(3 of 3)
Many of the country's cinema artists, who travel abroad a good deal, now find that they can feel at home in their own country for the first time. One of them is Actress Sylva Daničková, the lovely hostess at her country's Kinoautomat success at Expo 67. "I was always traveling abroad talking about politics, art, love—anything—critically, angrily and happily, however I felt," says Miss Daničková. "But when I came home, it was silence. You couldn't really participate in the life of your country. Now you can." Another Czechoslovak who found that he could come home again is Author Ladislav Mriačko, who went into exile last summer in protest over his government's pro-Arab policy. Mnačko is back in Prague, where his biting novel about a Communist leader's downfall, The Taste of Power, has just been published for the first time.
12,000 Secrets. Antonin Liehm, the bubbly editor of the journal Literárni Listy, speaks of the atmosphere as "a lovely dream from which we never want to wake." The dream, however, does have its limitations. Most of them are the result of the Dubček regime's fear of going too far too fast and perhaps allowing the reforms to get out of hand. Though the government has formally abolished censorship, for example, it asks editors not to write about some 12,000 items on a list of "state secrets." The list includes such seemingly harmless subjects as the price of veal and the cost of spinning yarn; to many editors, it is censorship in another form.
Above all, the reformist leadership has so far refused to permit the emergence of a genuine opposition party to the Communists. A political organization of liberal nonCommunists, K.A.N., has already signed up more than 20,000 members but takes care to describe it self as a club rather than a party. K.A.N.'s rallies at times take place despite police bans, but the club's sober leaders know that if they overstep the bounds, they may force the government to crack down.
More Cautious. Despite these drawbacks, the Czechoslovaks have quickly grown accustomed to their freedom. Perhaps because of their democratic tradition, they regard it as something owed them, a birthright. People now tune in their radio and TV sets and expect to hear real news and not propaganda. They expect their leaders to be responsive to their questions and petitions, and to give them action. The Hungarian rebellion of 1956 was loaded with drama and tragic heroism. What has happened in Czechoslovakia has been more cautious, deliberate and evolutionary; it is an attempt at the marriage of Communism and democracy that is taking place under the disapproving parental gaze of the Kremlin. If the liberalization wrought by Alexander Dubček has lost some of its drama as it proceeds, perhaps that will be its greatest strength—and the best assurance that it has a chance, in the end, of success.