Alexej Čepička

Alexej Čepička
Alexej Čepička in 1948
Minister of National Defence of Czechoslovakia
In office 25 April 1950 – 25 April 1956
Preceded by	Ludvík Svoboda
Succeeded by	Bohumír Lomský
Minister of Justice of Czechoslovakia
In office 25 February 1948 – 25 April 1950
Preceded by	Prokop Drtina
Succeeded by	Štefan Rais
Personal details
Born	(1910-08-18)18 August 1910 General of the Army

General Alexej Čepička (18 August 1910 – 30 September 1990) was a

Early years

Čepička was born into a poor family. He studied law in Prague. At the age of 19 he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia but was not very politically active. Later, he worked in advocacy. In 1942 he was imprisoned by Gestapo and was held in Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps until the end of World War II.^{[citation needed]}

Political career

After his return to Kroměříž Čepička got involved in local administration, dealing brutally, quickly, and effectively with post war chaos. He married the daughter of Klement Gottwald, the leader of the Communist Party, who later became prime minister and President of Czechoslovakia.^{[citation needed]}

As a candidate of the Communist Party, Čepička was voted into parliament in the 1946 elections. In 1947, he was named into the position of minister of domestic trade (ministr vnitřního obchodu).^{[citation needed]}

After the Communist takeover of power in 1948, he became Minister of Justice. In this position he let the law system be dominated by the will of the Communist Party; a law prosecuting political opponents was approved and put into full force.^[1] In 1950, he was named head of the state commission dealing with churches (Státní úřad pro věci církevní). His task in this position was to suppress any sign of resistance from religious organisations, especially from the Catholic Church.^[2][3]

He belonged to the so called "big seven", top party and state leaders, along with President Gottwald, Prime Minister Zápotocký, Central Committee Secretary Antonín Novotný, Minister of the Interior Václav Nosek, Minister of Foreign Affairs Viliam Široký and Minister of Information Václav Kopecký.

Minister of Defence

From 1950 to 1956, Čepička served as Minister of Defence. According to historian Karel Kaplan, Čepička was ordered by Joseph Stalin personally to prepare the Czechoslovak Army for incursion into Western Europe area.^[4][5] The preparations included militarisation of the society, purges of those suspected of low loyalty to the new regime, salary rises of army officers, and growth in numbers of army personnel.^{[citation needed]}

While he was the Minister of Defence, he proposed the

After the death of Stalin and Gottwald in 1953 the prospect of immediate war lessened and Čepička's position became precarious. Leaders of the Communist Party were afraid of his political ambitions and rumours of his being homosexual did not help his popularity.^[citation needed] In his book Špión vypovídá defector Josef Frolík stated that Rudolf Barák [cs] had Čepička followed and the general was eventually caught in Letná Park talking to a young man at night.^[8]

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 state patent office (1956-59).^[9] In 1959 he suffered a heart attack and was sent into comfortable retirement.^[3]

Continuing liberalisation of political life made him a symbol of the past wrongs and in 1963 Čepička was expelled from the Communist Party for his role in the "deformations of the 50s".^[3]

Čepička spent the rest of his life in retirement, never entered politics again, and died forgotten.^[3][10]

In fiction

In 1969 Miroslav Švandrlík wrote

• ISBN 2-226-00711-3
• ISBN 978-80-7243-322-3
  .