Czechoslovakia next week to build and operate a cellular mobile telephone network, it has been learned.The contract would give the two U.S. regional phone companies a combined 49 percent share in the joint venture with the Czech government. The agreement is being readied for signature during the President Bush's visit to Prague, which is scheduled for Nov. 17, a senior government official said.

A Columbia-based company has been awarded a $10 million contract to build a training system for the Temelin Nuclear Power Plant in Czechoslovakia.General Physics International Engineering and Simulation Inc., which specializes in nuclear training and simulation, is working on the project with ORGREZ, the leading simulator manufacturer in Czechoslovakia.GP International, a 2-year-old firm with 61 employees, will provide Czechoslovakia with computer software and training. The equipment will simulate problems that operators of power plants might confront.