Czechoslovakia: Purged & Put Down

In its campaign to silence "unruly" writers, Czechoslovakia's Communist regime is writing its own record of repression. Last week, at a two-day meeting in Prague, the party's Central Committee 1) expelled from the party Novelist Ludvik Vaculik, 41, Playwright Ivan Klima, 36, and Critic Antonin J. Liehm for "attitudes incompatible with party membership," 2) purged Novelist Jan Procházka, 38, of his alternate membership on the Central Committee for "mistakes in his literary activities," and 3) placed Literární Noviny, the weekly journal of the Czechoslovakian Writers' Union, under the Ministry of Culture for "becoming the platform for political views opposite to the Czech Communist Party."