Reason to Hope

Czechoslovakia's Party Boss Antonin Novotny rose to the top in 1953--the year of Stalin's death--but never quite adjusted to the Kremlin's new softer line or Eastern Europe's post-Stalin era of liberalization. Only a few months ago, he severely warned the country's intellectuals that he would never tolerate "the spread of liberalism" or any other contaminating Western ideology. In turn, Czechoslovakia never really adjusted to Novotny. Recently, an increasingly vocal opposition to his hardlining ways percolated right up to the innermost circles of the Communist Party. Last month the ruling Presidium voted 8-2 to fire Novotny as party chief, and only a hasty trip to Prague by Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev saved his skin.

It was only a temporary save; not even the Kremlin wanted to openly defy the groundswell of popular disenchantment with Novotny in Czechoslovakia. Last week the party's 200-man plenum, the Central Committee, met and declared the end for Novotny. Though its communique allowed him to "resign" and mechanically praised his accomplishments, the plenum fired Novotny as party leader, the country's most powerful post, leaving him only in the figurehead role of President. Into Novotny's place stepped the man who engineered the ouster. He is Alexander Dubcek, 46, a Presidium member, lead er of the Slovak wing of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, and the first member of the country's 5,000,000 Slovak minority to hold the reins of power.

Last-Minute Attempt. Novotny had desperately tried to save himself at the last moment by adopting a far more conciliatory line. In his New Year's message last week, he made important concessions to Czechoslovakia's restive Slovaks and promised rebellious Czech students and writers that he would permit the use of "progressive" ideas, even if they came from the West. For added effect, he also hinted that he would let the country's economic reformers resume their experiments with profits and price incentives to get the stalled economy moving again. It was a major turnabout for Novotny, but his fate had already been determined.

While he was off in Moscow congratulating the Russians on the 50th anniversary of their revolution last November, Dubcek remained behind to organize his revolt against Novotny. Using Slovak grievances over their neglect and the bungled state of the economy as rallying cries, Dubcek won the party's "liberal" faction to his cause. Back from the Soviet Union, Novotny quickly found himself outmaneuvered and outvoted in the Presidium, whose interminable meetings last month degenerated into angry personal clashes between Novotny and Dubcek.

Just before Christmas, the leadership crisis was finally tossed to the party's Central Committee. Novotny and his followers futilely tried to stall the inevitable with a filibuster, reportedly attempted to manipulate the militia to help maintain him in authority. Professor Ota Sik, 48, whose new economic model for Czechoslovakia (TIME, Nov. 11, 1966) fell victim to Novotny's apparatchiki, rose before the plenum and made particularly strong denunciations of the old guard--until he was hospitalized with the grippe. By the end of that week, the question was not longer whether Novotny would remain but rather who would succeed him.

Singular Victory. Dubcek (pronounced Doob-chQck), who is tall (6 ft. 4 in.) and blond, becomes the youngest national party chief in Eastern Europe. Largely educated in the Soviet Union, to which his father had migrated a few years after a brief, unhappy stay in the U.S., Dubcek was an anti-Nazi partisan during World War II. Since Czechs and ethnic balances are still essential in Czechoslovakia's ruling circles, Premier Jozef Lenart, another Slovak, will probably be pushed aside for Chief Economic Planner Oldrich Cernik, 44, a Czech who had been generally considered the front runner for Novotny's job.

The outcome of the Czechoslovak power struggle was a singular victory for liberal forces throughout Eastern Europe. Novotny's fall reduces the number of outright Stalinist rulers to one: East Germany's Walter Ulbricht, who, understandably, had tried to dissuade the Czechoslovak leaders from overthrowing his ideological comrade. The Russians did not seem noticeably bereaved at the loss; Brezhnev immediately fired off a congratulatory telegram to Dubcek. Nor did the Czechoslovak public display any particular grief. In their 20th year under Communist rule and 50th year as a nation, most Czechoslovaks hoped that the new changes would help them win more freedom at home and new friends abroad.

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