Pavel Auersperg
Pavel Auersperg
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.
Career timeline
- 1949–1954Assistant, Faculty of International Relations, University of Political and Social Sciences, Prague
- 1956Consultant for international questions, ÚV KSČ
- 1963–1964Head of secretariat of First Secretary Antonín Novotný
- 1965–1968Head of Ideological Department, ÚV KSČ; candidate member of ÚV
- 1969–1974Chief of International Politics Department, ÚV KSČ; full member of ÚV
- 1971–1986Deputy, Chamber of Nations, Federal Assembly
- 1974–1986KSČ representative, editorial board of Questions of Peace and Socialism
- 1986–1987Ambassador of Czechoslovakia to the Netherlands