Jan Šejna

Who was Jan Šejna?

Jan Šejna, also Sejna in English, was, in the time of communist Czechoslovakia, a Major General of the Czechoslovak Army. After losing political power and influence at the beginning of the Prague Spring, he sought refuge in the US consulate in Trieste and defected to the United States. He is the second highest-ranked officer to ever defect to the West from the Eastern Bloc, behind Lieutenant General Ion Mihai Pacepa of the Romanian Securitate. Significant motive for espace were his economic crimes. Among others, he illegally supplied collective farms by clover seed, hence he got nickname The Seed General.

In 1974 he disclosed detailed Soviet plans of how to occupy Austria in case of an all-European WAR for speedy advances into Tito's Yugoslavia from the north west across Italy's Friuli and the city of Trieste. The scenario, codenamed Polarka, foresaw a speedy occupation of Eastern Austria and Vienna much in the style of Czechoslovakia's occupation in August 1968, retaking Austria's postwar Soviet occupation zone from 1945 to 1955.