Kopecký, Václav

Born Aug. 25, 1897, in Kosmonosy, near the city of Mladá Boleslav; died Aug. 5, 1961, in Prague. Party and state figure of Czechoslovakia. A lawyer by profession.

From 1917 to 1921, Kopeck? was a member of the Social Democratic Youth League and then of the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party. He actively participated in the founding of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPC) in 1921. Editor of several province newspapers of the CPC in Brno, Plzen, and Ostrava from 1925 to 1928, he was also editor (1928–33) and editor in chief (1933–34) of the organ of the Central Committee of the CPC, the newspaper Rudé Právo. Kopecký was elected a member of the Central Committee of the CPC in 1929, a member of the Central Committee’s Politburo in 1931, and a deputy to the National Assembly of Czechoslovakia from the CPC in 1929. In 1938, after the CPC was banned, he emigrated to the USSR. He was a representative of the CPC to the Executive Committee of the Communist International from 1939 to 1943 and a member of the Central Committee Bureau Abroad of the CPC and a member of the editorial board of the newspaper Československé listy in 1943–44. Kopeck? participated in drawing up the Kosice Program. Upon returning to Czechoslovakia in 1945, Ko-peck? became a deputy to the National Assembly in that year.

He was a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPC from 1945 to 1954, a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPC from 1954 to 1961, minister of information and culture from 1945 to 1953, deputy prime minister of the government of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic from 1953 to 1961, and also minister of culture in 1953–54.