In the wake of East Berlin's 1953 bread riots, the Communist regime scolded the people for having forfeited the government's confidence and demanded that they work twice as hard to atone. Marxist Dramatist Bertolt Brecht offered a classic rejoinder. Instead of trying to rehabilitate such people, asked Brecht sarcastically, "wouldn't it be simpler for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?" It remained for Czechoslovakia, nearly two decades later, to take Brecht at his word.
Addressing 1,200 delegates at the 14th Congress of the Czechoslovak Communist Party last week in Prague's vast Congress Hall, First Secretary Gustav Husák...
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