Activities and affiliations

Political and party leadership Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) 1896–1953 ○ Natural causes

The communist leader who turned Czechoslovakia into a people's democracy through the February 1948 coup

We are the party of the Czechoslovak proletariat and our supreme chief of staff is indeed Moscow. We go to Moscow to learn from the Russian Bolsheviks how to wring your necks. That grin will be wiped off your faces! Maiden speech in the Czechoslovak National Assembly, 21 December 1929

Born into a poor Moravian peasant household, he helped found the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) in 1921 and became its general secretary in 1929, leading it until his death. A Comintern secretary from 1935 to 1943, he helped shape the Popular Front line, and in May 1945 he returned to Prague as deputy prime minister and National Front chairman. After the KSČ won 38 per cent in the 1946 elections he became prime minister, and following the February 1948 coup he was elected Czechoslovakia's first Communist president on 14 June 1948. As president he drove nationalisation and agricultural collectivisation and instigated the trials of Milada Horáková, executed in 1950, and of Rudolf Slánský and Vlado Clementis, executed in 1952; he died on 14 March 1953.

Political and party leadership Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) 1901–1952 ✕ Executed

KSČ General Secretary who organized the February 1948 coup and built Czechoslovakia's people's democracy as its operational architect

In September 1947 Slánský returned from the Cominform founding meeting with Moscow's directive to seize power. 'As in the international field, we have gone on the offensive on the domestic front as well' — the February 1948 coup had begun.

After joining the KSČ Central Committee and Politburo in 1929, he rose as Gottwald's closest lieutenant. During WWII he directed Czechoslovak broadcasts from Moscow and fought in the 1944 Slovak National Uprising. As General Secretary (1945–1951), he mastered the party apparatus and directed the operational work of the February 1948 coup, converting Czechoslovakia into a Soviet-aligned people's democracy. Arrested in 1951, he was tried and executed in 1952 on charges of conspiracy, Trotskyism, Titoism and Zionism: the most distinctly antisemitic purge trial in the Eastern Bloc. Rehabilitated 1963; party membership restored 1968.

Political and party leadership Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) 1908–1979 ○ Expelled 1969; died under police watch

The only Prague Spring leader who refused to sign the Moscow Protocol

In Moscow, standing before Brezhnev, Kriegel said: 'Send me to Siberia or shoot me dead. I will not sign.'

Czechoslovak communist politician and physician. He served as a doctor with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, then rose to become a KSČ Presidium member and chairman of the National Front during the 1968 Prague Spring, where he was among the most radical reformers. Arrested with Dubček on 21 August and deported to Moscow, he was the only one of twenty-six Czechoslovak politicians who refused to sign the Moscow Protocol. Expelled from the party and stripped of his medical license, he became a dissident and was among the first to sign Charter 77 in 1977.

Political and party leadership Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) 1913–1991 ○ Natural causes

Czechoslovakia's longest-serving leader, who crushed the Prague Spring and built 'normalization'

On 10 December 1989, Husák swore in the first non-communist majority government in 41 years — and resigned the presidency hours later, personally witnessing the formal end of the regime he had built.

A Slovak communist lawyer, he served in the leadership of the 1944 Slovak National Uprising against the Nazis. After the war he consolidated communist rule in Slovakia, but was purged in 1950 for 'bourgeois nationalism' and imprisoned for a decade. Rehabilitated in 1963, he became vice-premier during Dubček's Prague Spring, then reversed after the Soviet invasion to lead the purge of reformers. As KSČ general secretary (1969–1987) and president (1975–1989), he presided over 'normalization': combining relative material stability with secret-police suppression of dissent. He resigned during the 1989 Velvet Revolution, handing power to the first non-communist government in 41 years.

Political and party leadership Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) 1917–2014 ○ Died

The party ideology secretary who signed the letter inviting Soviet tanks into his own country

Charged with treason, Biľak denied signing any invitation: "I never wrote to Brezhnev." The letter had been addressed to the CPSU Central Committee, not to Brezhnev personally. A defense that was technically true and entirely beside the point.

A neo-Stalinist of Rusyn origin who rose from tailor to the Presidium of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. In 1968 he was a core member of the conservative 'healthy forces': one of five who signed the invitation letter urging the Warsaw Pact to intervene against the Prague Spring reforms with 'all means at your disposal.' As the KSČ ideology secretary under Husák, he drafted 'Lessons from the Crisis Development' (1970), the doctrinal foundation of normalization that branded the reforms a counter-revolution and justified mass purges, remaining an unreconstructed hardliner until expelled during the Velvet Revolution.

Political and party leadership Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) 1921–1990 ○ Natural causes

The KSČ hardliner who signed the letter inviting Soviet intervention to end the Prague Spring

On the morning of 21 August 1968, Dubček was arrested 'in the name of the Workers' and Peasants' Government led by Comrade Indra.' But Indra's cabinet never materialized for a single day, and the invitation letter he signed would remain secret until the 1990s.

A neo-Stalinist politician of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. A core conservative during the 1968 Prague Spring, he was one of five who signed the 'invitation letter' urging the Warsaw Pact to intervene, and was designated head of a Soviet-backed 'workers' and peasants' government' immediately after the invasion. Under Husák he remained in the Presidium and chaired the Federal Assembly, driving the 'normalization' purges until expelled by the Velvet Revolution in 1989; he died the following year.

Political and party leadership Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) 1921–1992 ↓ Removed 1969

He dreamed of a human face, and was posted to the forestry service

Before dawn on August 21, 1968, Soviet officers burst into Dubček's office. The phone lines were cut, handcuffs went on. 'We will kill, if necessary, a million Czechs, to put an end to your counter-revolution,' an officer said.

The Slovak reform communist who led the Prague Spring. Raised in the USSR from childhood, he abolished censorship in 1968 and pursued 'socialism with a human face', only to be deposed by the Warsaw Pact invasion and spend fifteen years as a forestry clerk. In 1989 he stood beside Havel on the balcony once more.

Political and party leadership Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) 1926–1987 ○ Natural causes

The ideology cadre who drafted the Action Programme, then served normalization to the end

In early 1968, in his Questions of Peace and Socialism office in Prague, Auersperg set the drafting group to work: Mlynář, Richta, Šik, and the others writing the Action Programme chapter by chapter.

A KSČ ideology cadre who personally wrote Part V of the Action Programme and led the working group that produced the defining document of the Prague Spring. He built his career as Antonín Novotný's secretariat chief, then as head of the party's Ideological Department from 1965, where he enforced censorship over culture and scholarship with a hard hand. In early 1968 he hosted the drafting team in his Questions of Peace and Socialism office and delivered the text adopted on 5 April. After the Warsaw Pact invasion, he broadcast for the pro-Soviet radio from Dresden and served Husák's normalization regime as head of international politics and, ultimately, as ambassador to the Netherlands.

Political and party leadership Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) 1930–1997 ○ Natural causes

A reform communist who sought to democratize socialism

Recalling a 1967 visit in which he laid his reform plans before his old roommate Gorbachev, Mlynář said: 'It seemed to me he understood very well what I was talking about.'

Zdeněk Mlynář was a Czechoslovak Communist politician and lawyer who sought to join socialism to democratic control and active citizenship. During the Prague Spring of 1968, he served as a Central Committee secretary, worked in Alexander Dubček's reform leadership, and helped shape the political and legal team that drafted the Action Programme. After the Warsaw Pact invasion he signed the Moscow Protocols, then confronted the limits of reform and the reality of occupation by resigning his posts and later leaving the party. He signed Charter 77 and emigrated to Austria, where he became a political scientist and an important interpreter of the Prague Spring.