Tremors of Change

The tremors emanating from Czechoslovakia's extraordinary wave of reform not only shook the country itself but spread through all of Eastern Europe. In Prague, Party Boss Alexander Dubcek, chief architect of the reforms, consolidated his position and opened the way for further liberalization by forcing the resignation of deposed Party Chief Antonin Novotny, 63, as President of the country that he had ruled with an iron hand for 15 years. Polish students used the reforms in Czecho slovakia as a herald in their defiance of the government. Rumanian Party Boss Nicolae Ceausescu, an earlier liberalizer (TIME cover, March 18, 1966), read the handwriting on the wall and decided that Rumania should go farther along the reform road. Everyone should be free to criticize the Communist party, Ceausescu told his Central Com mittee, even when "diverse and wrong views appear."

The events in Czechoslovakia gathered such force, in fact, that at week's end they produced a sort of Communist summit. Seeking to calm the fears of his Communist neighbors that his re forms might go too far and produce another Hungary, Dubcek traveled to Dresden in East Germany to confer with Communist leaders. The meeting was attended by East German Boss Walter Ulbricht, who is openly concerned by his neighbor's new course, and by Poland's Wladyslaw Gomulka. Hungarian Communist officials also showed up. Finally, as an indication of the meet ing's importance, both Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin and Party Boss Leo nid Brezhnev arrived in Dresden. The confrontation came only days after a Czechoslovak delegation returned home from Moscow with a Kremlin prom ise that the Russians would not in terfere with Dubcek's drive for "so cialist democratization."

Giant Stalin. The week's most dramatic event, the fall of Antonin No votny, followed a country-wide clamor for his resignation. At noisy meetings throughout Czechoslovakia, Novotny was denounced and taunted. In Slova kia, portraits of him were burned. Pe titions for his dismissal poured into Prague. Seeing that he was through, many of Novotny's old friends, including the army general staff, joined the chorus against him. Novotny closed himself off in Hradcany Castle on a hill overlooking Prague, hoping that the storm would blow over. When a news paper suggested that illness might give him an honorable excuse to resign — he suffers from gallstones — he telephoned the editors to report that his health was much improved. Politically, he was already in extremis. When the Communist Party Presidium ordered him to resign, he went along like a loyal Communist; the alternative, under Communist discipline, was expulsion from the party. In his final moment of humiliation, Novotny cited ill health as the reason for his resignation.