Around the Corner, Prague Spring Redux : Czechoslovakia: The hated officials who ‘invited’ the Soviets into Prague in ’68 are on their way out, and with them goes the Communist Party’s power. In the wings is Alexander Dubcek.

This week, Czechoslovakia’s opposition demanded the resignation of six people: Gustav Husak, the country’s doddering 77-year-old president; Milos Jakes, the reigning party boss; Karel Hoffman, a central committee secretary; Jan Fojtik, the party man in charge of ideology; Miroslav Zavadil, the trade union overlord; and Alois Indra, the geriatric, ailing speaker of Parliament.

Why these six? With the exception of Husak, they have one thing in common: They are the most prominent “inviters” still in office, and universally despised as such.

The word “inviters” refers to the group of 18 reactionary Communist leaders who, in August, 1968, invited the Soviet Union to crush the eight-month-old Prague Spring. Issuing that invitation amounted to an act of high treason. Fear of retribution motivated this group in power to refuse, until recently, any dialogue with the opposition.

The opposition is disparate and variegated. Students are active as never before in the country’s history. And several groups have recently gathered under an umbrella called the Civic Forum, which features at least four elements: Charter 77, the senior civil-rights organization in all of Eastern Europe; Protestants and Catholics, who gathered some 300,000 signatures under a petition demanding greater freedoms; the political club Obroda (“Rebirth”), which includes the liberal former party leaders who lost out after the invasion; and the Socialist Party, one of the tiny non-Communist legal parties whose Johnny-come-lately leadership finally woke up.

The personnel changes demanded by the opposition were expected to start today; the Central Committee was meeting in emergency session and Jakes, perhaps with others, was widely expected to be replaced. Curiously, who will take Jakes’ place is no longer all-important. Even in Eastern Europe, the top party position isn’t what it used to be. Does anyone even remember who heads the Polish Communist Party, for example?

As democracy sweeps through the region, Communist parties have to share power. They wilt, wither, split--even get disbanded. Meanwhile, real power is shifting to the presidency, the job to which the most astute politicians aspire. In East Germany, Egon Krenz, who now has it all, is interested in giving up his party mantle, the better to hold the presidency. In Hungary, Imre Pozsgay helped create the office of president, to which he hopes to be elected, as Mikhail Gorbachev was in the Soviet Union.

In Czechoslovakia, the presidency has been an office of critical importance since it was first occupied by Thomas Masaryk in 1918. More often than not, however, it was occupied by mediocrities. In the coming months, the country will be looking to this office for leadership, inspiration and steady direction. Mediocrities--and the country is full of them--need not apply.

As Husak resigns, and resign he must, there will be only one person in the country with the stature, the charisma, the political will, the confidence of the people, and, most critically, the confidence of the Soviets: Alexander Dubcek.

This politician who, after his election two decades ago to the most powerful job in the country, went to an ice-hockey match instead of immediately starting to purge his enemies, may have been naive then, but he has had a long time for reflection. He lived in obscurity as a minor government pencil-pusher until his retirement a few years ago. Only recently was he allowed contact with the outside world.

But last November, he visited Italy to receive an honorary doctorate of philosophy from the University of Bologna. He returned a changed man. There is no sign of depression, no sign of resignation. In May, he visited the playright Vaclav Havel after Havel’s release, once again, from prison. He has been talking to foreign journalists and writing for the foreign press. He has approached leaders of the countries that invaded Czechoslovakia in 1986, asking them to reconsider and reevaluate their actions. He splits his time between Bratislava and Prague, conferring with his colleagues from the Obroda club. Day by day, he sounds less like a retired bureaucrat and more like a politician ready to make the comeback of a lifetime.

In the coming weeks, Czechoslovakia’s parliament, awakening from its doldrums, may well elect Dubcek to the office that will take him to the Prague Castle. The romantic in me envisions him presiding over the rebirth of democracy, joining Masaryk as the country’s most beloved leader of the century.