On Thursday morning the former high ranking communist politician Vasil Biľak died. For more than 40 years Biľak was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist party of Czechoslovakia and from the year 1968 he was the committee’s secretary, having a decisive word in the country’s foreign politics and ideology.
He strongly supported the Soviet intervention of the then Czechoslovakia in August 1968 and helped eliminate efforts of the so called Prague Spring, reformed politics promoting a more moderate and humanly socialism in Czechoslovakia. He in fact was one of the signatories of the so called invitation letter for the Warsaw pact troops which invaded the country. At the age of 96, Vasil Biľak died at home in Bratislava.
Katarina Richterova
