Word: presidiums
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...fate of the topmost liberal leaders, including Dubćek, hung at least partially on a debate between two factions of the ultraconservative majority on the eleven-man Presidium that runs the country. One group, reportedly led by Deputy First Secretary Lubomir Strougal, a ruthless pro-Moscow loyalist, urged that Dubćek and other liberals be placed on trial, perhaps even on charges of treason. The second group, headed by Party Secretary Alois Indra, apparently objected that such kangaroo-court sessions would saddle the regime with a neo-Stalinist label. Ludvik Svoboda, the popular President and elder statesman...
...party's eleven-man Presidium did nothing to calm those fears. Meeting at its heavily guarded Prague headquarters last week, it announced a number of repressive new decrees. One prescribed jail sentences of up to three months for anyone who defames a Czechoslovak leader or fails to obey police orders. Another gives the government power to fire teachers who fail to instruct their pupils in accordance with the principles of Socialist society...
...April to the figurehead post of president of the National Assembly, had occasionally fretted aloud at the speed and enthusiasm with which his reform movement took hold in Czechoslovakia. But he did not dwell on anti-socialist dangers. On the night of the invasion, two conservative members of the Presidium presented a memorandum stating that the party was losing control of Czechoslovakia to reactionaries. Dubček and his majority on the Presidium quickly rejected it. As Dubček evidently concluded, the perils of "anti-socialism" were distinctly preferable to the economic stagnation and moral despair that have...
...persecutions of camp life have not quenched the spirit of Daniel and Ginzburg. Now, along with four other prisoners, they have written an open letter to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, urging "corrective legislation" to change the regulations in camps like Potma, where, according to official designation, "especially dangerous political prisoners" are held. Last week their letter was being circulated widely in Moscow...
...Presidium also contains two conservatives, who were among ten Czechoslovaks absolved by Party decree last week of any treachery in collaborating with the Soviets after the invasion. But the majority of the members, including Husák, are drawn from the ranks of the so-called realists who, while they may be liberals in theory, regard cooperation with their Soviet overlords as the only practical course for the country. Clearly, the Russians had sought to install a new government that would do their bidding while still retaining the broad if grudging support of the Czechoslovak people...