Tying Up Some Loose Strings

The leaders of Prague's short-lived Springtime of Freedom have long since been silenced. Alexander Dubcek is variously reported on an extended vacation in Slovakia or undergoing treatment in a Prague sanatorium. Josef Smrkovsky, the onetime darling of Czechoslovak liberals, is on an enforced vacation in Bohemia. Hundreds of other officials, journalists and even schoolteachers have lost their jobs. But under the hard-line regime of Party Boss Gustav Hus`ak, who replaced Dubcek seven months ago, the purges go on.

Last week Husak all but completed his cleanup of the country's legislatures by forcing 63 liberals out of the Czech National Council, the parliamentary body for the Czech-speaking part of the country. Previously, liberals in the federal Parliament had been replaced by hardliners. Among those expelled in absentia from the Czech Council last week were Economist Ota Sik and Kafka Expert Eduard Goldstuecker, former president of the Writers' Union, both of whom have gained refuge in the West. Said Dubcek's onetime Culture and Education Minister, Cestmir Cisar, as he resigned from his post as Council president: "I admit my share of the responsibility for the errors and shortcomings, but I beg you to believe that they were not committed out of ill will."

Rearguard Operation. After Husak visited Moscow in October, he and his Soviet hosts issued a joint statement that spoke of "carrying on to the end the struggle against right-wing opportunism." Husak has been faithful to his word: some Czechs are wondering whether he will go so far as to stage political show trials.

As it is, he has gone quite far. Suspected liberals in the Czechoslovak diplomatic corps are being recalled from foreign posts to Prague, where an eye can be kept on them. Several judges have been sacked, and liberals in Communist women's organizations are being dismissed from office. Many leading journalists and broadcasters lost their jobs in the early days of the Soviet-led invasion; now the hunt is under way for the less well-known newsmen and intellectuals, who have conducted a bothersome rearguard operation against political repression.

In quick succession, the party leaders of the state television network and the radio stations as well as leaders of the composers' union have all been forced to resign. Some 300 journalists have been fired for harboring liberal tendencies. To undercut the bargaining position of Czechoslovakia's nine unions of artists, writers and other creative people, Minister of Culture Miroslav Bruzek has declared that he will deal with members strictly on an individual basis. Only those who obey the party line will be given financial aid and permission to travel abroad.

All Too Reminiscent. The Prague theater, which for months remained the last voice of not-so-veiled defiance, also is being silenced. Tango, the biting satire by Polish Playwright Slawomir Mro-zek about the corruption of Communist officialdom, was closed down by government censors after only one performance. Fearful of a police crackdown, Prague's Theater in the Vineyard withdrew Maxwell Anderson's Barefoot in Athens, whose plot revolves around the Spartan occupation of Athens in 404 B.C. The scene in which the Spartan commander embraces the collaborationist mayor of Athens was all too reminiscent of newsreel shots that showed Husak being bussed by Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev.

The cultural crackdown has extended to the film industry, which at first had escaped relatively unscathed because of its importance as an earner of hard currency for Czechoslovakia. Now a party hack has been installed as head of the film industry, and pressure is being put on producers and directors to confess "mistakes" committed during Dubcek's era. JiriMenzel, whose Closely Watched Trains won a 1967 Academy Award as best foreign film, has been told that his latest movie, Larks on a String, will not be released. The film describes the plight of a number of Czechoslovak intellectuals who end up working on a scrap heap for refusing to obey party dictates. While on location in a steel town west of Prague, Menzel took the precaution of acquiring a new trade: he learned to operate a crane.

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