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
A national hero of two world wars who became an unlikely last bastion of the Prague Spring
In Moscow in August 1968, when Brezhnev demanded he install a 'workers'-peasants' government,' Svoboda replied that he would put a bullet in his own head unless Dubček and the reformist leaders were released.
A World War I veteran who deserted the Austro-Hungarian army for the Czechoslovak Legion, Svoboda organized the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps in the USSR during World War II and emerged a national hero, liberating his homeland from the east. As Minister of Defense, he declared in February 1948 that 'the army will not march against the people,' enabling the Communist takeover, only to be purged and spend the 1950s imprisoned and in obscurity. Elected president in March 1968 on Dubček's recommendation, he consented to the Prague Spring reforms; after the Warsaw Pact invasion that August, he flew to Moscow and threatened to shoot himself in Brezhnev's presence unless the kidnapped reform leaders were freed. During normalization he passively acquiesced to the muzzling of the press and Dubček's removal, remaining in office until a constitutional provision forced him out in 1975.
Career timeline
- 1915–1920Czechoslovak Legion: battles of Zborov and Bakhmach, Siberian withdrawal
- 1921–1939Officer in the Czechoslovak Army; battalion commander at Munich
- 1939–1945Organizes Czechoslovak units in Poland and USSR; commands 1st Corps at Kiev and Dukla
- 1945–1950Minister of National Defense of Czechoslovakia
- 1950–1951Deputy Prime Minister and chairman of the State Committee for Sport
- 1951–1954Purged: arrested, imprisoned, then released to work on a cooperative farm
- 1954–1959Commandant of the Klement Gottwald Military Academy
- 1968–1975President of Czechoslovakia
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.
The Charles University student who set himself on fire against the Soviet occupation
On his deathbed, Palach told doctors and fellow students: 'My deed has fulfilled its goal.' He urged others never to repeat his act but to fight alive.
On 16 January 1969, five months into the Warsaw Pact occupation, Charles University student Jan Palach set himself on fire on Wenceslas Square to rouse Czechoslovak society from growing resignation. His letter demanded abolition of censorship and a ban on Zprávy, the Soviet occupation newspaper, and he signed it 'Torch Number One'; he died of his burns three days later. His funeral drew 200,000 people, the last mass expression of the reform spirit before normalization, and twenty years later, the protests marking his death helped ignite the Velvet Revolution.
Career timeline
- 1948Born in Prague, raised in Všetaty
- 1963–1966Gymnasium in Mělník
- 1966–1968Prague School of Economics
- 1968.09Transferred to the philosophy faculty, Charles University
- 1968.11Participated in the student strike
- 1969.01.16Self-immolation on Wenceslas Square
- 1969.01.19Died at 20
