„Ultras“ v Hradci: Aktivity prosovětskych sil na Kralovehradecku na podzim 1968
The ‘Ultras’ in Hradec: Pro-Soviet Forces ¨ in the Hradec Kralove Region in Autumn 1968

Summary/Abstract: The author introduces his article with a general description of the political groupings that openly supported interventionist interests after the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. He stresses that the groups were few in number, though after a while, in the autumn and winter of 1968, they were relatively influential. Not only did they provide the occupying forces with various information, but also, thanks to their links to Soviet circles they could act as intermediaries applying pressure on the gradually growing trend of political ‘realism’ embodied by Gustav Husak. He provides a concise description of the most vocal of these groups (the Prague radical left, represented by Josef Jodas and Eduard Famira, the Ostrava Stalinists and the Olomouc orthodox Communists, comprising mainly teachers at Olomouc University). He familiarizes us with their goals, approaches, and the biggest events (including the October meeting in Čechie, Libeň, and the meeting of the People’s Militias at Homole, Prague, and the November meeting of the Union of Czechoslovak-Soviet Friendship, at the Lucerna, Prague). The author then describes the activity of the radical left in Hradec Kralove and the surrounding region, which had hitherto not been discussed in the scholarly literature. This activity entailed three or four meetings with soldiers of the armies of occupation, which culminated in the kind of event organized by a commission for work with pre-war Party members and Party members of merit at the District Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party in Hradec Kralove on 17 October 1968. Using archive records, the author describes the meeting, its radical slogans and proclamations, and the subsequent negative response of Communist and other organizations and the buck-passing approach to the matter, which predominated in the Hradec Kralove District Committee of the Party. The article ends with an outline of the beginning of ‘Normalization’ in the district and regional organizations of the Party in Hradec Kralove and the lives of the main actors in the immediate aftermath of this story.

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