Milos Jakes
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Miloš Jakeš (born August 12 1922 in České Chalupy near České Budějovice) was the leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1987-1989, until collapse of communist party dominance.
Jakeš grew up in a poor village family in the Šumava borderlands before working in Bata shoe factories in Zlín between 1937 and 1950. He joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia soon after the war, triggering his fluent rise within the party ranks. In 1955 he began his studies at Moscow's Party's Higher College and after obtaining his degree in 1958 his career was then incessant, undisturbed even during the Prague Spring period. After the Soviet invasion, Jakeš began one of the main initiators of the political purges carried out in the name of "normalization".
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Party leader
His nomination for the party's general secretary was rather an outcome of several competing pressures within the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia as Gustáv Husák was ousted from his post at a dramatic party meeting in December 1987. Jakeš then began to promote the new "perestroika" course on a verbal level, being staunchly opposed at the same time to any dialogue with the growing opposition movement in the country. This was however the exact fulfillment of the hopes hidden behind Jakeš's nomination: the party leadership tried to appease the public "perestrojka" expectations while it did not need at all a true promoter of this course.
Target of jokes
Jakeš was a target of many jokes and humiliation due to his clumsy verbal style. He gained an unwanted fame by his famous speech addressed at a closed party session in Červený Hrádek close to Plzeň. When speaking about necessity of Gorbachev-inspired "perestrojka" he presented himself and the party as a lonely fence post being allegedly left alone to overcome the hardships. On the same occasion he mistook the word broiler (a young turkey bred) for boiler and spoke in an embarrassingly familiar way about some official Czech pop music singers when pointing to their allegedly super-high incomes (Nobody of us earns so much!). In a way unknown, his speech somehow found its way out and its recording were frequently transmitted among the people since summer 1989.
Widespread feeling of moral and intellectual decay of Czechoslovakia's ruling elite was confirmed by this speech. It is not surprising that the slogan Jakeše do koše (Jakeš to the trash) became one of the symbols of the Velvet Revolution.
Later life
In 2003 Jakeš and two other party prominents stood trial for their role in August 1968. It was at that time when Jakeš took part in an failed attempt to establish a pro-Soviet "workers-peasants' government" serving the interests of the occupiers. Facing a likely life sentence, Jakeš was nevertheless acquitted of the charge of treason. He lives in Prague as an ordinary pensioner and used to be a frequent guest at the current communist rallies. He wrote a book Dva roky generálním tajemníkem (Two years as the General Secretary) where he compared the forty-years-long communist rule of Czechoslovakia to the famous Hussite period in the nation's history.
External links
- Parts of the speech (http://www.czech-tv.cz/ct/historie/video/jakes.mp3) in Červený Hrádek (in Czech)de:Miloš Jakeš