Bread, Votes & Treason

Time & again, cocky, assertive Czechoslovakian Communist Party Boss Klement Gottwald assured the Kremlin and warned the West that he intended to convert Czechoslovakia into a one-party (Communist) state. But between plan and fulfillment stood next May's elections, in which Communists have set out to win an absolute (51%) majority. Last week, with voting six months away, Gottwald's campaign was in shrill swing.

Gottwald's party got 40% of the vote in Czechoslovakia's last election (TIME, June 10, 1946). Since then he had, in fact, been losing ground. Soviet failure to deliver promised goods, particularly bread grain, on promised schedule, increased the heat and frequency of criticism leveled at Gottwald and the Kremlin. The swing away from Gottwald reached a peak when the Social Democrats, by secret ballot, bounced their pro-Communist leader Zdenek Fierlinger out of his job and installed Bohumil Lausman in his place. No rabid antiCommunist, Lausman nevertheless believes that Czechoslovakia should come first. The seams of Gottwald's National Front began popping rivets.

Gottwald got off a call for help to Stalin. Last week the answer came back by wire. Stalin promised Czechs that not only would they get the 200,000 tons of grain promised last summer as a bonus for boycotting the Marshall Plan but an additional 200,000 tons as well. The Russian grain would be delivered by next April--before election time.

Czech Communists promptly began wrapping their promised bread with Communist threats. Communist Party Secretary Richard Slansky announced: "If anyone now dares to criticize the Soviet Union it will be a crime against the state." Communist Minister of Information Vaclav Kopecky more ominously added: "From now on anti-Communism is actually high treason." Retorted the National Socialist Svobodny Zitrek: "What are the Communists threatened by? Nothing but democracy."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.