Under a Cruel Star: A Life In Prague, 1941-1968

After the death of Soviet autocrat Joseph Stalin in 1953, a process of limited democratization took place across much of the Eastern Bloc. Under Stalin’s successor, Nikita Kruschev, states within the Soviet sphere of influence gradually became less repressive, with greater freedom of speech and movement than had previously existed. This process unfolded more slowly in Czechoslovakia than in most neighboring states, but by 1963, an economic downturn led a critical mass of Czechoslovakians to demand reform. The Czechoslovakian government, under President Antonín Novotný, began to relax its strict authoritarian rules—a change symbolized in part by the 1963 Liblice Conference, an academic gathering to celebrate the work of early 20th-century Czech writer Franz Kafka, whose work had long been shunned as incompatible with communist ideals.

Novotný’s reforms, however, did not go far enough, and he soon lost the confidence of both the public and the Czechoslovakian Communist Party. In 1968, he was replaced by Alexander Dubček, who introduced sweeping democratic reforms he called “socialism with a human face.” The press freedoms that Dubček introduced allowed open debate about the political direction of the country and close examination of the government’s actions in the Stalinist period. It was in this climate that the government admitted for the first time that the “conspirators” executed in the 1952 Slánský trial—including Kovály’s husband, Rudolf—were innocent.