Zdeněk Mlynář

Who was Zdeněk Mlynář?

Zdeněk Mlynář was secretary of Czech communist party in the years 1968–1970 and an intellectual who went against the grain during a critical time in the development of Eastern European political history. Mlynář wrote the noteworthy political manifesto “Towards a Democratic Political Organization of Society” which was released on 5 May 1968, at the height of the Prague Spring. He also wrote, while in exile in Vienna, an autobiographical account of the Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact invasion that put an end to it in August, 1968. It was published in an English translation called Nightfrost in Prague: The End of Humane Socialism.