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COMMUNIST AGAIN ALTERS HIS STRIPES

Back in 1968, Zdenek Safar had to choose between his principles and his career. Never strong on principles, he chose his career. Now he wonders if he made a mistake.

”I think I would have been better to emigrate,” said Safar, 51, who holds one of the most useless jobs in revolutionary Czechoslovakia: deputy director of the Marxist-Leninist Institute in the philosophy college of Prague University.

The parliament voted last week to abolish Marxism-Leninism as the basis of Czechoslovak education and to replace Marxist-Leninist courses with classes based on ”scientific knowledge, patriotism and humanism.”

This probably means that Safar, like the rest of his staff of 30, is out of a job, unless he can scramble into something new. But then, as he happily admits, he`s always been good at scrambling.

”I was a sociologist until 1968,” when Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia, he said. ”Sociology then became too hot. It was a time when many of us had to change our opinions. . . .

”I was 30 years old. I could have emigrated, but I had family ties. I had children.

”These were my best years. I have some colleagues who stood up for their principles. They lost their jobs and have been cleaning windows for the past 20 years. . . .

”It`s difficult to blame me for what I did.”

Neverthless, his two sons, aged 15 and 18, do blame him. They have been going to protest demonstrations here for the past year and once even signed his name to a protest petition. The news of his ”signature” was later broadcast on the Voice of America. Safar was not amused.

”I told them that if they were caught at a demonstration, I would lose my university job,” he said. ”They said that`s my problem.”

Safar, a small, ferret-faced man in a brown suit, was interviewed in the crowded corridors of the university, which striking students have occupied for the past two weeks.

The students seemed to ignore him as he hung on the fringes of crowds, listening to debates on ideas a world removed from Marxism.

Safar`s courses were mandatory for graduation. But the students regarded them as time-wasters, and even the teachers seem to have recognized that they were futile.

Did he believe in what he taught? He won`t say directly, possibly because the idea never occurred to him.

”It`s a kind of schizophrenia,” he said, smiling. ”In my opinion, I`m a liberal. There`s always been debates among us. The last 10 years I`ve found the ideas of the neo-conservatives, of Milton Friedman, very challenging.”

The textbooks he assigned were largely dry theory or justifications for the 1968 invasion. Most, he said, ”are completely rubbish and must be rewritten.”

Then why did he assign them? ”That was my job.”

No cautious careerist would have uttered such ideas before. Safar recalls a student who let his liberal ideas be known, was expelled into a life of manual labor, and has now written an angry letter demanding revenge.

”I was lucky that, at that time, I was in a postgraduate course in Russia,” he said. ”If I`d been here, I would have had to vote against him, too. If I didn`t, I would have lost my job.”

And now? ”Well, I`ll probably lose my chair here, also part of my salary and my privileges.” He`s hoping he can get back his old job in sociology.

Safar seems flexible enough to make the shift, unlike some colleagues

”who can`t imagine this change has come. They have no philosophical base,” he said scornfully.

Safar admits he would be better off now if he had gone to the West in 1968. But then again, the past 21 years haven`t been so bad.

”I lived comfortably,” he said. ”And maybe, in some way, I was useful.”