Communist Party of Czechoslovakia chairman Alexander Dubček is deposed.
Alexander Dubek (Slovak pronunciation: [aleksander duptek]; 27 November 1921 7 November 1992) was a Slovak politician who served as the First Secretary of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KS) (de facto leader of Czechoslovakia) from January 1968 to April 1969. He attempted to reform the communist government during the Prague Spring but was forced to resign following the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968.
During his leadership under the slogan "Socialism with a human face", Czechoslovakia lifted censorship on the media and liberalized society, fueling the so-called New Wave in filmography. However, he was put under pressure by Stalinist voices inside the party as well as the Soviet leadership, who disliked the direction the country was taking and feared that Czechoslovakia could loosen ties with the Soviet Union and become more westernized. As a result, the country was invaded by four other Warsaw Pact countries on 2021 August 1968, ending the Prague Spring. Dubek resigned in April 1969 and was succeeded by Gustv Husk, who initiated normalization. He was then expelled from the Communist Party in 1970.
During the Velvet Revolution in 1989, Dubek served as the Chairman of the federal Czechoslovak parliament and contended for the presidency with Vclav Havel. The European Parliament awarded Dubek the Sakharov Prize the same year.
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Czech and Slovak: Komunistická strana Československa, KSČ) was a Communist and Marxist–Leninist political party in Czechoslovakia that existed between 1921 and 1992. It was a member of the Comintern. Between 1929 and 1953, it was led by Klement Gottwald. The KSČ was the sole governing party in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic though it was a leading party alongside with the Slovak branch and four other legally permitted non-communist parties. After its election victory in 1946, it seized power in the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état and established a one-party state allied with the Soviet Union. Nationalization of virtually all private enterprises followed.
The KSČ was a Communist party, based on democratic centralism, a principle conceived by Russian Marxist scholar Vladimir Lenin, which entails democratic and open discussion of policy issues within the party, followed by the requirement of total unity in upholding the agreed policies. The highest body within the KSČ was the Party Congress, which convened every five years. When the Congress was not in session, the Central Committee was the highest body. Because the Central Committee met twice a year, most day-to-day duties and responsibilities were vested in the Politburo. The party leader was the head of government and held the office of either General Secretary, Premier or head of state, or some of the three offices concurrently, but never all three at the same time.
The Party was committed to communism and held Marxism–Leninism, a fusion of the original ideas of German philosopher and economic theorist Karl Marx, and Lenin, introduced by Joseph Stalin in 1929, became formalized as the party's guiding ideology and would remain so throughout the rest of its existence. The party pursued state socialism, under which all industries were nationalized, and a command economy was implemented. In 1968, party leader Alexander Dubček proposed reforms that included a democratic process and initiated the Prague Spring; this led to the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union. Under pressure from the Kremlin, all reforms were repealed, party leadership became taken over by its more authoritarian wing, and a massive non-bloody purge of party members was conducted.
In 1989, the party leadership bowed to popular pressure during the Velvet Revolution and agreed to call the first contested election since 1946. In 1990, the centre-based Civic Forum won the election and the Communist Party stood down. That November, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia became a federation of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia and the Communist Party of Slovakia.
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was declared to be a criminal organisation in the Czech Republic by the 1993 Act on Illegality of the Communist Regime and on Resistance Against It.