Word: ek
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WHEN the curtain first went up on the drama of Czechoslovakia, TIME'S cover story (April 5) on Alexander Dubček observed that, more than any other man, he had "planned, pleaded for and nurtured the sweeping changes that promise to alter the temper and quality of Czechoslovak life, and perhaps the nature of Communism in the rest of Eastern Europe as well." As that drama began to climax with a confrontation between Dubček and a phalanx of irritated Russian leaders, TIME'S correspondents concerned themselves last week not only with the central characters...
However generous Russia's gesture, the Czechoslovaks were still very much under pressure-and not likely to welcome their guests with any brass bands. The Russians' mission is nothing less than to force the Czechoslovaks to forsake the democratic reforms that Party Boss Alexander Dubček has brought to the country over the past seven months. Moscow claims that the liberalization is paving the way for subversion and counterrevolution and weakening a keystone in the entire Warsaw Defense Pact structure. The Russian talks with Prague's leaders may well determine whether democracy will have any future...
...Warsaw Pact; 2) that the Czechoslovak Communist Party is losing or giving up its leading role; 3) that the party is overrun with "revisionists"; 4) that Czechoslovak journalists are against the party, the Warsaw Pact and the unity of the Communist camp; and 5) that if Dubček does not act himself, he can expect "international help"-meaning from Red army troops. Dubček hardly seemed prepared to acknowledge any of this, but he did throw a pacifier Moscow's way. His party Presidium, replying to a harsh Soviet note, rigorously denied charges that the country...
...would most likely take place at either a villa at Zlatá Idka near Košice or a country lodge in the High Tatra Mountains. In both places, the Soviet leaders could easily beckon Russian troops who are tarrying in Eastern Slovakia. However close the troops, Dubček certainly did not plan to cower or apologize. Instead he hoped to take the offensive himself at the outset. The Czechoslovaks have some grievances of their own concerning Soviet domination of both the Warsaw Pact and the COMECON economic community...
Moscow has watched the other Communist governments of Eastern Europe split badly on the Czechoslovak issue. Communist parties throughout Western Europe, moreover, reared back in almost unanimous disapproval of Russian pressure on Prague. In campaigns to win support from respectable liberals, their leaders had advertised Dubček's "renewal," as Italian Party Boss Luigi Longo called it, to be the party's exciting new image. Now Moscow has damaged and perhaps destroyed that image. The resulting bitterness in the Communist camp has raised serious doubt that the Kremlin will really be able to hold the summit meeting...