CONCESSIONS TO DEMANDS FOR LIBERALIZATION IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA
By George Novack
On February 23, less than two months after the political upheaval whereby the unregenerate Stalinist, Antonin Novotny, was replaced by Alexander Dubcek as first secretary, the Czechoslovak Communist party commemorated the twentieth anniversary of its assumption of power. Soviet party chief Leonid Brezhnev was the most prominent guest at the celebration. The Communist leaders of Rumania, Poland, Hungary, East Germany and Bulgaria were also on deck and doubtless discussed with Brezhnev and Dubcek the problems connected with the meeting of sixtyseven Communist parties which opened February 26 at Budapest.
This was Brezhnev's second appearance in Prague in three months. He made a flying trip last December to save Novotny, or, failing that, to work out a settlement of the dispute between the Old Guard diehards and their opponents in the Presidium and the Central Committee. The best he could get was a compromise by which Novotny retained the presidency but yielded the real power to Dubcek as head of the party.
Liberal and radical elements were incensed by this ostentatious interference in Czechoslovak affairs. Their resentment flared up at the December meet— ing of the Central Committee when Frantisek Vodslon was said to have demanded to know by what authority the body had invited Brezhnev to Prague when "I, as a member of the Central Committee, knew nothing of it."
These forces were concerned lest the Soviet leader take advantage of his current visit to Prague to put pressure on Dubcek to slow down the pace of economic and political reforms which the defeated Novotny and his supporters in the party and trade unions are trying to hamstring. The Kremlin is apprehensive that hasty and sweeping measures might set oppositional forces into motion which could pass beyond the control of the new regime.
The clash over domestic policy is sharpened by economic difficulties between the two countries. Prague's basic grievance is that it must export to the Soviet Union too much, and at unfavorable prices, to pay for raw material and food imports, and that this keeps Prague from trading more with the West.
Dubcek, who is inclined to greater independence from Moscow, obliquely referred to these irritants in an anniversary article under his name in the Soviet party paper Pravda: "Despite various difficulties and complicated problems, which
logically arise and should not be exag-
gerated, we are convinced all-embracing
collaboration between the Socialist coun-
tries will be worked out."
Meanwhile a tense struggle is be-
ing waged between conservative and liber-
al elements in the party over the imple-
mentation of the economic reforms. In a
radio interview on February 21, Professor
Ota Sik, the Central Committee member who
has been chief proponent of such reforms,
stated that workers have been told not to
accept them because they would lose their
"privileges."
He thus pointed an accusing finger
at Novotny whom he had vigorously opposed
in the stormy Central Committee sessions
leading to his deposition as party chief.
It is reported that when Novotny visited
the CKD machinery factory in Prague the
week before, he warned that the real
fight was no longer the class struggle
between capitalism and communism but be-
tween workers and intellectuals support-
ing reform.
Without mentioning Novotny by name,
Sik declared that democratic discussions
within the party had been banned for sev-
eral years by "fossilized elements." And
Prace, the trade-union newspaper, demanded
on February 22 "a ruthless analysis to
establish conditions so that people can
express without fear their views on every-
thing."
Significantly, at the anniversary
ceremony on February 23, Dubcek carefully
mentioned the contributions of the intel-
lectuals, whose insistence on economic
reforms and greater democracy helped put
him in power, while Novotny demagogically
praised the working classes.
The anti-Novotny camp is convinced
that the reforms, which have given little
results to date, cannot succeed unless
they are promptly put into effect with a
minimum of interference from the apparat-
chiks. But such elements are too deeply
entrenched in the party and trade unions
for their resistance to be easily over-
come.
The ruling circles are split on
almost every major question, from eco-
nomic orientation and relations with the
Soviet Union to the Czech-Slovak problen
and intellectual liberty. The most ad-
vanced intellectuals in both the USSR
and Czechoslovakia are pressing for great-
er freedom of cultural and even political
expression. The attitude toward them in
Prague is very different from that in
Moscow.
While the Kremlin continues to crack down on literary rebels and their defenders, Dubcek has retracted the punitive measures taken against the critics after the Writers' Congress in June 1947. [See: "New Regime Makes Concessions to Dissident Czech Writers," World Outlook, February 9, p- 105.] He has also installed his friend, Jaroslav Kozel, in place of Frantisek Havlicek, a zealous partisan of Novotny, as head of the ideological department of the Central Committee which regulates party relations with the intellectuals.
The atmosphere has been further eased by the removal of tke former head of the state security forces. There is much wider latitude for the ventilation of grievances in the country than at any time since 1948.
Under these conditions any extension of the interbureaucratic conflicts cannot help but arouse new layers of the party and the people into critical activity. Czechoslovakia is today the most unsettled of all the regimes in East Europe. The twentieth anniversary of Stalinist rule there clearly coincides with the opening of a new and momentous stage in its political evolution.
This estimate was further confirmed March 5 when Jiri Hendrych was ousted from his influential post as secretary for ideological affairs. As cultural commissar for the Novotny regime, Hendrych was directly responsible for last year's attacks upon the rebellious writers and students.
Hendrych was replaced by Josef
Spacek, one of the four new Presidium
members elected when Alexander Dubcek
replaced Novotny as first secretary of
the Communist party last January. When
he was first secretary of the regional
party organization in Brno, Spacek dis-—
played a more tolerant attitude toward
the intellectuals by permitting criticism
against the cultural policies of Novotny
and Hendrych.
In addition to this shift, the
Presidium abolished a 1966 law restrict-
ing the press, radio and television. It
will transfer the Central Publication
Administration, the government censorship
agency, from the Interior Ministry to an
unspecified jurisdiction. It also voted
to expand the importation and sale of
foreign literature and press publications.
Hendrych had to go despite the
fact that he deserted his patron Novotny
and switched to the opposition during the
prolonged intrabureaucratic contest for
supremacy last December and January. It
is reported that the new fifteen-member
party Presidium plans to publish a "full
account" of the Central Committee ses-
sions which culminated in Novotny's depo-
sition.
The enforced sacrifice of Hendrych
testifies to the strength of the demands
for liberalization sweeping Czechoslo-
vakia. It may be the prelude to a more
drastic cleanup of the old-line Stalin-
ist officials that could strip Novotny
of his remaining post as president of
Czechoslovakia.