Bohuslav Chňoupek

Bohuslav Chňoupek ( born August 10, 1925 in Petržalka ( now part of Bratislava), † 28 June, 2004 Prague ) was a Czechoslovak politician, diplomat and writer. He served as Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia from 1971 to 1988 one of the formative figures of normalization between the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution.

Life

Chňoupeks parents worked in public administration. He spent his school days in Bratislava. His studies at the University of Economics in Bratislava from 1946 to 1950, he completed a degree in engineering. Already in 1945 he became a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSC ) and was still while studying after February coup in 1948 editor of the communist propaganda magazine Borba. After his studies he worked for the newspaper Smena to 1958, from 1958 for the Slovak Pravda, for which he reported as a foreign correspondent in the Soviet Union from 1960 to 1965. After that, he was editor of the magazine Predvoj.

In 1967, he moved into politics, initially until April 1968 as Deputy Minister of Culture and Information. After the suppression of the Prague Spring, he became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and got important functions transferred, in 1969, first as director of the state broadcaster, 1970, as ambassador to the Soviet Union, and finally in 1971 as Foreign Minister, a post which he retained until 1988. During this time he was sitting as a native Slovak Czech for constituencies in Parliament. He was a faithful representative of Soviet positions through to perestroika. After the turn he sat on charges of abuse of office for half a year in prison.