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.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1937Joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
- 1945–56Regional party secretary in Zlín (Gottwaldov)
- 1960–62Head of planning, KSČ Central Committee
- 1962–63Chairman, State Planning Commission
- 1963–68Minister of Transport of Czechoslovakia
- 1968.8Signed the invitation letter; designated head of 'workers' and peasants' government'
- 1968–71Secretary, KSČ Central Committee
- 1971–89KSČ Presidium member; Chairman, Federal Assembly
Related historical events
- 1968The Prague Springsignatory of the intervention invitation letterHe was one of the five who signed the invitation letter requesting Warsaw Pact intervention, and later remained in the Presidium under Husák to drive the purge of reformists.
- 1989The Revolutions of 1989Party official ousted by the Velvet RevolutionHe was expelled by the Velvet Revolution in 1989.
August 1968: the attempt to install a 'workers' and peasants' government'
On 3 August 1968 Indra, together with Drahomír Kolder, Oldřich Švestka, Antonín Kapek and Vasil Biľak, signed the document that became known as the "invitation letter". Written in Russian, it asked for help "by all the means at your disposal" and claimed that only Soviet assistance could pull Czechoslovakia back from "the impending danger of counter-revolution", giving Moscow its pretext for intervention. Two accounts report that the letter was delivered to Brezhnev in Bratislava on 3 August.
Immediately after the Warsaw Pact invasion Indra worked to install a collaborative cabinet in place of the legal government. The Soviet Union mobilised conservative, anti-reform figures in the KSČ who opposed the Prague Spring, and the cabinet was to take power right after the invasion. During the afternoon of 21 August he went to Prague Castle with Kolder, Biľak and Jozef Lenárt and pressed President Ludvík Svoboda to hand over power on the argument that neither the government nor the party Presidium was functioning; Svoboda replied that he still trusted Oldřich Černík's legal government.
On 22 August the group met at the Hotel Praha and then at the Soviet embassy, and at 23:00 returned to the Castle. When Svoboda was asked to accept a "workers' and peasants' government" he refused it, and the cabinet was never appointed; the affair is recorded as the collaborative cabinet of conservative, pro-Soviet KSČ members, or the "Indra government". The content of the talks remains sealed in Russian archives.
The failure had immediate political consequences. The extraordinary congress held in secret at Prague-Vysočany on 22 August condemned the intervention and elected a new Central Committee dominated by reformists, excluding Indra and the other collaborators from the party's top bodies; Indra was not elected to the Central Committee and lost his post as a Central Committee secretary. After the Moscow Protocol he suffered a heart attack and returned to Czechoslovakia only weeks later, becoming, with Biľak, one of the most conservative and unpopular Czechoslovak communist politicians of the period. The congress's conclusions were annulled under the Moscow Protocol, however, and in 1971 he became president of the Federal Assembly, holding the office until 1989.