Approaching Total Eclipse

When Alexander Dubcek was sent off to Ankara two months ago as Czechoslovakia's Ambassador to Turkey, it appeared that he had been saved from the full wrath of the Communist Party's ultraconservatives. The "ultras" wanted to try Dubcek, hero of the liberalizing "Prague spring" of 1968, for his ideological sins. The man who replaced him as party boss, Gustav Husak, pledged repeatedly that there would be no retributions. Husak, after all, spent nine years in prison in the 1950s as the victim of a Stalinist purge.

It seems all too clear, however, that the noose has been tightening around Dubcek's political neck. In recent weeks he has come under noisy attack from such hard-line extremists as Party Secretary Vasil Bilak, who denounced Dubcek as a "weak man" and his reformist colleagues as "two-faced people." After months of rumors, the party paper, Rude Pravo, announced that Dubcek had been suspended from party membership and that several leading reformists, including ex-National Assembly President Josef Smrkovsky, had been expelled from the party. Though the Soviet Union has been supporting Husak, last week's developments seemed to imply not only a weakening of his hold on the party but also a shift in Soviet support to the extremists.

Perhaps significantly, the announcement of Dubcek's suspension came just after Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko had spent five days in Prague. The Czechoslovak party official most frequently seen in Gromyko's company was none other than Vasil Bilak, an ominous sign that he might be Moscow's choice as Husak's eventual replacement.

Economic Shortcomings. The next move will take place when the Central Committee meets in mid-April. If the ultraconservatives have sufficient strength by that time, they may try to expel Dubcek permanently from party membership. But even if they fail, it is difficult to believe that Dubcek can long retain his diplomatic post in Ankara.

Considering Dubcek's enormous popularity in the days when he was seeking to "humanize" Communism, there has been little outward reaction to his eclipse--and little active resistance to the overall repression. The fact is that the Czechoslovak people have resorted to passive resistance to the point where their slowdowns in factories and on farms are endangering the entire economy. Only recently, for example, the government proclaimed four Saturdays as wageless extra workdays because of "serious economic shortcomings." The Czechoslovaks did not exactly respond with patriotic fervor. As an industrial worker in Prague commented: "So now we will loaf on four additional working days."

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