Word: ek
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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While it has brought the euphoria of free expression and an undeniable sense of exciting evolution to Czechoslovakia liberalizing regime of Alexander Dubček has been unable so far to deliver much in the way of tangible reforms. One reason is that since he took over last January, Party Boss Dubček has had to move with caution while he measured Russian reactions. Another is the plain impossibility of dismantling overnight the barnacled apparatus of a hard-lining Communist state. Last week Dubček finally acted against the conservative Communists remaining in both the government...
Novotný's farewell performance was entirely in character. He reportedly tried to win votes by threatening to reveal stories about bribes taken by committee members in the past; then, when the committee debate went against him he broke into tears. Dubček had come armed with a batch of petitions from workers, students and other Czechoslovaks who called for the dismissal from the committee of Novotný's entire faction. He warned the committee that the party's capacity for action was threatened by "those forces who by words recognize the correctness...
...hated former Chief of Security, Miroslav Mamula, who was fired. He then got a job at a factory workbench, but when his fellow workers recognized him, they hounded him until he quit. In fact, the lash of public opinion has been harsher than that of Dubček. The suicides of 29 officials in recent weeks are attributed to TV and press exposés of their past roles in the Stalinist terror...
Thus no real purge has occurred so far, and that other Communist ritual that comes with every change of regime -rehabilitation-has also been slow to start. Dubček released about 450 political prisoners soon after his takeover. But he has yet to review the trials, many of which were rigged, of some 40,000 former prisoners, or to restore to good grace by any official act about 100,000 people who lost their party membership, jobs, pensions and other privileges because of political acts or "unreliable opinions." Such redress as there has been has come from ordinary citizens...
Russian Troops. The removal of Novotný from the Central Committee reflect's Dubček's growing strength, and he plans to consolidate it at a special party congress in September. Dubček, however, had to make certain concessions last month to visiting Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin. He promised, for one thing, to demonstrate his loyalty to the Warsaw Pact by permitting "staff exercises" in Czechoslovakia of troops from the Soviet bloc. The soldiers, most of them from the signal corps, were prompt to arrive. At week's end, the first of about...