Word: czechoslovakia
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...only to criticize the Soviet Union but also to stake out in dependent positions. The situation is without precedent in Communist history, and contrasts sharply with the post-Hungary period when the parties loyally supported Moscow, even though many members quit. Unless the Soviets can somehow reverse the trend, Czechoslovakia may mark a major and historic acceleration in Moscow's inability to control Communism. "In the past, individuals were driven by their conscience to question Soviet actions," says British Sovietologist Victor Zorza. "Now whole parties are questioning...
...Sign. Not all of them live beyond the Soviet orbit, either. Last week three well-known authors, including the editor and the former editor of Novy Mir, the Soviet Union's bravely liberal literary journal, refused in Moscow to sign a statement supporting the Soviet stand in Czechoslovakia. East Germany opened trials in East Berlin of some 100 people who protested against the Warsaw Pact invasion. Ironically, among those sentenced to a two-year prison term was a woman named Sandra Weigl. She is related to Playwright Bertolt Brecht, whose works reflected his hope that Communism would...
Despite the obvious risks, the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences defiantly challenged the Brezhnev Doctrine in a reply to Soviet allegations that the country had been in the grip of a counterrevolution. The Soviets made the charge in a pamphlet now being distributed in Czechoslovakia. Dismissing the Soviet arguments as "inventions" and "schoolboy sins against logic," the academy, which is composed of the country's leading intellectual figures, warned against the Soviet Union's unwillingness to allow Communism to accommodate to change. Said the academy: "The metaphysical conception of Socialism as a perfect system leads logically to the conclusion...
Splits Within Splits. In the free world, Communist anger at Moscow is greatest in Western Europe, where Communist parties are strongest. Since these parties seek to gain power by votes, and not by revolution, a liberalizing Czechoslovakia was an excellent advertisement for the image of Communism that they wished to project. Now that the Soviets have shattered that benign image, these parties are understandably anxious to dissociate themselves from this aspect of Moscow's policy. Italian Communist Chief Luigi Longo. whose party is Europe's largest, flatly declared that the Communist movement no longer has "centralized direction...
...longtime leader, Maurice Thorez, sometimes known in party circles as "the Hag" because of her terrible temper. At the same time, the party, which is led by Secretary General Waldeck Rochet, who in recent years has become a moderate, both reaffirmed its censure of Soviet action in Czechoslovakia and asserted its new-found critical attitude toward Mos cow. Wrote L'Humanite, the French Communist newspaper: "No party is perfect and no party can avoid making mistakes in method and analysis...