FORCED OUT AS PRESIDENT OF CZECHOSLOVAKTA
The aggravated clash between the contending factions in the Czechoslovak— ian Communist party which led to Antonin Novotny's replacement as first secretary has resulted in his resignation from the ceremonial post of president March 22. The intraparty controversies passed beyond the Central Committee and have now drawn one segment of the people after another into heated nationwide debates.
The already weakened position of Novotny and the key members of his orthodox Stalinist faction was badly compromised by the flight of Major General Jan Sejna to the United States. He was the secretary of the Communist party unit of the Ministry of National Defense and a member of the presidium of the National Assembly. He is said to be the highest ranking official ever to defect from East Europe.
Sejna is officially charged with misappropriating $20,000 worth of stateowned seed. But far more is involved. He reportedly conspired, as a partisan of Novotny and possibly in collusion with him, in an abortive coup d'état designed to keep the premier in power. Mlada Fronta, the newspaper of the Communist youth movement, disclosed that a tank division was mobilized for that purpose during a session of the Communist Central Committee last December. After the attempt was foiled, the general was protected by his superiors and allowed to escape the country.
The party section of the Czechoslovak army voted March 6 for a full investigation of the case and demanded that the public be kept informed regardless of the personages involved. Dubcek was first apprised of Novotny's scheme in late January by General Prchlik who replaced Mirosiav Mamula as head of the security police.
Jan Prochazka, recently restored deputy chairman of the Writers Union, wrote in its newspaper Literarni Listy: "It is now a public secret that this general was prepared to show the arm of power in the recent party dispute. History has taught and we are aware that whenever generals and colonels take a hand in politics they do not use only their hands."
He ironically regretted the flight of a figure "who could have contributed so much to the sociological study of morals." (The defection of so highly placed a military man to the U.S. imperialists certainly exposes grave moral and political rottenness at the top of the regime.)
Prochazka expressed surprise that the general was allowed to slip across the border "in the critical days when the state prosecutor had already asked for his arrest." He added that Sejna "is nothing but the tip of a floating iceberg and, as we all know, nine-tenths of all icebergs are submerged under water."
In a similar veiled reference to Novotny's complicity as a benevolent protector of the defecting general, the tradeunion newspaper Prace reminded its readers "how he called on all of us to be on guard and class-conscious, and right under the candle so much darkness." The