Czechoslovakia: Look Who's Destalinizing

Communist Czechoslovakia, always a bastion of harsh Stalinism while most of Eastern Europe was busy destalinizing, is liberalizing a little. The huge statue of the dead dictator that overlooked Prague is now finally demolished; writers have begun to talk about "an enlarged horizon of freedom"; in Prague's Lucerna Hall dance palace recently, teen-agers rocked the rafters with the Oliver Twist and Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik in Twist tempo.

Last week Old Stalinist Antonin Novotny, President and first secretary of the Communist Party, bowed to mounting pressure from younger party leaders for further liberalization, announced the purge of two oldtime comrades-in-arms. Served up as scapegoats were Karol Bacilek, 66, first secretary of the Slovak wing of the nation's Communist Party and former Minister of Internal Security; and Bruno Kohler, 62, a party member since its founding in 1921 and No. 3 man on the Central Committee Secretariat.

Announcing their downfall, the party mouthpiece, Rude Pravo, deliberately gave no reasons for the ousters, since a full explanation could set off a chain reaction of destalinization that might well cost dour, lackluster Novotny his job. Bacilek was top cop back in 1952 when Rudolf Slansky and ten other Red leaders were hanged in the bloodiest of Stalin's satellite show trials; Köhler also played a key role in preparing the purge. And Czechoslovaks with good memories would recall the day eleven years ago when Security Boss Bacilek publicly and effusively thanked all those who had produced the valuable evidence that helped send Slansky and his comrades to the gallows, "most of all, Comrade Novotny."