Visiting Prague

Summary: life and political intervention of Alexander Dubček.

It is impossible to talk about the History of the Czechoslovakia without referring to Alexander Dubček, although he was Slovakian. Both of his parents Stefan and Pavlina Dubček were emigrants in the Chicago, U.S. where they met and got married. Stefan always had a connection to the communist party whish resulted in his arrestment during his I World War. In 1921 Alexander’s parents moved back to Slovakia where he was born on the 27th of November. A man consumed by the communist ideas Stefan Dubček was one of the founders of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. In 1925 the Dubček family moved to Kirghizia, Soviet Union, where Stefan Dubček was one of the founders of an industrial cooperative. It was in the Soviet Union that Dubček completed his primary and secondary studies, although the family moved back to Czechoslovakia running from the Stalin’s totalitarian regime.
There Alexander joins the Communist Party the underground resistance against the wartime pro-German Slovak state headed by Jozef Tiso. During the events of the II World War the Czechoslovakia Alexander fought in the Slovak Uprising and was injured, but his brother Július was killed. After these actions he joined the Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS) being soon placed at the KSS Central Committee in the year of 1955. He left to Moscow, in 1953 to study in the Political College and graduated in 1958.
In the beginning of the 60’s he already was a full member of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Party. In the Party the got allies with Antonín Novotný the first secretary of the KSČ and president of Czechoslovakia. During this period the party faced challenges both internally and externally: the economy was in serious disarray, the Slovak communists chafed at Prague centralism, and de-Stalinization caused unrest. In this period everyone expected changes, especially Dubček, therefore he and other reformist took action. They called the Communist Party First Secretary Novotny’s policies into question at a Central Committee Meeting. This resulted in his ascendance to the first secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party on the 5th of January of 1968.
Between March and April of 1968 were where the great student demonstrations had time. Dubček is one of the symbols of these events wanting to liberalize the Communist regime, creating socialism with a human face. Dubček wanted to wind popular support for the Communist regime by eliminating its worst, most repressive features, allowing greater freedom of expression and tolerating political and social organizations not under Communist control. He wanted a free democracy to the Czechoslovakia against his colleagues of the Communist Party who were neo-Stalinists.
Dubček tried to regain good relations with the Soviet Union as well as the Warsaw Pact leaders as long as Czechoslovakia kept faithful to Soviet Union although he never managed to regain its trust.
After the Velvet Revolution, Dubček together with Václav Havel, represented the democracy and freedom that the country fought for. Dubček was elected speaker of the Federal Assembly on the 28th of December of 1989, and re-elected in 1990. In the same year of his re-election he received the International Humanist Award from the International Humanist and Ethical Union.
This untiring man died on the 7th of November of 1992 in a car crush that had happened a month earlier. He was buried in Slávičie údolie cemetery in Bratislava, Slovakia.

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