Antonin Novotny, the son
of a bricklayer, was born in Letnany, near Prague, in 1904. After
the First World War he joined the Czech Communist
Party.
The German
Army marched into Czechoslovakia
in October, 1938. Novotny was arrested in 1941 and spent the rest
of the Second World War in a Nazi concentration
camp.
Novotny was released
in 1945 and the following year he was elected as a member of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party.
Eduard
Benes
became president of Czechoslovakia but in the 1946 general election
the Communist Party won the largest number of parliamentary seats
with 38 per cent of the votes. Klement Gottwald
set up a National Front government but caused great controversy when
under the orders of Joseph Stalin, he
rejected Marshall Aid.
When
Klement Gottwald died in 1953 Novotny
replaced him as first secretary of the party. Over the next few years
he introduced central planning and concentrated on the needs of heavy
industry. In 1958 Novotny became president of Czechoslovakia.
In
the early 1960s the country suffered an economic recession. Novotny
was forced to make liberal concessions and in 1965 he introduced a
programme of decentralization. The main feature of the new system
was that individual companies would have more freedom to decide on
prices and wages.
These
reforms were slow to make an impact on the Czech economy and in September
1967, Alexander Dubcek, secretary of
the Slovak Communist Party, presented a long list of grievances against
the government. The following month there were large demonstrations
against Novotny.
In
January 1968 the Czechoslovak Party Central Committee passed a vote
of no confidence in Novotny and he was replaced by Alexander
Dubcek as party secretary. Soon afterwards Dubcek made a speech
where he stated: "We shall have to remove everything that strangles
artistic and scientific creativeness."
During
what became known as the Prague Spring,
Dubcek announced a series of reforms. This included the abolition
of censorship and the right of citizens to criticize the government.
Newspapers began publishing revelations about corruption in high places.
This included stories about Novotny and his son. On 22nd March 1968,
Novotny resigned as president of Czechoslovakia.
He was now replaced by a Dubcek supporter, Ludvik
Svoboda.
Antonin Novotny
died
in 1975.
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