Lubomir Strougal, former prime minister of communist Czechoslovakia from 1970 to 1988, has died at the age of 98, the Czech news site Seznam Zpravy announced on Monday.
Strougal became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia at the age of 34 in 1958, and remained there until the fall of the regime during the Velvet Revolution of 1989. He served as Minister of agriculture in 1959, then Minister of the Interior two years later.
Follower of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms
Strougal condemned the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, which crushed the short period of relative freedom known as the "Prague Spring", but soon changed sides and became prime minister, despite reservations of then-Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.
A follower of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms in the 1980s, Strugal was surprised that an anti-reform wing had prevailed within the Communist Party and resigned in 1988. He was replaced by Ladislav Adamec, the last head of the Communist government in the country.
Like many Czechoslovak leaders of the totalitarian communist era, Strougal escaped all attempts to hold him accountable for the regime's crimes. Czechoslovakia peacefully split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993.
