Tremors of Change

The tremors emanating from Czechoslovakia's extraordinary wave of reform not only shook the country itself but spread through all of Eastern Europe. In Prague, Party Boss Alexander Dubcek, chief architect of the reforms, consolidated his position and opened the way for further liberalization by forcing the resignation of deposed Party Chief Antonin Novotny, 63, as President of the country that he had ruled with an iron hand for 15 years. Polish students used the reforms in Czecho slovakia as a herald in their defiance of the government. Rumanian Party Boss Nicolae Ceausescu, an earlier liberalizer (TIME cover, March 18, 1966), read the handwriting on the wall and decided that Rumania should go farther along the reform road. Everyone should be free to criticize the Communist party, Ceausescu told his Central Com mittee, even when "diverse and wrong views appear."

The events in Czechoslovakia gathered such force, in fact, that at week's end they produced a sort of Communist summit. Seeking to calm the fears of his Communist neighbors that his re forms might go too far and produce another Hungary, Dubcek traveled to Dresden in East Germany to confer with Communist leaders. The meeting was attended by East German Boss Walter Ulbricht, who is openly concerned by his neighbor's new course, and by Poland's Wladyslaw Gomulka. Hungarian Communist officials also showed up. Finally, as an indication of the meet ing's importance, both Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin and Party Boss Leo nid Brezhnev arrived in Dresden. The confrontation came only days after a Czechoslovak delegation returned home from Moscow with a Kremlin prom ise that the Russians would not in terfere with Dubcek's drive for "so cialist democratization."

Giant Stalin. The week's most dramatic event, the fall of Antonin No votny, followed a country-wide clamor for his resignation. At noisy meetings throughout Czechoslovakia, Novotny was denounced and taunted. In Slova kia, portraits of him were burned. Pe titions for his dismissal poured into Prague. Seeing that he was through, many of Novotny's old friends, including the army general staff, joined the chorus against him. Novotny closed himself off in Hradcany Castle on a hill overlooking Prague, hoping that the storm would blow over. When a news paper suggested that illness might give him an honorable excuse to resign -- he suffers from gallstones -- he telephoned the editors to report that his health was much improved. Politically, he was already in extremis. When the Communist Party Presidium ordered him to resign, he went along like a loyal Communist; the alternative, under Communist discipline, was expulsion from the party. In his final moment of humiliation, Novotny cited ill health as the reason for his resignation.

Thus ended the career of one of Communism's most guileful and skillful leaders. One of Novotny's first projects after he maneuvered to succeed the late Klement Gottwald in 1953 as party boss was to build a giant statue of Stalin overlooking the Vltava River in Prague. Though he eventually came around to recognizing the need for a reorganization of the country's decrepit economy and for granting wider freedom of expression to writers, he did so only reluctantly. He ran a severe police state, yoked the economy and foreign policy of Czechoslovakia to the needs of the Soviet Union and mercilessly purged "revisionists." Ill suited by training and temperament for any sort of liberalization, he later stalled on economic reforms and took back some of -the privileges that he had granted the writers--thus setting off the intraparty fight that brought in Dubcek.

Jeers & Whistles. Though Novotny is gone, much of his handiwork remains behind. Last week the demands for specific reforms continued to multiply. More than 10,000 students crowded into the massive Prague Congress Hall, where they questioned party leaders and demanded everything from a neutral foreign policy to removal of the red star from the nation's coat of arms. When Forestry Minister Josef Smrkovsky rose to ask the students why they had omitted a pledge of friendship to the Soviet Union from one of their resolutions, the hall echoed with jeers and whistles.

Sensing the country's mood, the Roman Catholic Church demanded wider religious freedom. In a letter to Dubcek, Bishop Frantisek Tomasek of Prague called for the return to Czechoslovakia of Primate Josef Cardinal Beran, 79. Cardinal Beran, whom the Communists kept under house arrest for 14 years, agreed to leave the country in 1965 in exchange for party concessions to the church; he is now living in the Vatican. Without fully suppressing it, the party has harassed the church for 19 years, even appoints the priests for some dioceses. Bishop Tomasek's letter also asked Dubcek to begin talks between the government and the bishops, to reopen religious orders and remove restrictions on seminaries.

Greater Voice. At week's end, Prime Minister Jozef Lenart took over the duties of the presidency until the Czechoslovak National Assembly can meet to elect a successor to Novotny. The party Presidium made plans to restore the reputations of as many as 30,000 people disgraced in Novotny's purges. This week the Central Committee is due to get Dubcek's reform program, which is likely to remove some controls on the economy and give the people a greater voice in their affairs. While the other top Communists in the Soviet bloc are clearly worried about the program's impact in their countries, Dubcek must deliver something to his own people, who have been clamoring for specific reforms to go with their wider freedom of speech.

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