Czech journalist who chaired the Revolutionary Governing Council of the Slovak Soviet Republic in 1919
Born in Nymburk, he was originally an engine fitter; he joined the Social Democratic Party in 1895 and from 1906 was a workers’ journalist and an official of workers’ associations. Living in Budapest from 1918 as a correspondent of the Kladno paper Svoboda, he led the Czech and Slovak section of the Hungarian Communist Party’s central committee in 1919. After the Hungarian Red Army entered Slovakia he proclaimed the Slovak Soviet Republic in Prešov and became chairman of its Revolutionary Governing Council, but the state ceased to exist on 7 July when Czechoslovak troops pushed the Hungarians out. Imprisoned in Hungary after the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, he was handed over to the Czechoslovak authorities in 1920. Granted Soviet citizenship, he moved to Soviet Russia in 1922 and worked for International Workers’ Aid. He died of natural causes in 1941.
Career timeline
- 1895Joined the Social Democratic Party
- 1906Workers’ journalist and official of workers’ associations
- 1919Head of the Czech and Slovak section of the Hungarian Communist central committee
- 1919Chairman of the Revolutionary Governing Council of the Slovak Soviet Republic
- 1922–1941Moved to the Soviet Union; International Workers’ Aid
Czech politician who resisted both the Nazis and the Communists and was hanged in 1950 after a fabricated treason trial
A women’s rights activist and anti-Nazi resistance member, Horáková served in parliament after the war and resigned in 1948. Arrested in 1949, she was sentenced to death in a fabricated treason trial and hanged in 1950.
A Prague lawyer, she was prominent in the interwar women’s rights movement. Active in the underground resistance under German occupation, she was arrested by the Gestapo in 1940, passed through Terezín and German prisons and was freed by American troops in April 1945. After the war she became a National Socialist deputy and in 1947 founded the women’s magazine Vlasta. She resigned her seat in protest shortly after the February 1948 coup but chose not to emigrate and stayed politically active in Prague. Arrested in September 1949 and interrogated under torture, she was sentenced to death for conspiracy and treason and hanged in Pankrác prison on 27 June 1950.
Career timeline
- 1926Became director of the Prague City Council welfare department and joined the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party.
- 1945Freed by Allied forces after imprisonment for resistance under German occupation, she returned to Prague, rejoined the National Socialist Party and became a member of parliament.
- 1948Resigned from parliament after the Communist takeover in February.
- 1949Was arrested on 27 September in connection with an illegal political group.
- 1950Was sentenced to death at a trial on treason and espionage charges and hanged on 27 June.
A poet who confronted censorship and power at each moment of reform
In September 1968, condemning the invasion, he contrasted the first tank to enter Prague with the last one to leave.
Jaroslav Seifert was a Czechoslovak poet and journalist who linked Prague’s working-class culture with the avant-garde. He left the Communist Party in 1929 in protest against its bureaucratic and Stalinist turn, while retaining a left-wing social outlook. After 1948 he led a committee examining the persecution of writers, and in 1968 he helped make the Writers’ Union a platform for abolishing censorship and widening cultural freedom, later condemning the invasion. He received the 1984 Nobel Prize in Literature, even as normalization restricted his publications and public voice.
Career timeline
- 1921Published his first poetry collection, City in Tears, and joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
- 1922–1929Helped found Devětsil and edited Communist newspapers and avant-garde journals
- 1929Expelled from the Communist Party after signing the Manifesto of the Seven
- 1930–1948Worked as a journalist and cultural editor in the social-democratic and trade-union press
- 1949–1956Left journalism to write full-time and faced restrictions on publication
- 1956Criticized cultural policy toward disfavored writers at the Writers’ Congress
- 1968–1970Chaired the Czechoslovak Writers’ Union and then the Czech Writers’ Union
- 1984Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
Slovak Communist who succeeded Jan Masaryk as foreign minister and was executed after the Slánský trial of 1952
As deputy foreign minister, he backed rejection of the Marshall Plan; after the 1948 coup he became foreign minister and organized Czechoslovak air support for Israel. Forced out and arrested in 1950, he was executed after the 1952 Slánský trial.
A lawyer from Tisovec in Slovakia, he was a left-wing intellectual who co-edited Dav, a cultural and political journal of great influence among interwar Slovak intellectuals. He sat as a Communist deputy. He became foreign minister after Jan Masaryk’s death in March 1948 and served until 1950. Accused of “Titoism” and “national deviation”, he was sentenced to death at the Slánský trial of 1952 and executed on 3 December; he was later rehabilitated.
Career timeline
- 1925Joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, practised law, and organized communist cells in Slovakia.
- 1935Became a Communist Party deputy in the National Assembly.
- 1945Became state secretary for foreign affairs.
- 1948–1950Served as foreign minister, helped organize the coup, and arranged air support for Israel.
- 1950Was forced to resign amid accusations of deviationism and then arrested.
- 1952Was convicted in the Slánský trial and hanged.
- 1963Was rehabilitated posthumously.
