Prague, March 9 (CTK) – Foreign Minister Martin Stropnicky (ANO) on Friday paid respect to former Czechoslovak foreign minister Jan Masaryk who died under mysterious circumstances, officially as a suicide, a few days after the Communist coup 70 years ago.
Stropnicky told journalists that he would ask Russian authorities to provide access to archive documentation that might shed a light on Masaryk’s death.
He said he himself believed that Jan Masaryk, son of the first Czechoslovak President Tomas Garrigue Masaryk (1918-1935), did not commit the suicide.
“There are many major anniversaries this year, but I would not like this one to be ignored because Jan Masaryk is an important personality of our modern history,” Stropnicky said.
“I am even ready to say that in his life, a part of the fate of our country is concentrated,” Stropnicky added.
“For the whole nation, it was a tremendous tragedy because it definitively confirmed the onset of a new, dark era,” Stropnicky said.
Masaryk was found dead under the windows of the Cernin Palace, the seat of the Foreign Ministry where he lived, in the morning of March 10, 1948.
The Communist investigators said Masaryk committed a suicide, but other versions, including implication of foreign intelligence services, have been suggested, too.
“I think this can only be cleared up if we receive the documents, still classified, from the Russian authorities,” Stropnicky said.
“I will certainly speak about it with the ambassador of Russia. I will not be the first to ask for them. The effort has been so far in vain,” he added.
