Bohuslav Laštovička

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Bohuslav Laštovička (born April 29, 1905 in Pelhřimov , Bohemia ; † March 30, 1981 ) was a Czechoslovak journalist and politician of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia ( Komunistická strana Československa ) .

Life

Officer and journalist

After attending school, he joined the army and became an officer after finishing the military academy . In 1930 he became a member of the Communist Youth Association (ČSM) and then joined the Komunistická strana Československa (KSČ) in 1931 . He then took up a job as a journalist and was initially editor of the party newspaper Rudé právo between 1934 and 1935 , before he became editor of the party newspaper in Ostrava .

Between 1936 and 1937 Laštovička was secretary for the organization of KSČ in the Prague district and then took part in the Spanish Civil War as commander of the Klement Gottwald anti - aircraft battery from 1937 to 1939 . During the Second World War he was in exile in London , where he was head of the cultural committee of the KSČ party executive.

Top functionary of KSČ and Prague Spring

After the end of the Second World War he returned to Czechoslovakia, where he was initially again editor of the party newspaper Rudé právo for a short time and then from 1945 to 1948 General Director of the Czechoslovak Radio ( Československý rozhlas ) . At the same time he became a member of the Central Committee (ZK) of the KSČ in 1946 .

After the February coup , which led to the Communist Party coming to power, he was ambassador to the Soviet Union between June 1948 and May 1950 and also became Deputy Minister of Defense. In the course of the political cleansing during the trial of Rudolf Slansky , he fell out of favor at the beginning of 1952, lost his posts as Deputy Defense Minister and member of the Central Committee and was demoted to the Ministry of Metallurgy until 1957 . After that he worked again as a journalist and became editor of the magazine Nová mysl (New Idea).

On June 23, 1964 he succeeded Zdeněk Fierlinger as President of the National Assembly ( Národní shromáždění ) and held this office until he was replaced by Josef Smrkovský during the Prague Spring on April 18, 1968. In addition, he was not only a member of the Central Committee again , but also on March 5, 1964 of the KSČ Politburo .

In December 1967, shortly before the beginning of the Prague Spring, Laštovička belonged Politburo next Otakar Šimůnek , Michal Chudík and Jozef Lenárt to the supporters of the conservative First Secretary of the KSČ and President Antonín Novotný , while Novotný liberal opponents Alexander Dubcek , Oldřich Černík , Drahomír Kolder , Jiří Hendrych and Jaromír Dolanský were among them, with Kolder later being one of the strongest supporters of the crackdown on the Prague Spring and co-signing the so-called letter of invitation in which leading Czechoslovak politicians asked the Soviet Union for help. A “stalemate” arose in the Politburo.

On April 5, 1968, he finally lost his position as a member of the Politburo and thirteen days later as President of Parliament.

After the crackdown on the Prague Spring, he became a member of the Federal Assembly ( Federální shromáždění ), the new parliament of Czechoslovakia.

Publications

About his experiences during the time in exile in London during the Second World War, he wrote the books V Londýně za války (1961) and V Londone vo vremia voǐny (1966).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ After 1945: something like normality (Archive of the Czechoslovak Radio)
  2. ↑ Czechoslovak Ministeries (rulers.org)
  3. ↑ Jaromír Navrátil: The Prague spring 1968: a national security archive documents reader , 1998, ISBN 963-9116-15-7, pp. 7, 21
  4. ↑ M. Mark Stolarik (Editor): The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 , 2010, ISBN 0-86516-751-6, p 35
  5. ↑ Leadership and Government Changes (April 1968) ( Memento of the original from January 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.foia.cia.gov
  6. ↑ Nomenklatura 1968
  7. ^ Open Library
personal data
SURNAME Laštovička, Bohuslav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czechoslovak politician
DATE OF BIRTH April 29, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Pelhřimov , Czech Republic
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 1981
Place of death Prague