There was no reason to worry. Jula was rehearsing the war drama “When blue shirts get to speak” and meanwhile socialism was getting its human face which was smiling at everyone and gaining more and more support from the public. People were forgetting the hide-bound and unpleasant representatives of yesterday with relief and applauded those who made it to the foreground. Some of them could compete with popular actors and singers.
You could of course hear the uncanny voices that whispered that senile General Svoboda was visiting the army institution where he was giving consultations about lifting the skirts of young female comrades. Or that Cestmir Cisar was exposed by Novotny as French spy and wasn’t convicted only because the masses wouldn’t believe that this accusation was true should there be a political trial? Smrkovsky was in fact preparing the fascist dictate and naïve Dubcek understood nothing but Trencin football which he unlawfully but generously financed.
There was lot of gossips but surprisingly enough, people refused to believe them. If there were such rumors about the former power garniture, they would make the most of it.
You call this a labor manifestation?
Dumbera shouted.
Instead of demonstration of strength of our working class united around the Communist Party, it was something between Sibrinky ( Sokol’s masquerade ball) and a Brazilian carnival. I haven’t seen bigger provocation in my whole life! How come that hippies and gangs of hooligans were allowed to march? Who allowed it? How come the police didn’t intervene? How come that they let the sacred working-class ideas be offended like this? It is fortunate that Jan Neruda or Julius Fucik don’t live to see that!
“Don’t be so pessimistic, Kefalin was calming him down.
Your beloved women from Zizkov were prancing around this time as well!
But social fascists disabled their ideological work!
answered Dumbera angrily.
The TV commentators barely accepted their presence. Their beautiful patterns stayed almost unnoticed. Dubcek hardly waved to them. All his attention went to hairy nihilists full of bourgeois ideology. And these are supposed to be our allies? The leadership of the Party should wake up; there is a civil war waiting to happen!
Who will fight with whom?
Kefalin asked.
Dumbera just waved his hand. And then he growled darkly
You will see about that! The working class is confused now, but that’s not important. Karl Marx wrote: It is not important what a worker as an individual thinks or does, but what the working class has to do to achieve its task.