Josef Smrkovský

Josef Smrkovský (26 February 1911 – 15 January 1974) was a Czechoslovak politician and a member of the Communist Party reform wing during the 1968 Prague Spring.

Josef Smrkovský was born into a farmer's family in Velenka, in the Kingdom of Bohemia (present-day Czech Republic). As an adult, he began working as a baker and soon became a secretary of the Red Trade Union (1930–32) and was involved in the communist movement. He joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) in 1933 and went to study at a political school in the Soviet Union. When he returned, Smrkovský began to work as a secretary of the KSČ in Brno (1937–38).

During the Second World War, Smrkovský worked for the illegal communist resistance to Nazi occupation and eventually became a member of the central committee. In May 1945, as a member of the Czech National Council, he negotiated an agreement for the Nazi units in Prague to surrender. He is notorious (and often quoted) for preventing the US Army from liberating Prague via Plzeň – a claim he himself made publicly in the 1960s.

Although the Czech National Council was dissolved and its members unpopular with Soviet authorities, Smrkovský was co-opted into the presidium of the Central Committee of the KSČ. He worked as a chairman of the Land Property Fund, and in 1946 was elected as a member of the National Assembly. During the government crisis in February 1948, he served as a commander of the Lidové milice (People's Militias) and helped support the successful communist coup d'état. He then found work in the Ministry of Agriculture.

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