Čtrnáct životů Františka Kriegla
The Fourteen Lives of František Kriegel

Summary/Abstract: The Czechoslovak communist politician and physician František Kriegel (1908–1979), to whom Martin Groman has dedicated the voluminous biography "Kriegel: Voják a lékař komunismu" [Kriegel: Soldier and Doctor of Communism], had an extraordinary career. He was born into a Jewish family in the town of Stanislavov in the Austrian part of Halych (today’s Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine). He studied medicine in Prague and joined the Communist Party. He led an international medical team in the Spanish Civil War and served in a similar capacity in China and Burma during the Second World War. On his return to Prague, he was involved in the Communist coup within the party apparatus and then became Deputy Minister for Health. He escaped the political trials of the 1950s but was deposed from his functions and worked as a general practitioner. In the early 1960s, he served as a medical advisor to the Cuban government. His career then rose again, and during the Prague Spring he became a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and Chairman of the Central Committee of the National Front. His “moment of glory” came in August 1968, when he was the only one of the abducted Czechoslovak politicians to refuse to sign the so-called Moscow Protocol, which legalized the terms of the Soviet occupation. He was then gradually stripped of his posts and excluded from public life. As a dissident, he was one of the first signatories of Charter 77. According to the reviewer, Martin Groman has written an excellent, honestly craftedand carefully thought out, yet at the same time readable and engaging biography. The reviewer appreciates the way in which he has managed to focus, organize andmake use of the rich and uncluttered documentary material. A real sensation is the author’s discovery and use of Kriegel’s personnel file from the Moscow headquarters of the Communist International in the late 1930s. He reflects on some moments in Kriegel’s biography and disputes Groman’s interpretation of the Prague Spring in terms of whether it was really a conflict between groups of reformists, centrists and conservatives in the leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.

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