ABSTRACT
By the spring of 1968, Czechoslovakia journalists had mobilized critical public opinion and amassed such influence that they played a vital role in bringing down the conservative Antonin Novotny as president of Czechoslovakia and general secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (KSC). By allowing an uncensored press to develop an independent voice in the political process, the Czechoslovaks had created an idiosyncratic situation in the communist system. In the Czechoslovakia of 1968, journalistic aggressiveness was fueled by yet another source: Individual reporters who were ashamed of their conservative backgrounds wanted now to erase the memory of their past activities by becoming more outspoken than those individuals who had been propounding liberal views all along. When the Czechoslovak journalists set out to speed up the rehabilitation process, they did so by exposing the inner workings of the purge cycles in both Czechoslovakia and in the Soviet Union.
