He did not fit into the boxes of gray political figures, he enjoyed the positive interest of Western politicians, he liked to appear at sporting events, and there were many rumors about his privacy. Several times he escaped death and an unfavorable court verdict for the dead at the state border. Lubomír Štrougal was born a hundred years ago, on October 19, 1924, and died last February at the age of 98.
Štrougal’s family has been involved in the colors of the Social Democracy and then the Communist Party for a long time. Father Josef came from Nezabudice in Rakovnick, where he was an important functionary who took part in the anti-Nazi resistance. He was arrested just like Lubomír Štrougal’s brother Přemysl and died at the end of the war, probably during the Allied bombing of the prison. The young Lubomír was also involved in the distribution of illegal printed materials, who luckily escaped arrest and was fully employed after graduating from the Třeboň grammar school.
Photo: Josef Mucha, CTK
President of the Republic Antonín Novotny accompanied by Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Lubomír Štrougal on a tour of the Donava farm in Židlochovice, 27 March 1959
Immediately after the war, he joined the Communist Party and sympathized with its vision of rebuilding society. Although he originally wanted to become a doctor, he eventually graduated from the Prague Law Faculty. At the same time, he became involved in political activity and gradually rose in the hierarchy of the party apparatus in South Bohemia, where he became the head secretary in 1957 at the age of only thirty-three and where he built up a political background. Subsequently, he was promoted to central politics and gradually managed the Ministry of Agriculture, the Interior and, as party secretary, the economy.
As head of the interior from 1961 to 1965, he reorganized the department entrusted to him in the spirit of a political thaw and also had around fifty chiefs of security fired, thereby, according to his own words, creating a hostile atmosphere towards himself for a long time. In addition, he carried out partial revisions of political trials from previous years, although new cases were added, for example the monster trial of Catholic intellectuals. Štrougal also gave the order to create the Vlast unit, which aimed to liquidate prominent exiles abroad. A year before the end of his tenure at the ministry, the discovery of Nazi documents in Šumava’s Černý jezera, which had been planted there by the State Security itself and which were then used to discredit some Western politicians, was staged.
In February 1962, Štrougal directly participated in the arrest of his predecessor and at that time the Deputy Prime Minister, Rudolf Barák, who was subsequently convicted of the crime of sabotage and enrichment to fourteen years in prison. “You are the head of the party, you can do everything,” Štrougal allegedly told his patron and the then first man of Czechoslovakia, Antonín Novotný, when asked if they could arrest Barák immediately.
Photo: Oldřich Pícha, ČTK
Press conference on documents found in the Šumava lakes. On the picture, Minister of the Interior Štrougal during a speech, 15 September 1964
However, with the fall of Novotný and the liberalization of public space in 1968, the whole case began to appear in a different light. Barák was presented as a political victim, a reformer for whom the supporters of the old order had set a trap. His case was reopened and publicized. Štrougal, who was politically relegated to the position of Deputy Prime Minister at that time, was so affected by the matter that he stopped going to work and locked himself in his villa on Hanspaulka, where he even contemplated suicide, as Valtr Komárek at least testifies. In the end, the Soviet military invasion took over and Barák’s political comeback did not take place due to Štrougal’s disapproval.
Resistance against the invasion and then the Obtraža Spring of 1968
Štrougal did not believe that Moscow would enter Czechoslovakia because of its reputation, and he considered the increasing unfavorable signals to be psychological pressure. On the night of August 21, 1968, together with other workers of the Office of the Prime Minister, the Soviets briefly detained him. The following evening, as Deputy Prime Minister, President Svoboda invited him to the Castle and entrusted him with the temporary management of the cabinet. Subsequent attempts to establish a pro-Soviet “worker-peasant” government, for which Štrougal was also considered, were rejected at a decisive moment, which also affected the president’s attitude.
“Our people, in absolute and unshakable unity, in accordance with the opinions of the new, legally elected 14th Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Czech Republic, and in accordance with the opinion of the National Assembly and the government, resolutely reject the occupation as illegal, unconstitutional and unjustified, and demand the withdrawal of the occupying troops,” it is written in in a message dated August 25, 1968 addressed to President Svoboda, who was advised to consider interrupting the ongoing negotiations in Moscow and return to Czechoslovakia. Among other things, it was Štrougal who signed the text.
Moscow did not forget the opposition and disloyalty towards the Soviets, who apparently informed Štrougal about their intentions in advance. At the same time, however, she noticed other events and the behavior of individual political actors. Štrougal ranked among the so-called realists – centrists and his positions were pragmatic, at the same time he opportunistically began to act within the framework of Soviet interests, which partially improved his score. He went up politically.
Photo: CTK
First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party Alexander Dubček and Deputy Prime Minister Lubomír Štrougal at a meeting of the National Assembly, 27 October 1968
From the fall of 1968, he was a new member of the innermost leadership of the Communist Party of the Czech Republic, a position he held for twenty years. He considered Dubček a politician who was not good enough for a difficult situation, they did not have good relations.
Štrougal participated in the gradual reversal of power. As in January 1968, he also now supported his friend Oldřich Černík for the leading party position, even though his name was heard behind the scenes. Mainly under Soviet influence, he finally supported Gustáv Husák in April 1969 and took part in strengthening the normalization process. In July 1969, he became the commander of the People’s Militia, which, together with the army and the security forces, bloodily suppressed the anti-Soviet demonstrations on the first anniversary of the occupation a month later. There was a threat that otherwise Moscow would intervene alone and the new political leadership would lose confidence.
A strong pair with Husák
Štrougal formed a tandem with the new head of the Communist Party, Husák. They should have promised each other that together they would prevent the worst and implement the necessary reforms. It was a paradoxical alliance, as Štrougal supported political rehabilitation in the past as Minister of the Interior, but at the same time he let Novotný monitor former prisoner Husák. In January 1970, despite many objections, it was Husák who promoted Štrougal to the seat of federal prime minister instead of Černík.
According to Komárek, Štrougal applied a “shrewd, concrete, matter-of-fact approach”, although he could also be cynical. Even before the start of the party purges, which Štrougal proposed to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev already in the fall of 1968, he should have said to Komárk: “Wait until we sit together in the mine. Then you will know what those Asian pigs can do!” However, Štrougal knew the “pigs” well, without previous experience and their support, he would hardly have been able to stay on the political Olympus.
Photo: Jiří Karas, CTK
Ceremonial meeting on the 25th anniversary of the liberation of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Army. In the middle, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Leonid Brezhnev, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party Gustáv Husák and Prime Minister of the Czechoslovak Republic Lubomír Štrougal, 7 May 1970
When the ideological mantra of normalization, the well-known Lessons from crisis development, was being prepared, he expressed concern that it would not become a burden in the future. In the end, however, he agreed in a disciplined manner, just like with the dismantling of the reforms. Although he was already aware from the sixties that the economic system had survived and it was necessary to change it. However, this did not correspond to the just agreed normalization starting points and Moscow’s position, and even the majority of the political leadership did not show interest in a more radical solution.
Štrougal’s head was nevertheless criticized for managing the economy badly – his great rival Vasil Biľak excelled in this. With a feeling of doom, he therefore considered resigning from his position, from which Husák discouraged him each time, telling him to be patient. They got into a situation of riding a tiger, while illusions about the temporary nature of the ruling conditions, career reasons and the knowledge that they could be of some help prevailed.
Photo: Jiří Karas, CTK
Prime Minister of the Czechoslovakia Lubomír Štrougal, year 1974
Štrougal is well remembered by some public figures. Hockey player Jiří Holík and tennis player Jan Kodeš remember him as a “big sports fan” who was able to go beyond his duties to help. Musician and theater actor Jiří Suchý, whose Semafor theater was the subject of a political curse, speaks positively of his influence.
Western politicians also evaluated Štrougal within the Czechoslovak elite as a moderate politician who could be dealt with rationally. For example, the American ambassador in Prague William Luers or the West German politicians Willy Brandt or Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who recalled in his book memoirs that he also received confidential information about events in the Eastern Bloc from Štrougal, left evidence of this.
Štrougal’s political career was also accompanied by the relentless efforts of his enemies to discredit him. Initially, information questioning his past from the time he worked inside and from August 1968 was pulled. Later, additional charges were added. For example, in January 1979, an anonymous letter sent to the party leadership appeared, drawing attention to machinations and looting of socialist property in the office of the Bureau of the Federal Government.
Photo: CTK
Lubomír Štrougal congratulates Jan Kodeš on winning the Davis Cup semi-final, 26/09/1975
Security circles also probed the financial affairs of journalist Jiří Janoušek, the husband of Štrougal’s daughter Eva. She also, when she accompanied her father, raised rumors about his relationship with the singer Helena Vondráčková, with whom they were similar. News about the allegedly immoral behavior of the federal prime minister traveled all the way to Moscow, and the West German press did not miss the spice.
“Privatization? I could do that too”
It wasn’t until the accession of Mikhail Gorbachev to the head of the Soviet top brass that there was hope for deeper changes, while in the course of 1987 the struggle for Husák’s succession broke out. At the same time, information about fights between the Štrougalov and Biľak clans appeared in Soviet records for a long time. The Prime Minister sensed an opportunity and radicalized his pro-reform speeches. Still, the saying was true that when two strong ones fight, the third one – albeit less pronounced – laughs. Miloš Jakeš succeeded as a compromise candidate.
Husák and Štrougal tried to reverse the matter, but they did not go to Gorbachev’s side. This was followed by further staff reshuffles and the political departures of people associated with them, including Štrougal himself, who saw the hopelessness of the situation and in October 1988, after nineteen years, resigned from the premiership and the highest party posts. He withdrew from public life at a cottage in the Jizera Mountains.
Photo: Michal Krumphanzl, CTK
With the dog Albert at the cottage, August 1995
Some circles continued to hope that he would return to political prominence. After the fall of Jakeš during the election of the new head of the Communist Party, Štrougal was proposed in November 1989, but unsuccessfully. Husák, who may have already suspected the infamous end of their era, stood against it. However, Štrougal spoke out against the use of force during the Velvet Revolution, resigned from his mandate as a member of parliament, and was subsequently expelled from his native Communist Party after forty-five years.
In new times, he remarried and came out of seclusion several times, when he published book memoirs in the interest of the public, and then in connection with his protracted investigation. He was accused of blocking the reopening of brutal murder cases from the late 1940s as Home Secretary. Above all, however, he was accused of killing people at state borders, and the investigation ended only after Štrougal’s death.
Lubomír Štrougal admitted responsibility for the state of affairs, and even rather self-critically, in particular he blamed himself for not using the space for the necessary reforms and taking the initiative in the 1980s. At the same time, he spoke of politics as the art of what is possible within the given system and looked no less critically at post-apocalyptic events in connection with the privatization process and the country’s indebtedness. “I’d take that too,” he said with an ironic smile.
Photo: Matyáš Folprecht, Law
History (doesn’t) lie – the historical series of the events Právo
Sources and direct testimonies testify to the enormous self-regulation that he underwent as a politician and which, together with the accumulated problems, he struggled to cope with. “I’ll admit that sometimes I’d like to drop everything from history and forget that something like this happened. But that’s not possible,” stated the ex-prime minister at the end of his life, who, when the conversation turned to the Soviets, began to whisper in his own apartment.
