Sakharov Prize
European Parliament

Alexander Dubček – 1989, Slovakia

A leading figure in the Prague Spring, Alexander Dubček strove to achieve democratic and economic reform. He continued to fight for freedom, sovereignty and social justice throughout his life.

Born in 1921 into a family committed to building socialism in the Soviet Union, he secretly joined the Communist Party and the underground resistance against the pro-German Slovak state in 1939.

In 1968, Dubček, a devoted communist, became the new First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and sought to liberalise the Communist regime. He began a series of reforms, granting greater freedom of expression to the press, rehabilitating victims of the Stalin-era political purges and initiating economic reforms and a wide-ranging democratisation of Czechoslovak political life. However, his reforms raised concern in Moscow and his endeavours to give socialism a human face were shattered on 21 August 1968 when Warsaw Pact tanks seized control of Prague. Dubček was kidnapped by the KGB, taken to the Kremlin and briefly detained.

In 1970, he was accused of treason, stripped of office and expelled from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. For 15 years he lived as an ordinary worker and only returned to political life as a civil rights activist in 1988.

When he was awarded the Sakharov Prize on 22 November 1989, Dubček was still a citizen deprived of his human rights, but, just a few days later, on 28 November, Czechoslovakia's Communist Party relinquished its hold on power, toppled by the Velvet Revolution.

In a message to the European Parliament on 10 December 1989, just four days before he died, Andrei Sakharov wrote: 'I am convinced that the "breath of freedom" which the Czechs and the Slovaks enjoyed when Dubček was their leader was a prologue to the peaceful revolutions now taking place in eastern Europe and Czechoslovakia itself.'

After the 1989 revolution in Czechoslovakia, Dubček was elected chair of the federal assembly from 1989 to 1992. Addressing the European Parliament in January 1990 as he received his Sakharov Prize, Dubček noted that 'even during the most difficult moments of their history, the nations which make up my country have never ceased to feel that they are part of humanity's great struggle for freedom' and, from the Prague Spring to the Velvet Revolution, 'the ideals of freedom, sovereignty and social justice remained alive.'

Alexander Dubček died in a car accident in 1992.