Zdeněk Fierlinger

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First World War He had no loyalty to Austria-Hungary and, like many of the other Czechs living in Russia, chose not to return to the Empire upon the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 but instead stayed in Russia. Fierlinger, together with several other Czechs living in Rostov-on-Don, organised themselves into the Česká družina ("Czech Companions"), which joined the Imperial Russian Army to fight in Galicia against Austria. Like many other Czechs of his generation, Fierlinger was a Russophile and saw Russia as the great Slavic power that would liberate the other Slavic peoples like the Czechs from Austrian rule. During the war, he joined the Czechoslovak Legion, which fought for independence from Austria. He was described as a "brave and selfless soldier". For his bravery on the battlefield, he was awarded the Order of St. George four times. Among other battles, he participated at the Battle of Zborov as the commander of the 9th Company. After the battle, he was promoted to the commander of a battalion. In July 1917, the Czechoslovak National Council, led by Tomáš Masaryk and Edvard Beneš, sent Fierlinger and Emanuel Voska to the United States. The purpose of the American tour…Citește mai mult

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Early diplomatic career After the war, Fierlinger returned to Czechoslovakia and joined the diplomatic service. Masaryk became the first president of Czechoslovakia, and Beneš became the foreign minister. Fierlinger was appointed by Beneš to serve as the chief of the economic section of the Foreign Ministry despite complaints that he lacked a university degree and that he was unsuitable to be a diplomat. He was successively ambassador to the Netherlands, Romania, the United States, Switzerland and Austria. Zeman and Karlsch wrote: "Fierlinger was self-confident, blunt in expressing his views and ready to stand up to the experts". During this period, he was a close friend and collaborator of Edvard Beneš. In 1924, he joined the Czech Social Democratic Party. From 1925 to 1928, he served as the Czechoslovak minister in Washington, DC, where he developed an illness in his kidneys that required him to go to Switzerland for medical treatment. During his time as the Czechoslovak minister in Bern, Fierlinger also served as the chief of the Czechoslovak delegation for the League of Nations, which required him to make regular visits to Geneva when the League of Nations was in session. Because of all the member states of the League…Citește mai mult

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At the same time, Bakulin informed Fierlinger that he had already promised to ship 38,516 kg of radioactive material to the Soviet Union. On 14 October, 37,012 kg of uranium paints were shipped to the Soviet Union, and on 29 October, 9,725 kg of uranium concentrate were loaded onto a train there. In response to a message from Molotov, Fierlinger indicated his willingness to have the Soviet Union be the exclusive buyer of the uranium, but he was opposed to the joint stock company, and the Jáchymov mine must be under sole Czechoslovak control. On 14 November, Bakulin submitted a new draft treaty to Fierlinger, which dropped the demand for a joint stock company but provided for a state-owned Czechoslovak company, whose management would consist of a joint board of four member (two Czechoslovak and two Soviet) to run the Jáchymov mine. On 17 November, Fierlinger spoke at the presidum, consisting of the prime minister and the five deputies representing the five major parties about the treaty, and general approval was expressed. On 21 November 1945, Bakulin told Fierlinger that the Soviets were willing to accept the treaty if 90% of the uranium went to the Soviet Union, and the…Citește mai mult

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Communist Czechoslovakia Between 1946 and 1948, Fierlinger was chairman of the Czech Social Democratic Party. In November 1947, the Social Democrats ousted him as their leader, claiming that he was too submissive to the Communists. After the communist coup in February 1948, Fierlinger acted as the chief proponent of the "unification" of the Social Democrats and the Communists. Under the terms of the merger later that year, he became a member of the KSČ Central Committee. According to the American journalist John Gunther, Fierlinger was subsequently nicknamed "Dr. Quislingerer". He subsequently served as Deputy Prime Minister from 1948 to 1953, Minister of the State Office for religious affairs from 1951 to 1953, Chairman of the National Assembly from 15 October 1953 to 23 June 1964 and Minister in charge of the State. He remained a member of the Central Committee until 1966. During the Prague Spring of 1968, the Soviet embassy in Prague viewed Fierlinger in hostile terms as a "right-wing" force within the KSČ (a supporter of the Prague Spring). In its reports to Moscow, he was described by Soviet diplomats as someone who supported the liberalising reforms of Alexander Dubček intended to achieve "socialism with a human face".…Citește mai mult

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R.I.P
Zdeněk

Zdeněk Fierlinger (11 July 1891 – 2 May 1976) was a Czechoslovak diplomat and politician. He served as the prime minister of Czechoslovakia from 1944 to 1946, first in the London-based Czechoslovak government-in-exile and then in liberated Czechoslovakia. Long close to the Soviet Union, he has his name often associated with the merger of his Czech Social Democratic Party with the Czechoslovak Communist Party after the communist coup in 1948. He was the uncle of Paul Fierlinger, the animator for numerous PBS cartoons.

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R.I.P
Zdeněk

Early life Zdeněk Fierlinger came from a lower-middle-class Czech family in the city of Olmütz in Moravia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Olomouc, Czech Republic). His father worked as a teacher of French and English in the local high school. Fierlinger was described as a mediocre student but one who was excellent with languages. He graduated from business school in 1910 in Olmütz and then worked in Russia as a sales agent for the MacCormick International Harvester Company of Chicago in Rostov-on-Don. Fierlinger was one of the 70,000 or so Czechs living in Imperial Russia in 1914.

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Ambassador to Soviet Union Between 1937 and 1945, Fierlinger held the post of envoy (and later ambassador) to the Soviet Union. Fierlinger arrived in Moscow on 5 October 1937 as the Czechoslovak minister-plenipotentiary. The diplomat to whom Fierlinger was closest during his time in Moscow was Joseph E. Davies, the American ambassador, who shared his pro-Soviet sentiments. Predictably enough, the diplomat to whom Fierlinger was most hostile was Count Friedrich von der Schulenburg, the German ambassador in Moscow, whom he made no secret of disliking. Fierlinger reported to Prague that Davies had told him that he felt that the two best world leaders were President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States and President Edvard Beneš of Czechoslovakia and described both leaders as progressive liberals whom he greatly admired. Within the diplomatic community in Moscow, there was much discussion of the effects of the Yezhovshchina ("Yezhov Times") on the Red Army. Both Schulenburg and the British ambassador, Lord Chilston, felt after the mass executions of much of the Red Army's senior command in June 1937, the Soviet military was finished as an effective fighting force. By contrast, both Davies and Fierlinger maintained an optimistic view and argued that the mass…Citește mai mult

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World War II On 14 December 1939, Fierlinger was asked to leave Moscow, as the legation was finally closed, and on Christmas Day, he arrived in Paris. In Paris, he sought out Jan Šrámek, offered to work as an unofficial diplomat to maintain contacts with the Soviet Union and said that he did not expect the current alignment in Soviet foreign policy to last. In a memo that he wrote to Beneš on 20 April 1940, Fierlinger argued that such steps such as the closing of the Czechoslovak Legation in Moscow and Soviet recognition of Slovakia were insubstantial, as he still believed that Soviet foreign policy was anti-German and that the pact was merely a transitional measure. However, with the Soviet Union more or less allied to Germany, Fierlinger's pro-Soviet views put him on the margins of Czechoslovak émigré politics. In a memo that he wrote sometime in 1940 "The Present War as a Social Crisis", Fierlinger argued that the present war was a "people's war" and noted that in Britain, many people were demanding social and economic reforms to create a better world after the war. He noted that a return to the world of the 1930s was repulsive…Citește mai mult

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Third Republic Just before the end of World War II in Europe, he in April 1945 became prime minister of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile and retained that post after the country was liberated later that year. On 10 May, Fierlinger flew into Prague aboard a Soviet plane. Fierlinger took part in the victory parade in Prague and rode in the car in front of Beneš, who received the loudest cheers from the city's people. Beneš had lowered his opinion of Fierlinger and told US Ambassador Laurence Steinhardt that he was "superficial, unreliable, tricky and ignorant". Zeman and Karlsch wrote, "He manipulated Beneš's disillusion with the West after Munich-he was Beneš's bad conscience". Immediately after the dropping of atomic bombs on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, followed by Nagasaki on 9 August, a delegation of Soviet geologists and Red Army officers started to take an immense interest in the uranium mine at Jáchymov, in the Sudetenland. In response to complaints that the Soviets had taken virtual control of the mine in September, Fierlinger advised the local authorities to "do nothing". Without initially informing the minister of industry, Bohumil Laušman, Fierlinger opened up secret talks for Czechoslovakia to supply…Citește mai mult