Page "Society of Communist Czechoslovakia" Paragraph 34

In 1949, the KSC at its Ninth Party Congress issued " directives for new socialist culture.

" The congress declared that " literary and artistic production is an important agent of the ideological and cultural rebirth in our country, and it is destined to play a great role in the socialist education of the masses.

" Some arts maintained their tradition of excellence throughout the era.

Theater productions relied on the classics for their repertoire.

Czech filmmakers relied on anti-Nazi, World War II plots to produce works of world renown in the 1960s.

This was and has continued to be a safe topic.

But writers were a perennial source of consternation for the authorities.

Officials of the Novotny regime periodically denounced them for " unprincipled liberalism.

" Those placed under interdict wrote, as the phrase went, " for the drawer "; some, like Novomesky, were sentenced to long prison terms.