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.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1931Joins the KSČ
- 1936–39International Brigades doctor, Spanish Civil War
- 1940–45Military doctor, China-Burma front
- 1949–52Deputy Minister of Health
- 1964–68National Assembly deputy → KSČ CC member
- 1968.4–8National Front chairman & KSČ Presidium member
- 1968.8Refuses to sign the Moscow Protocol
- 1969–77Expelled from party; first Charter 77 signatory
Related historical events
- 1936–1939The Spanish Civil WarInternational Brigades doctorHe served as a doctor with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939.
- 1945–1948Czechoslovakia: from the Košice programme to February 1948Active participant in the 1948 coupAs political deputy in the People's Militias, he took an active part in the February 1948 coup.
- 1968The Prague SpringOnly leader who refused to sign the Moscow ProtocolArrested and deported to Moscow, he was the only one of 26 Czechoslovak politicians who refused to sign the Moscow Protocol. Dubček and the others refused to leave for Prague without him, forcing his release.
Return, February 1948, and responsibility as a Stalinist
Kriegel returned to Czechoslovakia in November 1945 after his service on the China and Burma fronts. While continuing to work as a doctor, he threw himself into the political work of the KSČ, became a member of the Prague Regional Committee, and by the time the party seized control of the country in February 1948 he was working as a secretary in the People's Militias.
Czech sources record that he was, even within the party of that period, a hard-line Stalinist. As organisational secretary of the Prague KSČ organisation and political deputy to the commander of the People's Militias, Josef Pavel, he took an active part in the February 1948 coup, and he argued that the militias should be given more submachine guns and ammunition alongside their rifles and the authority to fire whenever they judged it appropriate during the coup. Until the 1950s he was described as the right hand of Antonín Novotný, political secretary of the Prague KSČ regional committee.
From 1949 to 1952 he served as deputy minister of health, and in that post he shielded prominent doctors branded "bourgeois specialists" from dismissal and from the end of their medical careers. Yet in the antisemitic purge of the party leadership he was removed from the deputy ministry in 1952. A Stalinist who had himself been part of that apparatus now became a target of its purges. He was not arrested, however; although the State Security (StB) investigated him, he was protected by Novotný, who had risen to the party's top leadership after the fall of Rudolf Slánský. After his dismissal he was placed as a factory doctor at Tatra Smíchov, was dismissed from there after three months, and until 1957 worked as a district doctor, transferred from one post to another several times. In 1957 he was decorated with the Order of 25 February for his active part in the February 1948 coup, and was subsequently awarded the Order of the Red Star and the Order of Labour.