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Musical Satires. Many people have moved their dinner back an hour so that they will not miss the latest exposes about the Novotnŷ era on the 7 p.m. television news. One listener recently complained to Radio Prague about government jamming of Western broadcasts. In no time at all, the station produced the apologetic voice of the Minister of Culture, Miroslav Galuska, who announced that the government planned to abolish jamming. At the Semafor, a cellar theater in Prague, S.R.O. crowds gather three nights a week to laugh and cry out in shocked surprise at a musical satire, The Last Stop. In two hours of leggy displays, big-beat tunes, psychedelic lights and slapstick chases, the production fearlessly dissects the incompetence and corruption of the old set of Communist leaders and even lampoons the new set a bit.
Another major sign of how much life has changed is the outpouring of honors for Thomas Masaryk, the country's first President, and his son, the late Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk, who was probably murdered by the Communists. The very existence of both men was officially erased during the Novotnŷ period. Now, at the graves of the two patriots in the village of Lany, small green shrubs have been planted to form letters that spell the presidential motto, "Truth Prevails." Schools in Prague and Bratislava have been renamed after both men. And some mornings, as the train pulls into Prague Central Station, an exuberant conductor may call out, "Masaryk Station!"—its name before the Communists took over and changed it.
Opening Old Wounds. The political transformation has altered many lives. Some have benefited from it; others have come to grief. Everywhere, people talk endlessly about the past and compare their sufferings, opening old wounds and cursing those responsible for them. "People must talk about these things and keep talking," says Museum Clerk Karel Nigrin, 64, who spent eight years in solitary and seven at hard labor as a political prisoner. "This regime has allowed them to talk like no other Communist regime ever has."
Among those who have lost their jobs in the nationwide shake-up are the "peace priests," who were induced by Novotny to break with the Vatican and run the country's Roman Catholic churches. The old Communists had demanded that all clergy swear allegiance to the government, and arrested those who refused. But now thousands of priests who were forced to work in factories and on farms have returned to their flocks. A certain amount of private business is tolerated. Jerry Herdglotz, 47, for example, now drives his own Opel Olympia sedan as a private entrepreneur, makes $250 a month v, $150 that he used to earn working for the state cab company.