Roses for a Ghost

The virus of freedom had been so rife in Czechoslovakia that the country's new masters hardly knew where to begin to attack the endemic disease. But last week they were making a start, on some obvious fronts.

Premier Antonin Zapotocky (TIME, June 21) announced plans for further purges of the army,* the courts, the schools, the libraries, and the economy ("to erase the last vestige of capitalism" and establish "harmony" with Russia). His purge of the press provoked the first open resistance the new regime had encountered. The government announced that all Socialist publications would be closed down this month when the Social Democratic Party "merges" with the Communist Party. At the plant of venerable Pravo Lidu (People's Right), 55-year-old Social Democratic Party organ, 500 newspaper workers assembled in a protest rally. Shouts of "Strike!" went up. Social Democratic Deputy Premier Zdenek Fierlinger, who hurried to the Pravo Lidu plant to try to smooth things out, was received bitterly. Said Fierlinger: "Things will be better for all of us." Cried one worker: "We Socialists helped the Communists to publish one of their papers at our plant. This is what we get for it."

Meanwhile the memory of Jan Masaryk still haunted Czechoslovakia. Persistent rumors whispered that Masaryk had been murdered. In Washington, Juray Slavik, former Czech ambassador to the U.S., said that Masaryk had been bludgeoned to death (after he had shot two of his assailants) and that after death his body had been dumped from his study window. Snapped Evzen Erban, Czech Minister of Social Welfare: "Fairy tales . . . Hollywood yarns."

Actually, it mattered little whether Jan Masaryk had been killed or been driven to kill himself; he was a casualty of the Communists. One day last week Communist President Klement Gottwald made a gesture of exorcism. The new President and his wife drove to the little cemetery where Jan Masaryk is buried beside his great father Thomas. President and Mrs. Gottwald laid red roses on Jan Masaryk's grave. But the ghost still walked.

*General Karel Janousek, wartime commander of the Czech air force in Britain, was condemned to death for treason when he tried to flee the country. (The sentence was commuted to 18 years at hard labor.) Seventeen other Czech air force men managed to escape to Britain in a "borrowed" plane.

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