The election was attended by 288 representatives, 180 votes was necessary for the three fifth majority. Svoboda got 282 votes, six refrained from voting.
With the benefit of hindsight we can see rather clearly why General Ludvík Svoboda was chosen. First of all he was a man who enjoyed great authority. This was partly due to the fact that he was, together with many other protagonists of the after February movement, a victim of persecutions that happened in the nineteen fifties. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was awarded the Gold Star of the Hero of USSR and had influential supporters in Moscow he might not have got off so lightly.
Reformist communists also preferred Ludvík Svoboda because he was a well known and accomplished hero of the Second World War. This fact should have weakened the antagonism of so called brother countries that was, at the beginning of the revivalist process, kept secret from the public. It is an undeniable fact that for the first time since 1948 ten of thousands of people were spontaneously coming directly to the Castle to congratulate the new President Ludvík Svoboda.
What were the ambitions of the General when he took the office at the Castle? It is a well known fact that he was rather naïve. As a solder he wanted to make use of his function and to actually govern. Soon was he to discover that the Presidential office was in the socialistic Czechoslovakia just a formal position and that his party colleagues wouldn’t allow any kind of Presidential ruling. Eventually he grew resigned to these aspirations and withdrew.
Sad end
A day after the Soviet and other nations’ armies of the Warsaw pact had invaded the Czech Republic, Svoboda refused to appoint the collaborator so called peasant-workers government headed by Alois Indra. Immediately afterwards he flew to Moscow to negotiate about release of the proper government whose members were interned.
It is there where he played a key role in the collapse of Prague Spring. As it turns out he was pushing our delegation, which was until then undecided, into accepting Soviet conditions. Let’s leave it to historians to judge to what degree this was caused by his servility towards Soviet leaders or by the common sense of an experienced soldier who realized that the battle was lost.
Only a year later, in 1969, a completely different Svoboda was at the Castle. He returned from Moscow together with Husák and in tired voice talked at the airport about his the journey that was according to him simply wonderful: “We can carry on only with the Soviet Union as only this country is, together with others that will join in, able to guarantee peace between all nations of the earth.”
It is apparent that Svoboda had already problems with keeping his thoughts coherent. He was indeed helping Husák with normalisation but his health was, at the beginning of seventies, distinctively deteriorating. He offered to resign but was turned down, probably because his authority was needed for shielding of Husák’s normalization politics.
Later on, after he had suffered a stroke, he was persistently refusing to resign. Therefore one paragraph of the constitution had to be changed to remove Svoboda from the office. This change wasn’t explained to public at that time Svoboda left the Castle in poor health. He died on 20th September in the age of eighty-three.
Who was Ludvík Svoboda
25. 11. 1895 Hroznatín - 20. 9. 1979 Praha
During the First World War he was a member of Czechoslovak Legion in Russia. He took part in the battles of Zborov and Bakhmach and on the “Siberian anabasis”. After his return he worked for two years on his father’s estate. Since 1922 he was an officer of the Czechoslovakian army and held many other posts. He was a second in command of a battalion in Carpathian Ruthenia, a Hungarian language teacher at the military academy in Hranice, the same one that he had graduated from as an officer of the battalion in Kroměříž. During the mobilisation in 1938 he was an officer of infantry.
At the beginning of the Nazi occupation he worked in a resistance group Obrana národa (National Defence). In June 1939 he fled to Poland, forming an initial Czechoslovak military unit in Kraków. In September 1939 he fell into Soviet captivity and was interned together with his soldiers. Already before his exile he established connections with the Soviet Intelligence and carried on with this activity while he was in Moscow. That saved his life. One part of NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) held him to be a spy. He was imprisoned and sentenced to death. Svoboda demanded that the judges phoned a certain number in Kremlin and after this phone call the sentence was immediately annulled. The rest of the day Svoboda spent by drinking vodka with his judges. Later he presented this event as a proof of warmth of Soviet people who “once they see they were mistaken can be very appreciative”.
After the outbreak of the German offensive against the USSR in 1941 Svoboda became head of the 1st Czechoslovakian Independent Field Battalion that was fighting from 1943 in the Soviet territory. Due to the trust he enjoyed on the part of Klement Gottwald´s exile leadership and Soviet functionaries he quickly climbed the military ranks. He was a Commander of the 1st independent brigade, 1st army corps, from 1943 to 45 he was a Brigadier, from May to August 1945 a Division General and in 1945 an Army General. Bohumír Lomský who later succeeded Čepička in the post of Minister of defence, was Second-in-command and eventually chief of Svoboda’s staff.
Svoboda returned home as an apolitical Minister of Defence and stayed in this function from 4. 4. 1945 until 25. 4. 1950. He was treated by the nation as a hero of Sokolov, Dukla and other battles where mainly ordinary soldiers of the Czechoslovak Eastern Army risked their lives. In spite of many bitter experiences they believed that by marching towards Prague they marched towards freedom. The fact that Svoboda was politically indifferent was convenient for the Communist Party leaders. It meant that they gained another cabinet chair and could influence another significant department.
Svoboda’s part in the February 1948 events has been a subject of many discussions and interpretation. He strictly refused the opinion of some historians that the army was neutralized. He was right. His command prevented some of units that were not under communist leadership from fighting against SNB (National Security Corps) and Communist’s pressure groups. He was proving that the army leadership took part on the coup. He described his behaviour in February in the following way (the first time he did so was probably at the historical conference in Libice in 1963): “When the KSČ (Communist Party) called the foundation meeting of the National Front’s Central Action Committee to Prague’s Municipal House for 23rd February, the Comrade Gottwald asked me who am I with. I answered that it is obvious. But I want a clear answer, said Klema. I replied: ‘I am with the people. ‘Gottwald then asked me to come to the meeting in Municipal House. I replied that I would arrive with all my medals pinned on my uniform. ‘No Ludvíček, you have to come about 10 minutes late. ‘I said that we solders are punctual. ‘I know, ‘said the prime minister, ‘but everyone will be looking for the army and they will grow nervous. It is good to let them feel insecure, your arrival will be afterwards in the centre of general attention and it will be the biggest triumph."
And so it happened exactly according to the wish of Gottwald, who was a grand master of political games. Svoboda adorned in all his medals, arrived on the stage with the required delay and he wasn’t alone. He was accompanied by heroes of the resistance movement, Generals B. Boček and K. Klapálek, both of whom were later send to prison by Communist judges.
After the February of 1948 it wasn’t necessary to pretend apolitically any more and Svoboda joined the Communist Party. However, at the beginning of the fifties even he was falling into disfavour. In April 1950 he stopped being the Minister of Defence and was replaced by A. Čepička. In 1950 and 1951 he was deputy Prime Minister of the Czechoslovak government and Chairman of Czechoslovakian state committee for physical education and sport. At the end of 1951 he was removed from his office and a year later he was imprisoned for a while. After he had been released he worked in JZD, an agricultural cooperative, in Hroznatín.
In 1945 he was gradually returning to political life. This was allegedly happening at the request of top Soviet leaders, maybe even Chruščov. Svoboda became a member of the National Assembly (1954-64) and for long time he was a Deputy Chairman of the Union of Antifascist Fighters. In the army he became a head of the Klement Gottwald Military Academy in Hranice. Later on he was also a director of the Military History Institute in Prague. At this time he also wrote his memoirs with the help of the institute’s employees. The first edition was published in 1960 under the name From Buzuluk to Prague.
In the period of Prague Spring, on 30 March 1968, Svoboda was elected as President of Czechoslovakia. Until the August 1968 he was known for his moderate and non-committal support of reformists. After the Soviet occupation lots of legends were woven around his activities. He was given a halo as someone who refused the formation of the collaboration of a so called peasant-workers government and as someone who saved the lives of reformist leaders who were kidnapped to USSR. Special courage wasn’t needed for the refusal of collaborationists. On the contrary, the whole nations hated them. The Moscow meetings were held upon Svoboda’s suggestion at the time when all the interventionists and collaborationists’ internal and international plans completely failed. He severely pressurised reformist representatives into signing of Moscow protocols which meant a de facto capitulation. Svoboda also supported then Minister of Defence Martin Dzúr who ordered the Czechoslovak army not to show any resistance.
After August, Svoboda became one of the leading representatives of the normalization period. He was considered to be a national hero and saviour of a post-January development and this legend was very appealing and moving Nevertheless his political behaviour was convenient for almost everyone, even for fanatics and collaborationists. It suited them that Svoboda was scolding newspapers and other media.
Svoboda kept warning about consequences of not obeying the occupying forces. He contributed to Dubček's removal from his post of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and helped to put G. Husák through to this office. Svoboda was not only a President but also a member of the presiding group of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.
As of 1974 he wasn’t able to hold presidential office because of poor health. He was stubbornly refusing to resign. Therefore a special Act had to be adopted that enabled to remove him from the office. He was succeeded by ambitious G. Husák. Thus the after the February developments events caught up with Svoboda again. Like then he was used. The ruling mafia used his reputation of a national hero and wise and experience old man who prevented disaster, when they were done with him he was retired.
