Obviously, not only political matters were described in newspapers. Journalists welcomed the election of the new President and in relation to it they speculated that Ludvík Svoboda has a unique opportunity to rehabilitate the function of the head of state. Jan Lipavský wrote in Kulturni Noviny (Cultural Newspaper) 5th April 1968 the following:
We want to believe, that the name of the President of the Republic is a lucky synonym of the current reviving process and also of the future of the people of this country…We want to believe, that he has the same idea of freedom as millions of people in this country, i.e. as the right of a person to do anything provided it does not harm somebody else…
Lipavský remembers the tradition of the president – philosopher and even if he does not explicitly mention the name of T.G. Masaryk, he unequivocally refers to him as to the ideal to which Svoboda could at least partially come close to.
Ernst Fischer’s message
The political changes were closely observed by both foreign politicians and philosophers, such as the Austrian Ernst Fischer, who wrote the following message in Kulturni Noviny:
The changes in Czechoslovakia are a great hope for us. I’d even say that the greatest in the last twenty years. What is happening could be named a democratic revolution…We think that the Czechoslovakian Republic is far ahead of all other socialist countries and that it will represent an example, that we had been waiting for so long.
Newspapers started to deal with past cases. One of them was the criminal procedure against the former controversial Minister of Interior Rudolf Barak who became unpopular in the eyes of Antonín Novotny in 1960’s and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. His wife Jarmila was given space in an interview to justify her husband.
Dr. Brešťanský’s tragedy
In another place of Kulturni Noviny we can read about Dr. Brešťanský’s tragedy. The author of the article, Karel Tomášek, remember an interesting contraposition of two cases: On 25th February 1968, former secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and a member of the National Assembly major-general Jan Šejna crossed the border between Czechoslovakia and Hungary. On 2nd April 1968, the State Security found JUDr. Jozef Brešťanský, the chair of the Criminal Committee and a deputy chair of the Supreme Court, general and judge strung up near Babice…“Both of them in top state positions with a lot of power – yet they were so different…Sejna was a careerist who came forward in a certain phase of the development of our state. JUDr Brešťanský was some kind of a self-made man, who held the most progressive judicial position.“
The author of the article further remembers that during the time preceding his death he mainly dealt with rehabilitations – it was him who lead the work of the Supreme Court concerning this matter, he assigned tasks to chairing judges, he advocated exact and rigorous investigation of the past crimes…“ It was him who provided the National Assembly with a report on the causes of the breach of law, where, for the first time, appeared the name of Antonín Novotný and others… Shortly before his death he wrote a letter to the Ministry of Interior, in which he demanded that the Supreme Court be provided with all documents from the period of unlawfulness, even the top secret documents. Dr. Brešťanský did not receive a reply. If they had given him the documents, many people from the past regime would be in danger. And some of them could have a reason to eliminate Dr. Brešťanský.
Films from the safe
In April 1968, cinema Praha brought out Films from the safe. One of them was the film by Jaroslav Sikl, (Destinies of the year 1964 . Sikl made a film about three people, who during the so called period of the personality cult went up only to rapidly plunge. One of them was the western aviator Josef Hubáček, who during the First Republic belonged to the famous trio of world champions in acrobatic flying Novak – Hubáček – Široký, then he was one of our best fighter pilots in the battle of England and after the war until the year 1951 he was the chief of Ruzyne Airport. Then in the space of 24 hours he was fired and told that he had to leave Prague…Sikl’s film had to go through many approval procedures and in 1965 it was matched with a feature film Hvězda Zvaná Pelyněk and it was shown in Cinema Sevastopol and then in Lucerna. Yet soon after the film was withdrawn and what is more, Antonín Novotný bitterly criticised it in his speech to People’s Militia. The film then was not properly shown until spring 1968.
About Jan Masaryk again
One of the cases that were brought up again in 1968 was the unclear suicide (possible murder) of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Jan Masaryk. At the beginning of April, a certain B. J. an employee of the Prague Taxi Services who used to work as a driver of the Security twenty years before that, came to the editorial office of Svobodne Slovo newspaper. He expressed his wish to give a testimony of the early morning of 10th March 1948, when he was driving three members of the National Security to Černínský Palace. Even this insignificant man had spent two years in prison – probably for the simple fact that he was an uncomfortable witness…On the same page, the General Prosecutor’s Office offered the possibility of continuous informing of the public on the investigation of Jan Masaryk’s tragic death. Dr. Jan Kotlář was charged with the task to clarify the case and he had already started to gather accessible documentary material and depositions.