Alexander Dubček (Slovak pronunciation: [ˈaleksander ˈduptʂek]; 27 November 1921 – 7 November 1992) was a Slovak statesman who served as the First Secretary of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) (de facto leader of Czechoslovakia) from January 1968 to April 1969 and as Chairman of the Federal Assembly from 1989 to 1992 following the Velvet Revolution. He oversaw significant reforms to the communist system during a period that became known as the Prague Spring, but his reforms were reversed and he was eventually sidelined following the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968.
Best known by the slogan, "Socialism with a human face", Dubček led a process that accelerated cultural and economic liberalization in Czechoslovakia. Reforms were opposed by conservatives inside the party who benefited from the Stalinist economy, as well as interests in the neighbouring Soviet-bloc who feared contagion, western subversion, strategic vulnerability, and loss of institutional power. For reasons of institutional interests in the Soviet Union such as those of the military and KGB, false reports, and the growing concern among the Soviet leadership that Dubček was no longer able to maintain control of the country, Czechoslovakia was invaded by half a million Soviet-led Warsaw Pact troops on the night of 20–21 August 1968. This was intended to enable a coup by conservative forces. That coup, however, could not materialize due to lack of a viable pro-Soviet replacement leadership and the unexpected extraordinary popularity of Dubček and the reformist leadership. Soviet intervention ushered in a period of maneuver between conservatives and reformers where conservatives relied on Soviet influence to shift the balance of power, reversing reforms of the Prague Spring.
Dubček was forced to resign as party head in April 1969, and was succeeded by Gustáv Husák, a former reformer and victim of Stalinism who was ambiguously favored by Moscow. This signaled the end of the Prague Spring and the beginning of normalization. Dubček was expelled from the Communist Party in 1970, amid a purge that eventually expelled almost two-thirds of the 1968 party membership. This mostly purged the younger generation of post-Stalin communists that he represented along with many of the most competent technical experts and managers.
During the Velvet Revolution in 1989, Dubček served as the Chairman of the federal Czechoslovak parliament and contended for the presidency with Václav Havel. The European Parliament awarded Dubček the Sakharov Prize the same year. In the interim between the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution, Dubček withdrew from high politics but served as a leading inspiration and symbolic leader for Eurocommunism, maintaining intermittent contact with European communist reformers, especially in Italy and the Soviet Union. Also in 1989, just before his death, Andrei Sakharov wrote, "I am convinced that the 'breath of freedom' which the Czechs and the Slovaks enjoyed when Dubček was their leader was a prologue to the peaceful revolutions now taking place in eastern Europe and Czechoslovakia itself." Sakharov credited Dubček and the Prague Spring as his inspiration.
At the time of his death in an automobile crash in 1992, Dubček remained an important political figure. Many saw him as the destined future president of newly-formed Slovakia.
Alexander Dubček was born in Uhrovec, Czechoslovakia (now part of Slovakia), on 27 November 1921. When he was three years old, the family moved to the Soviet Union in search of job opportunities and better quality of life. He spent most of his childhood living in a utopian Esperantist and Idist industrial cooperative, Interhelpo, in Kyrgyzstan. The settlement was in Pishpek (now Bishkek), in the Kirghiz SSR of the Soviet Union, now the independent state of Kyrgyzstan. Pavol Dubček, Alexander's son, described what his grandfather's family found as "nothing . . . but an old barracks," and said many of the first generation of immigrant children suffered typhus. Despite this, Pavol said it was "impossible" to go back at that time. In 1933 the family moved to the Central Russian city of Gorky, now Nizhny Novgorod. Alexander was then 12.
In 1938, due to general orders by Stalin, the Dubčeks would have had to renounce their Czechoslovak citizenship in order to stay in the Soviet Union. Instead, the family chose to return to Czechoslovakia. At 17 years old, Alexander joined the then-illegal Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS), working to organize resistance at his workplace. It was here, as a factory worker in Dubnica nad Váhom, where he learned his first trade. He worked together with his brother, Július, and with his childhood friend, Anna Borsekova.
Dubček and his brother fought against the wartime pro-German Slovak state headed by Jozef Tiso. In August 1944 Dubček and his brother were ordered to join the partisans. They were members of the Jan Žižka partisan brigade during the Slovak National Uprising. His brother died in the uprising. The second and last time Alexander was wounded, he was sent to the Peterov family in Velčice to recover with Anna's help. Because of his participation in the uprising, Dubček was targeted by authorities during the Stalinist period after they began grouping the partisans with members of the wartime regime and other non-communist elements.
Dubček's father, Štefan, had been a member of the party since 1921 and became active again upon his return. Štefan was responsible for printing the party papers, forged and official documents, as well as producing other left-wing publications. During this time, the activities of Alexander and his family relied more on working through personal networks rather than party cells. The entire family was involved, shifting from one place to the next, eventually moving to Velčice. After the arrest of much of the KSS leadership in 1942, Štefan and the Dubčeks worked with another former Interhelpo member, primarily organizing communist youth. Alexander was arrested himself in July, but not before having significant impact and authority. Štefan was arrested, sent to prison and eventually to Mauthausen concentration camp, which he survived in part because he was there a short time.
Dubček married childhood friend, Anna Dubčeková (née Borseková), in September, 1945. They started a home in Trenčín.
Dubček began his studies at Comenius University in Bratislava, but he would return to the Soviet Union in 1955 to attend the University of Politics in Moscow, where he graduated in 1958 before he returned home. While in Moscow, Dubček's Russian friends learned of Khrushchev's 'secret speech' denouncing Stalin in 1956. The speech had been an answer to stories circulating of those who had begun returning from false imprisonment in the gulag. However, Dubček's friends did not tell him about the speech for several months. Dubček was disturbed by the news of what Stalin had done, but he also admired Khrushchev for making the speech over the opposition of most of the Soviet leadership, who were themselves involved.
Education and early political career
In 1948, the party he had joined was reorganized as the Slovak branch of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). Though still outside of the higher circles, Dubček's generation represented the young idealistic rank-and-file of the party that took power in 1948, not a break from it. It was Stalinism that represented the discontinuity. It was this pre-Stalinist generation that originally seized power, allied with the younger generation of party members, who began to question the path taken by their leadership elders as they began to rise in the ranks during the 1950s and early 1960s.
The Slovak branch of the party emerged from the war with a smaller membership base and less connection with Slovak institutions than the Czech branches had. To recruit a mass party base for electoral politics, the party's leadership, which was over 60 years old on average, appealed to a broad segment of less ideologically motivated younger people, giving the party a more pragmatic and less orthodox culture. In contrast to the Czech branch of the party, family, regional identity, religious, professional, and inter-personal relationships formed the glue of the Slovak branch of the party. A socially idealistic Dubček, with no rigid ideological destination in mind, rose amid these ranks.