EAST-WEST, Page 44Anatomy of a PurgeIn an exclusive account of Jakes's ouster, TIME reveals howthe Czechoslovak party chief double-crossed Gorbachev and lostBy Kenneth W. Banta/PRAGUE
For Milos Jakes, the beginning of the end came early last
summer. In a series of private exchanges between the Czechoslovak
Communist Party leader and Mikhail Gorbachev and his advisers, the
Soviet President made clear that his own internal situation
demanded a repudiation of the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. If
Jakes, 67, did not want to be undercut by the Soviet move, he would
have to act -- and act soon. An agreement between Moscow and Prague
was struck. Come October, Jakes would convene a Central Committee
meeting and expel all Politburo members tainted by the 1968
invasion -- except himself. After appointing a new team of his own
choosing, Jakes would then rehabilitate the 460,000 Communist Party
members he had personally ordered purged immediately after the
invasion.
There was only one problem: Jakes reneged on his agreement with
Gorbachev. That extraordinary double cross began the unraveling of
Jakes's two-year rule. Through a variety of sources, TIME has
pieced together an account of the final days of the repressive
Jakes regime. It is not a sympathetic tale; in the end, Jakes had
only his own poor judgment, panic and stubbornness to blame.
Jakes's humiliation within the party began on July 17, when a
videocassette circulated among rank-and-file Communists that showed
Jakes berating an assembly of provincial party chiefs for failing
to implement his directives. With characteristic ineloquence, he
scolded his underlings for leaving him "standing like a lonely
stake in a fence." Says a Prague journalist: "Jakes was turning
into a party joke."
Not long after, agreement between Gorbachev and Jakes was
reached on the plan for a Politburo purge. But October came and
went with nothing done. In mid-November, hard-line ideology chief
Jan Fojtik traveled on short notice to Moscow, where he met with
Georgi Smirnov, chief of the Moscow Institute of Marxism-Leninism.
Smirnov said that a document condemning the 1968 invasion had been
approved by the Soviet Politburo, and he warned that with the Malta
summit approaching, the document would soon be published.
Before Jakes could fashion a response, events exploded. On
Friday, Nov. 17, Prague riot police cracked down on student
demonstrators. With his authority rapidly crumbling, Jakes launched
a last-minute bid to crush the uprising. Advised by
Czechoslovakia's military that it would take no part in a violent
action against the populace, Jakes turned in desperation to the
People's Militia, units composed mostly of factory workers that
function in effect as the Communist Party's private army. Beginning
Nov. 19, militia units were deployed at factory gates and inside
industrial compounds around the country. Care was taken to ensure
that each unit was deployed outside its own home region. However,
the show of militia force served only to spark further protests.
Even then, Jakes resisted internal party pressure to convene
an emergency session of the Central Committee. "It wasn't just the
Central Committee; it was the regional party officials who were
shouting for it," says Antonin Mlady, a factory foreman and member
of the newly formed Politburo. Finally the Politburo overruled
Jakes and called a meeting. On Friday, Nov. 24, the session opened
in an austere hall in the Stalinist-era Party Political University
on the outskirts of Prague. There, Jakes tried one last tactic to
save his job: he proposed a new law that would permit freedom of
assembly, thus legalizing the demonstrations that had brought
Prague and other cities to a standstill.
But the 148-member Central Committee, by now painfully aware
of the revolutionary spirit in the streets, responded by
orchestrating an internal purge. The offensive was led by former
Prime Minister Lubomir Strougal, 65, who was replaced last year by
Ladislav Adamec, 63. Over the past six months, Strougal, who is
still a member of the Central Committee, and Adamec had conspired
to take advantage of just such a moment. They agreed that Adamec
would publicly call for reform while Strougal used his influence
within the Central Committee to oust Jakes and other hard-liners
in the Politburo. Strougal rallied a core group of 20 moderates
within the Central Committee to their cause. "In the main hall,
everything looked calm," says a participant. "Behind doors all
around it, people were negotiating like crazy, shouting and
threatening."
Through some eight hours of back-room combat, Strougal and his
allies gradually broke down the resistance of Jakes holdouts,
including trade-union representatives, while wooing the bloc from
the Slovak republic, which was trying to boost its own influence.
In exchange, the reformist camp had to make three concessions. They
allowed two hard-liners, Prague party leader Miroslav Stepan and
trade-union boss Miroslav Zavadil, to keep their Politburo seats.
The five Slovak members of the Politburo also would retain their
posts, including Jozef Lenart, despised for his collaboration with
the Soviets in the post-invasion era. And no Strougal partisans
would replace the ousted Politburo members. Hence the appointment
of Karel Urbanek, a relative unknown, to the prime ministry.
Presented with a fait accompli, Jakes reluctantly resigned, along
with six of his Politburo allies.
But Urbanek, it turned out, was a closet Strougal partisan
determined to finish the housecleaning. In communication with
Gorbachev, he pledged to carry out the party rehabilitations that
Jakes had reneged on. Then Urbanek clinched a deal in which key
figures among those expelled from the party 21 years ago refused
to rejoin until the last hard-liners were thrown out of the
Politburo. On Nov. 26 Urbanek reconvened the Central Committee and
secured the resignations of Stepan, Zavadil and Lenart. The purge
