Word: stalinists
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More fascinating even than the Czech Charleston is the country's ideological twist between Moscow and the Albania-China faction. Officially, Czechoslovakia backs Moscow, but Premier Antonin Novotny is an old Stalinist. Not only have the Czechs managed to keep on trading with Albania, but they have acted as Russia's representatives at Tirana since the Soviets severed diplomatic relations. Meanwhile, Prague's huge Stalin monument, which Novotny had promised to destroy, still stands. Some Prague wags suggest a solution for that: paint the monument black and rename it the Patrice Lumumba memorial...
...accommodating Nikita, the argument goes, the West would strengthen Khrushchev's hand against the still powerful Stalinists, who, with the Chinese Communists, still cling to the Marxist dogma that war between the two systems is inevitable. If, on the other hand, the West pushes Khrushchev too hard, he might fall, and a Stalinist or "Chinese" successor might be far tougher to deal with. In effect, this theory is a political version of Hilaire Belloc's cautionary verse...
With the exception of Walter Ulbricht's puppet state of East Germany, the most stubbornly Stalinist regime in the Soviet empire is run by Czechoslovakia's Antonin Novotny. Observing the form rather than the function of Nikita Khrushchev's destalinization drive, Novotny three months ago ordered the demolition of Prague's 6,000-ton Stalin statue and the transfer of dead Red Boss Klement Gottwald from a glass-topped coffin in a grandiose mausoleum to a less conspicuous resting place (TIME. Dec. 1, 1961). But this month, under the transparent banner of destalinization, Novotny carried...
...more important reason for Barak's ouster is that he enjoyed a personal following inside the party, unlike the friendless and ruthless Novotny. Furthermore, Barak was Czechoslovakia's only ranking Red leader untainted by a Stalinist past, and he probably advocated genuine destalinization. Obviously, if real destalinization had swept Czechoslovakia, Novotny-not Barak-would have been the first to fall...
Balancing Act. Most of the aces are still held by Togliatti. 68. He too advocates Communist diversity-in fact, he coined a word to describe it: "poly-centrism"-but he does not go so far as Amendola. Once an ardent Stalinist, Togliatti smoothly switched to supporting Khrushchev, and the Italian party was one of the first to denounce Khrushchev's ideological enemies, the Red Chinese and the Albanians. Not that there is much personal warmth between him and the Kremlin boss. Several years ago, Togliatti routinely began his day by asking his staff: "What new mess has our peasant...