IN Prague's baroque Lesser Town, 500 people gather in a square, and a young man mounts a box to unfurl a banner reading: DEMOCRATIZATION MUST BECOME DEMOCRACY. Everyone starts cheering wildly. Along the glittering Vltava River, bearded young men and miniskirted girls collect signatures on a petition demanding that the government resume diplomatic relations with Israel; after they have collected 30,000 signatures, they are invited to the office of the foreign ministry to have tea and cake—and discuss government policy. At a meeting in the city of Moravská Ostrava, Czechoslovak intellectuals face an audience of workers and their families for a political debate. A miner shouts: "Wasn't there anything good in the past?" More timidly, but no less urgently, a bespectacled young girl rises to ask: "Why can't we see the film Doctor Zhivago?"
Only a few months ago, such scenes would have been almost unthinkable in Czechoslovakia, where questioning and dissent were rigidly suppressed by the strict, doctrinaire regime of Antonín Novotnŷ. Today, under the new reforms of Alexander Dubček, they are commonplace. Life in Czechoslovakia rings with the sounds of freedom. Despite a constant threat of reprisals from the Soviet Union, the political change has not only transformed public life but worked a captivating magic on the people's mood. It has made Czechoslovakia the most contagiously exciting country in Eastern Europe—and perhaps in all of Europe.
Cheered & Booed. From Prague to the High Tatra Mountains, reports TIME Correspondent Peter Forbath, who spent several weeks traveling through Czechoslovakia, the hostility, suspicion and dreariness associated with other Communist states has all but vanished. Unlike Communist bosses elsewhere, the country's leaders make frequent public appearances, are often cheered, booed, photographed and chased for autographs. At the borders, customs officers dutifully glance into the car trunks of foreign visitors, but do not even bother to open their luggage before waving them through. Traffic the other way is heavy too; suddenly able to get passports and visas after years of restricted travel, Czechoslovak citizens are jamming border points on their way to vacations in Western Europe.
The country's police are now obliged to wear identification badges, the only cops in any Communist country to do so. Political debate breaks out almost anywhere, in cafes, restaurants, offices and even on streetcars, where passengers eagerly share newspapers containing the latest revelations of past evils and argue over them with strangers.