Anatomy of A Purge

By KENNETH W. BANTA PRAGUE

For Milos Jakes, the beginning of the end came early last summer. In a series of private exchanges between the Czechoslovak Communist Party leader and Mikhail Gorbachev and his advisers, the Soviet President made clear that his own internal situation demanded a repudiation of the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. If Jakes, 67, did not want to be undercut by the Soviet move, he would have to act -- and act soon. An agreement between Moscow and Prague was struck. Come October, Jakes would convene a Central Committee meeting and expel all Politburo members tainted by the 1968 invasion -- except himself. After appointing a new team of his own choosing, Jakes would then rehabilitate the 460,000 Communist Party members he had personally ordered purged immediately after the invasion.

There was only one problem: Jakes reneged on his agreement with Gorbachev. That extraordinary double cross began the unraveling of Jakes's two-year rule. Through a variety of sources, TIME has pieced together an account of the final days of the repressive Jakes regime. It is not a sympathetic tale; in the end, Jakes had only his own poor judgment, panic and stubbornness to blame.

Jakes's humiliation within the party began on July 17, when a videocassette circulated among rank-and-file Communists that showed Jakes berating an assembly of provincial party chiefs for failing to implement his directives. With characteristic ineloquence, he scolded his underlings for leaving him "standing like a lonely stake in a fence." Says a Prague journalist: "Jakes was turning into a party joke."

Not long after, agreement between Gorbachev and Jakes was reached on the plan for a Politburo purge. But October came and went with nothing done. In mid-November, hard-line ideology chief Jan Fojtik traveled on short notice to Moscow, where he met with Georgi Smirnov, chief of the Moscow Institute of Marxism-Leninism. Smirnov said that a document condemning the 1968 invasion had been approved by the Soviet Politburo, and he warned that with the Malta summit approaching, the document would soon be published.

Before Jakes could fashion a response, events exploded. On Friday, Nov. 17, Prague riot police cracked down on student demonstrators. With his authority rapidly crumbling, Jakes launched a last-minute bid to crush the uprising. Advised by Czechoslovakia's military that it would take no part in a violent action against the populace, Jakes turned in desperation to the People's Militia, units composed mostly of factory workers that function in effect as the Communist Party's private army. Beginning Nov. 19, militia units were deployed at factory gates and inside industrial compounds around the country. Care was taken to ensure that each unit was deployed outside its own home region. However, the show of militia force served only to spark further protests.

Even then, Jakes resisted internal party pressure to convene an emergency session of the Central Committee. "It wasn't just the Central Committee; it was the regional party officials who were shouting for it," says Antonin Mlady, a factory foreman and member of the newly formed Politburo. Finally the Politburo overruled Jakes and called a meeting. On Friday, Nov. 24, the session opened in an austere hall in the Stalinist-era Party Political University on the outskirts of Prague. There, Jakes tried one last tactic to save his job: he proposed a new law that would permit freedom of assembly, thus legalizing the demonstrations that had brought Prague and other cities to a standstill.

But the 148-member Central Committee, by now painfully aware of the revolutionary spirit in the streets, responded by orchestrating an internal purge. The offensive was led by former Prime Minister Lubomir Strougal, 65, who was replaced last year by Ladislav Adamec, 63. Over the past six months, Strougal, who is still a member of the Central Committee, and Adamec had conspired to take advantage of just such a moment. They agreed that Adamec would publicly call for reform while Strougal used his influence within the Central Committee to oust Jakes and other hard-liners in the Politburo. ) Strougal rallied a core group of 20 moderates within the Central Committee to their cause. "In the main hall, everything looked calm," says a participant. "Behind doors all around it, people were negotiating like crazy, shouting and threatening."

Through some eight hours of back-room combat, Strougal and his allies gradually broke down the resistance of Jakes holdouts, including trade-union representatives, while wooing the bloc from the Slovak republic, which was trying to boost its own influence. In exchange, the reformist camp had to make three concessions. They allowed two hard-liners, Prague party leader Miroslav Stepan and trade-union boss Miroslav Zavadil, to keep their Politburo seats. The five Slovak members of the Politburo also would retain their posts, including Jozef Lenart, despised for his collaboration with the Soviets in the post-invasion era. And no Strougal partisans would replace the ousted Politburo members. Hence the appointment of Karel Urbanek, a relative unknown, to the prime ministry. Presented with a fait accompli, Jakes reluctantly resigned, along with six of his Politburo allies.

But Urbanek, it turned out, was a closet Strougal partisan determined to finish the housecleaning. In communication with Gorbachev, he pledged to carry out the party rehabilitations that Jakes had reneged on. Then Urbanek clinched a deal in which key figures among those expelled from the party 21 years ago refused to rejoin until the last hard-liners were thrown out of the Politburo. On Nov. 26 Urbanek reconvened the Central Committee and secured the resignations of Stepan, Zavadil and Lenart. The purge was complete.