Lubomír Štrougal
Dr. Lubomír Štrougal is a former Czech politician and communist Czechoslovakia prime minister.Early Life
After a compulsory service in Germany’s industry during the World War II he finished the law studies at the Charles University in Prague. He entered the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and since the late 1950s was a member of its leadership.
Between 1959 and 1961 Štrougal was agriculture minister, then till 1965 he was interior minister.
In 1968 he became deputy prime minister to Oldřich Černík. At first he refused the 1968 Occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact forces, but later became one of the prominent representatives of Gustáv Husák‘s regime. Štrougal was Czechoslovakia’s prime minister from January 28, 1970 to October 12, 1988.
Because of the conflicts with the communist party chairman Miloš Jakeš, he resigned as the prime minister. He criticized the state of the party, the executive and the society. During the 1989 Velvet Revolution Štrougal was one of the candidates for the communist party chairmanship, but later left political stage and in February 1990 he was expelled from the party.
The Office for the Documentation and the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism Police of the Czech Republic accused Štrougal, that in his function in 1965, he prevented investigation of crimes conducted by the communist State Security in 1948 and 1949. However, the Prague city court discharged him in 2002 due to lack of evidence.
