Preceded by Viliam Siroky Role Politician Name Jozef Lenart | Nationality Slovak Preceded by Antonin Novotny Succeeded by Oldrich Cernik | |
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Born 3 April 1923
Liptovska Porubka, Czechoslovakia
(now Slovakia) ( 1923-04-03 ) Died February 11, 2004, Prague, Czech Republic Party Communist Party of Czechoslovakia | ||
Jozef Lenárt FuLL'MoVie'FREE
Jozef Lenárt (3 April 1923 – 11 February 2004) was a Slovak politician who was Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia from 1963 to 1968.
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Life and career
Born in Liptovská Porúbka, Slovakia, he graduated from a chemistry high school and worked for the Baťa company. He became a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) and of the Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS).
Lenart was a member of the federal parliament (whose name changed several times) from 1960 to 1990, and was Speaker of the Slovak National Council from 1962 to 1963. He was also a member from 1971 to (?)1990. He served as Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia between 1963 and 1968.
Although ethnically Slovak, he became a Czech citizen after the country split in 1993.
On the basis of insufficient evidence, on 23 September 2002 Lenárt was acquitted of treason charges (along with his co-defendant Miloš Jakeš), related to his handling (or lack thereof) of the Prague Spring events in 1968. He was accused of attending a meeting at the Soviet embassy in Prague on the day after the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion, planning to establish a new "workers and farmers'" government.
Jozef Lenárt was one of the most resilient figures in Czechoslovakia's communist hierarchy, occupying one post or another in the leadership for no less than a quarter of the century. That achievement was all the more remarkable because his career at the top straddled a succession of regimes and several abrupt changes in policy.
He died in Prague in 2004.