DISSATISFACTION IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA LEADS TO OUSTER OF NOVOTNY
The Czechoslovak press disclosed January 5 that Antonin Novotny had been deposed as the first secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist party. He is to be allowed, however, to remain as president of the country. The new first secretary is Alexander Dubcek, a member of the Presidential Council and first secretary of the Slovak Communist party. The regime thus appears to have reached at least a temporary resolution of the deepest crisis it has suffered up to now.
Novotny had run the Communist party since 1953 and served as head of the country since 1957. He utilized his double posts to impede the spread of liberalization in the country.
For four years he had been at odds with a number of his colleagues in the party Presidium who wanted a faster pace of reform. Resentment among the Slovaks over disregard of their rights as a minority was especially acute. Novotny acknowledged this indirectly in his New Year's address when he promised that development of the neglected Slovak regions would have to take precedence in the coming year. His promise turned out to be too little and much too late.
The current struggle began two months ago when all three Slovak members of the Presidium -- Premier Joseph Lenart, Alexander Dubcek and Michal Chudik -- demanded that the president quit both jobs. They blamed Novotny for blocking the three-year-old plans for economic reforn. They accused him of discriminating against Slovakia, the underdeveloped eastern region of the country. Dubcek's accession to Novotny's post is intended as a dramatic concession to this sentiment.
The Slovak trio were later joined by Vice Premier Oldrich Cernik, state planning commissioner, who accused the president of clumsy leadership in econonic and party affairs. A Central Committee meeting last October 30-31 adopted a resolution on revisions of the party structure which, contrary to custom, has not yet been made public. It concluded that "it is incompatible with Leninist principles to suppress criticism, not to listen to remarks, and to place oneself above the party." These complaints were aimed at Novotny. Official organs of the party were conspicuously cool toward the president on the tenth anniversary of his accession to office some weeks later.
Novotny's head-on collisions with the intellectuals and students have sharpened the differences within the leadership. On October 31 more than 1,000 students from the Strahov campus of the
the Technical College of Charles Univer-
sity marched with burning candles toward
the government's Hradcany Castle to pro-
test the lack of light and heat in their
dormitories. The demonstration was spon-
taneous and nonpolitical.
The students were blocked from the
government buildings, shoved, cursed and
beaten. The official count says twelve
students and three policemen were hospi-
talized but students estimate the injured
as close to fifty.
Although the grievances were
promptly attended to, the political reper-
cussions of the fracas continue. One stu-
dent leader reportedly remarked that some
of the most convinced Communists in the
university have begun to question the re-
gime's action. "They want to know why, if
it was so easy to fix the lights, we had
to demonstrate to get it done," he said.
"But more importantly, they want to know
how our Socialist police can crack down
on Socialist students with a legitimate,
nonpolitical complaint."
Students at Charles University be-
lieve that the police crackdown was
ordered because the government fears that
the disaffection of the Czechoslovak writ-
ers is spreading to the campuses. (See:
"Defiant Czech Writers Provoke a National
and International Debate" by George Novack,
World Outlook, December 15, 1967.
The speeches of the dissident writ-
ers at the Congress of the Writers' Union
in June have since been the prime topic of
private discussions among the students.
They now say that the police action against
the demonstrators confirms the criticism
of the rebel writers. "The writers said
Novotny must finally come to terms with
the mistakes, the excesses, and the crimes
of Stalin," one language student observed.
Neal Ascherson, London Observer cor-
respondent in Prague, reported on Decem-
ber 16 that he watched "students selling
their magazine on the street and calling
on passers-by to read about the 'bestial'
acts of the police and proclaiming that
the party cultural journal had defamed the
students. Their magazine, in an article
headed 'The Logic of Untruth,' openly sets
the students alongside the protesting
writers and compares their opponents to
Pontius Pilates."
This could be a scene from Berkeley
or some other turbulent campus in the
United States.
The criticisms of the Old Guard
Czech boss coming from the Slovak repre-
sentatives, dissenting students, rebel-
lious intellectuals, proponents of economic reform and other elements in the population yearning for improvements raised hopes that the meeting of the CP Central Committee beginning December 20 would see Novotny removed from office.
However, Novotny managed to hang on temporarily to both positions through the intervention of Soviet CP Secretary Brezhnev, who flew to Prague December 8 without advance notice to argue against the ouster of his friend. Some say that Brezhnev made the move after an appeal from Novotny. Others claim that his sudden action was urged by Walter Ulbricht, head of the East German Communist regime, who feared that if Novotny were ousted this would aid the Bonn government in its efforts to gain greater influence in the East European countries at the expense of the German Democratic Republic. Ulbricht may also have feared that Novotny's downfall might signal his own eclipse, since he faces similar troubles.
According to New York Times correspondent David Binder, before Brezhnev arrived in Prague, the anti-Novotny group had grown to include eight of the ten full members of the Presidium. But Brezhnev succeeded in obtaining concessions from the president which induced two of the Slovaks, Premier Lenart and Michal Chudik, to switch sides.
Two incidents at the Presidium sessions which preceded the inconclusive Central Committee meeting show how tense and rancorous relations are among the top leaders. Novotny's self-criticism in December was a consequence of the accusation of “bourgeois nationalism" he made at the previous Central Committee gathering last October against Alexander Dubcek, first secretary of the Slovakian CP.
This attack had an ominous ring because such accusations formed the basis for a purge of the Slovak party in the 1950s. Moreover, Dubcek had done nothing but welcome the gestures toward democratization in the discussion on revising the party structure. Instead of accepting Novotny's charges, the Presidium made him backtrack and even raised the question of -9-
replacing him as first secretary.
Toward the close of the Presidium meeting with Brezhnev, a stormy quarrel flared up between Novotny and his secondin-command Jiri Hendrych who is in charge of ideological matters. Each blamed the other for the collapse of party authority over the writers last June and for the repression against the students in October. After that Hendrych went over to the anti- Novotny faction, which left the presidium split five to five.
It had been predicted that in view of the forces arrayed against him, Novotny could not hold on to power very long. It was reported that he might have been ousted in December had his opponents been able to agree at that time on a successor. Perhaps the rising pressure from below led them to rally around Dubcek.
The Communist rulers of Czechoslo~ vakia face this dilemma. The pressures for social, economic, cultural and even political change are so strong that they must be heeded without much delay. But they fear to open the floodgates of reform too wide lest the surge toward liberalization become unmanageable.
Lack of faith in the government is rife among the workers, intellectuals and youth. The spectacle of Brezhnev's intervention on Novotny's behalf, with its reminder of the regime's humiliating dependence upon Moscow, should further lower the fast-fading prestige of the leadership among the party ranks. The difficulties stemming from the economic reforms have provoked considerable dissatisfaction. The Central Committee itself acknowledged at the end of its May 3-4 plenum that there is an undesirable growth of inventories, a large volume of unfinished capital construction, and a growing gap between production and foreign trade.
The masses want rising living standards, more freedom, less regimentation. Will Dubcek prove capable of satisfying these demands? Or will his accession prove to be but the prelude to events that will pass over his head?
VIOLENT CLASHES WITH GUERRILLAS REPORTED IN ANGOLA
The guerrilla war in Angola has spread to the center of the country, the New York Times of December 40 reports. After having confined their operations primarily to the border regions for the last six years, the