The New Ice Age

The intellectuals of Eastern Europe have yet to benefit from the improving political climate between East and West. If anything, their lot has deteriorated, particularly in Czechoslovakia, where the leader of the Politburo's hardline faction, Vasil Bilak, seems to be carrying out a witch hunt against suspect liberal ideas. The lessening of tensions, Bilak has announced, will not result in official toleration of "rightists, opportunists, revisionists and organizers of counter-revolution."

Presumably to combat such scoundrels, the country's libraries have now started combing their shelves, removing thousands of works by some 300 Czechoslovak authors. The books are being crated and shipped to an unknown destination for pulping. References to them in library card catalogues are being destroyed. Works about or by Czechoslovakia's founder, Tomas Masaryk, and about his successor, Eduard Benes, have disappeared--as have all records relating to Alexander Dubcek's 1968 fall from power. Editions of Marx and Engels fare no better if they contain prefaces by blacklisted authors.

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