Jozef Lenárt

Who was Jozef Lenárt?

Jozef Lenárt was a Slovak politician.

He graduated from a chemistry high school and worked for the Baťa company. He became a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and of the Communist Party of Slovakia.

Lenart was a member of the federal parliament from 1960 to 1990, and was Speaker of the Slovak National Council 1962–1963. He was also a member from 1971 to 1990. He served as Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia between 1963 and 1968.

Although a Slovak, he became a Czech citizen after the country had split in 1993.

On the basis of insufficient evidence, on 23 September 2002 Lenárt was acquitted of treason charges, related to his handling 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.