Word: czechoslovak
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
DIED. Frantisek Kriegel, 71, Czechoslovak physician and politician; of a heart attack; in Prague. After serving his profession and political conscience as a medical officer in the Spanish Civil War, with Mao Tse-tung's forces resisting Japanese aggression and, with the U.S. Army during World War II, Kriegel returned home and helped engineer the 1948 Communist coup d'etat. He then served as Deputy Minister of Health, medical adviser to Fidel Castro in Cuba, Central Committee member and, in 1968, chairman of the National Front. By then a liberal tied with the independent-minded regime of Alexander...
DIED. Ján Kadár, 61, expatriate Czechoslovak film director; of respiratory failure; in Los Angeles. The Hungarian-born Kadár, a wartime labor camp survivor, focused so sharply in his movies on the rights of individuals that Czechoslovak film authorities once suspended his license to work. He fled to the U.S. "to be a free citizen" when Soviet tanks crushed the brief "Prague spring" liberalization in 1968; that was three years after he had produced his masterwork, The Shop on Main Street, a haunting drama about an elderly Jewish woman who is betrayed to the Nazis...
...Soviet Union, the toughest target, 22 Bible-bearing vehicles were confiscated in 1977 alone. Border guards now come armed with probing tools and auto owners' manuals. Some border checkpoints are even equipped with terminals to Western-made computer systems to check the record of any driver they stop. Czechoslovak guards in 1977 barred the entry of an American woman when the computer informed them that she had been thrown out of the Soviet Union two years before for Bible smuggling. Most people caught in the act are simply questioned for a few hours and then refused entry. The longest...
...condemning the aggression by Viet Nam, the other condemning aggression by China. On Saturday, in protest against the council's decision to give the floor to the representative of Pol Pot's defeated regime in Cambodia, Soviet Delegate Mikhail Kharlamov stalked out. He was followed moments later by the Czechoslovak delegation. Kharlamov was careful to leave an aide in attendance at the table, but it was the first Soviet walkout from the Security Council since the Korean...
Problems of morale aside, Czechoslovak leaders face nagging signs of economic stagnation. On the face of it, the economy is performing respectably, with an annual growth rate averaging 5.5%. But the country has been losing its share of Western hard-currency markets for its principal exports, which include glassware, engineering machinery and textiles. Capital investment has been minimal, and many factories are obsolete. Decentralized planning, economic incentives and worker participation were intended to be keystone policies of the Dubček government. In a highly bastardized form, they have been revived by Finance Minister Leopold...