Alexander Dubček (November 27, 1921 – November 7, 1992) was a Slovak politician and briefly leader of Czechoslovakia (1968-1969), famous for his attempt to reform the Communist regime (Prague Spring). Later, after the overthrow of the Communist government, he was Speaker of the federal Czechoslovak parliament.

A review of Alexander Dubček's autobiography Hope Dies Last kicks off with the comment that 'Even if he hadn't been at the center of the drama in 1968, Dubček's story would be fascinating'. That drama of 1968, the drama that brought him immortality, was, of course, the Prague Spring.

As the relatively newly-installed president of his country, in early 1968 Dubček presided over a number of reforms which he described as an attempt to establish 'socialism with a human face'. Most communist governments were anxious about the expression on that face, however, and on August 21st 1968 Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops crossed into Czechoslovakia to bring an end to Dubček's little political experiment.

This caught everyone by surprise, not least Dubček himself, who is said, on hearing the news, to have exclaimed, 'How can they do this to me?'. On the streets of Czechoslovakia the response was shock and... passive resistance. The non-communist world - and with it, communist Romania, which had refused to go along with its Warsaw Pact allies - rallied to condemn the invasion, but went no further than that similarly passive condemnation. The troops remained.

Dubček and his politburo were arrested and taken to Moscow, where they were entertained by Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders. Although he was later appointed Czechoslovakia's ambassador to Turkey, it turned out to be only a short-lived respite, lasting just one year, before his exile to an insignificant job in the country's forestry service. He stayed there for twenty years, re-emerging into public life once more only when the Velvet Revolution brought in Havel's liberalising administration.

But Dubček's life was long and eventful, and the Prague Spring only one episode in it. But why, you may ask, are we reading this stuff about Dubček anyway? What's the connection with Kyrgyzstan? The anwer is that Alexander Dubček spent many of his formative years in Kyrgyzstan, in Bishkek. Or rather Pishpek. Or was it Frunze? (Actually both: Pishpek up to 1926, then from 1926 to 1991 Frunze, after the Red Army leader who died under suspicious circumstances on an operating table in Moscow. Although that is another story. - Ed.)
Anyway... Dubček's parents, Stefan and Pavlina, were originally from Slovakia but met and married in the USA. According to Dubček they were: 'a pair of Slovak socialist dreamers who happened to have emigrated to Chicago', where Stefan worked as a cabinet maker and was also active in the labour movement. When America entered the First World War, Stefan refused to serve in the army and was arrested and spent fourteen months in an internment camp in Texas. In 1921 they returned to Slovakia in search of work because prospects were poor and conditions tough in the post-war US. A few months later, on 27th November, Alexander was born in the town of Uhrovec.

Stefan became one of the founder members of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, and in the spring of 1925, in response to an appeal for workers to help build socialism, the family moved to the Soviet Union. Alexander was three-and-a-half, and his brother Julius 18 months older.

The train journey took a month, including four days spent waiting at the Russian border. Towards the end of the journey they passed through an immense area of seemingly endless sand and rock, which they were told was called the Hungry Desert. Apparently a few members of the group began at this stage to lose their enthusiasm. Fortunately, however, they passed through this wilderness and came upon rivers, meadows, cottages and, glistening in the distance, the majestic Kyrgyz range of the northern Tien Shan mountains. They were greeted at the end of their journey with a late April flurry of snow. They were four kilometers from the town of Pishpek.

What they found on arrival was not exactly encouraging. They probably noticed more than one or two minor differences from the picture they had been given back home. No-one knew they were coming and nothing was prepared for them; they were short of funds; and although they had been told they would be going to a fresh and healthy climate, what they got was malaria, water shortages and no doctors; and they had nowhere to live.
That last problem was sorted out when they were given a tumble-down cottage of mud brick in a former military camp. Or rather, the whole group of 300 were assigned ten such cottages. Conditions were tough, but they lived communally  - there was no choice -  and helped one another out. It was important to find some way of supporting themselves and the group settled down to work building workshops and a sawmill. It wasn't easy because the materials were not readily available and had to be transported a long way. For the first few months they were paid no wages. Later, they were able to borrow 20,000 roubles from a bank. Life was a struggle: people ate sparrows' eggs, raw; and pigs had to feed themselves off local rubbish dumps. Then, in the following year, fire ravagaged their workshops.

Dubček says that at this point some of the group decided that enough was enough and that it was time to go back home - or, if not home, at least somewhere else in Russia. The Dubček boys, however, took to Pishpek. Pavlina, Dubček's mother, was elected leader of the women's committee responsible for the children, all 140 of them. A school was opened with an initial roll of 50 and no textbooks, paper or pencils. Alexander started school at the age of nearly eight, in 1929. The languages of instruction were originally Czech and Slovak, but later on he was taught in Russian as well.

In 1932 Interhelpa sent Alexander's father to Moscow for a course, and he took advantage of the opportunity to move to Gorkii in Russia where he worked in the GAZ automobile factory along with, among others, a few American engineers. In Gorkii the family rented a house in a settlement called Ruttenberg. His mother didn't go out to work. Alexander was sad to leave Frunze, the only home he knew. But he had no choice; and at his new secondary school in Gorkii - he was 12 then - where discipline was strict, he got on well, both academically and in various sports: skating, water-polo, hockey and football.  In 1935, after the family had moved back to Frunze, Julius, Alexander's brother, 15 years old at the time, was involved in a street fight with boys from another part of town, and he hurt one of them seriously. It was decided that he and his mother would return to Czechoslovakia while Alexander and his father remained in Kyrgyzstan.

Alexander was no more interested in politics than any other boys his age. In his memoires he describes his confusion at having to obliterate names and pictures of erstwhile revolutionary heroes who had fallen into disrepute, been declared enemies of the people, had been tried and finally excecuted.

In the autumn of 1938, the Supreme Soviet issued a decree requiring foreigners living in Russia either to accept Soviet citizenship or to leave the country. Despite his socialist sentiments Stefan decided to leave the USSR and took with him his now 17-year-old son. He still thought of Czechoslovakia as home, that he and Alexander were Slovaks living abroad... but the situation was more complicated for Alexander. Once again he was leaving behind him the only country that he knew: it held all his memories, good and bad. For Alexander, leaving Kyrgyzstan was venturing out into the unknown.
Back in Czechoslovakia he became an apprentice in the Skoda factory and in 1939 he joined the Communist Party, which at that time was banned. Then came the Second World War, and action for both Dubček brothers as communist guerrillas fighting the Nazi occupation. In the winter of 1944-45 he fought in the Slovak uprising against the Germans and was wounded twice; Julius was killed.

After the war Czechoslovakia came under the control of the Soviet Union and Alexander found work in a factory where he became active as the secretary of various local communist committees. He rose fast and by the early 1950s he had a seat on the central committee of the Slovak Communist Party. After studying law in Bratislava and later receiving a doctorate in Political Studies in Moscow, by 1964 he had risen to the chairmanship of the Slovak Communist Party. In 1967 the Czechoslovak communist leader, Novotny, was dismissed; Dubček replaced him early in 1968.

However, since 1964 he had begun to adopt unconventionally liberal economic views - unconventional, that is, for a high-ranking communist official. The main problem was that he saw a substantial role for private enterprise in a socialist state, but he also began openly to associate with intellectuals and artists. Soon he was authorizing liberalization in the media, trades unions, economic enterprises and the courts. This burgeoning liberalization across Czechoslovak society was what became known as the Prague Spring; where civic freedoms flourished in a state that nevertheless declared itself communist. A crisis was developing... Which is where we began, no?

Alexander Dubček died on November 7th 1992, aged 70, of injuries received in a car crash.

His time spent in Kyrgyzstan and his affection for the place are still remembered and may, possibly, have helped to encourage the warm relations that exist between the three republics. Of course, that may be nonsense: maybe this is only the same kind of meaningless formulaic unimaginative blather that one expected (and, sadly, still expects) from the kind of regime that Dubček tried to change; or maybe it just looks like that. Well there's a question to ponder.