He was Prime Minister of communist Czechoslovakia from 1970 to 1988
Luborim Strugal, who served prime minister of communist Czechoslovakia from 1970 to 1988died at age 98 years oldCzech news site Seznam Zpravy reported today.
Strugal became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia at the age of 34, in 1958, and remained there until the fall of the regime during the Velvet Revolution of 1989. He held the posts of Minister of Agriculture, in 1959, and then Minister Interior, two years later.
Strugal condemned the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, which crushed the brief period of relative freedom known as the Prague Spring, but he soon switched sides and became prime minister, despite the reservations of then-Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.
A devotee of Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms in the 1980s, Strugal was surprised that an anti-reform wing had taken hold in the Communist Party and resigned in 1988.
He was replaced by Ladislav Adamec, the last leader of the country’s communist government.
Like many Czechoslovak leaders of the totalitarian communist era, Strugal managed to escape any attempt to be held accountable for the regime’s crimes.
Czechoslovakia peacefully split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993.
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