Gottwald & Grandma

The position of a Red nation in Communism's ideological conflict can be judged by the location of corpses and symbols. After the 22nd Communist Party Congress voted last October to remove Joseph Stalin from the Red Square tomb he shared with Lenin, Czechoslovakia's Communist Party announced a similar assault on the cult of personality. Stalin ist Klement Gottwald, who led the party to power in 1948 (and died in 1953 of pneumonia and pleurisy contracted at Stalin's funeral) was to be moved from his mausoleum. But visiting Prague last week, TIME Correspondent Robert Ball discovered no change. Gottwald, face serene, skin unlined, waxen hands folded peacefully, still lay in his glass case amid Byzantine, marbled gloom.

The mausoleum is open only three hours a week, and few residents of Prague visit it. Most Czechs actually believe that the late Premier's body has long since been reburied. "You mean," said a Foreign Ministry official, "he's still there?"

Party spokesmen insist that the topic is still under discussion. A four-man commission is sounding out rank-and-file reaction to Gottwald's removal. The backing and filling points up one fact: the Czechs are a careful, canny and slow-moving people. Unlike neighboring Hungary, Poland or East Germany, Czechoslovakia has few outspoken malcontents and no likelihood of an uprising. The party, in return, is more lenient; the Czechs are allowed a relative cultural freedom. Western books sell briskly; J. D. Salinger is currently a favorite. Western films can be seen without stigma. In Prague, Designer Zdenka Bauer. 27, showed a collection of attractive dresses, suits and beachwear that were "an effort to follow Paris lines but adapt them to Czech fabrics."

Western jazz has long been a steady favorite. The Charleston is back in vogue, suggesting that reactionary elements are freely at work in the pop music field. Prague's favorite tune last week was Come on Grandma, Teach Me the Charleston. Sample lyric: Grandma, leave the pullover alone. There is still plenty of time till Christmas. I'll knit half a yard for you tomorrow, If you come and teach me the Charleston.

More fascinating even than the Czech Charleston is the country's ideological twist between Moscow and the Albania-China faction. Officially, Czechoslovakia backs Moscow, but Premier Antonin Novotny is an old Stalinist. Not only have the Czechs managed to keep on trading with Albania, but they have acted as Russia's representatives at Tirana since the Soviets severed diplomatic relations. Meanwhile, Prague's huge Stalin monument, which Novotny had promised to destroy, still stands. Some Prague wags suggest a solution for that: paint the monument black and rename it the Patrice Lumumba memorial.

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