Alexej Čepička

Alexej Čepička (18 August 1910 – 30 September 1990) was a Czech communist politician and general of the Czechoslovak Army. He held several ministerial positions in Czechoslovakia after World War II, including Minister of Justice from 1948 to 1950 and Minister of National Defence from 1950 to 1956.

Early years Čepička was born to the family of a civil servant in Kroměříž. He matriculated from gymnasium in Kroměříž in 1929, and then moved to Prague, where he was admitted to the Faculty of Law at Charles University. In Prague, he also joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), and worked as a functionary of the Young Communist League of Czechoslovakia from 1932 to 1935. Čepička obtained a doctorate in law in 1935, and then worked at a law firm in Brno.

After the start of World War II and the occupation of the Czech lands by Nazi Germany, he became involved with the anti-Nazi resistance, which led to his arrest by the Gestapo in 1942. Čepička was at first held in Auschwitz, and then in Buchenwald, where he remained until the end of the war. From June 1946 until May 1948, he represented the KSČ in the Constituent National Assembly. Between 1949 and 1950, Čepička also headed the State Office for Church Affairs, and between 1951 and 1954, he was a member of the Presidium, the Political Secretariat and the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the KSČ. A large-scale redeployment of military units along the western border of Czechoslovakia also took place; according to historian Karel Kaplan, Čepička was personally ordered by Joseph Stalin to prepare the Czechoslovak Army for an incursion into Western Europe in case of a possible military confrontation.

As Minister of Defence, Čepička proposed the construction of the Hotel International Prague, and envisioned a monument to the newly formed Fourth Czechoslovak Republic that would reinforce ties with the Soviet Union.

Downfall and later years After the death of Stalin and Gottwald in 1953, the prospect of immediate war lessened and Čepička's position became precarious. Other leaders of the KSČ were afraid of his political ambitions, and rumours of him being homosexual did not help his popularity. In his book Špión vypovídá, defector Josef Frolík stated that Minister of the Interior had Čepička followed on one occasion, and that he was caught in Prague's Letná Park talking to a young man. Čepička was selected as a scapegoat for the cult of personality around Gottwald, dismissed from all functions in 1956, and put into low importance position as head of the State Office for Inventions and Standardization. In 1959 he suffered a heart attack and was sent into comfortable retirement.

In fiction In 1969 Miroslav Švandrlík wrote Black Barons (Czech: Černí baroni), a satirical book officially published in 1990, after the fall of the Communist Party from power. The book and its sequels became popular and were followed by a film and TV series. The book subtitle "We waged war under Čepička" reminds us of the then Minister of Defense Alexej Čepička. One of the main characters in the book, major Terazky, is shown as a comical character, hopelessly trying to turn stupid army officers and bored conscripts into feared warriors, and this image of him as a clown underscores the absurdity of the socialist army.

Awards and honours Czechoslovak honours

Literature Karel Kaplan, Dans les Archives du comité central: Trente ans de secrets du bloc soviétique, Paris: Michel, 1978, pp. 165-66; Jiří Pernes, Jaroslav Pospíšil, Antonín Lukáš: Alexej Čepička - Šedá eminence rudého režimu (Alexej Čepička - the Grey Eminence of the Red regime), Prague, 2008.