Prague, May 22 (CTK) – Bozena Fukova, one of the four deputies to the Czechoslovak National Assembly (federal parliament) to vote against the agreement on the Soviet troops’ temporary stay in Czechoslovakia in October 1968, died on May 18 at the age of 82 years, the Charter 77 Foundation told CTK yesterday.
Her funeral will take place within the family.
Fukova was 33 and had a little daughter during the crucial 1968 vote in the communist parliament.
She told reporters at a commemorative event a few years ago that she had not feared to make this fundamental decision in her life and had never been considering changing her stance during the normalisation period or the re-establishment of the hardcore communist rule after the 1968 occupation of Czechoslovakia.
“I think I was brave during the seven days and seven nights when we alone voted for not leaving the parliament seat since they (invading soldiers) wanted to prevent us from returning there by their armoured carriers and tanks,” she said.
Fukova, born in January 1935, came from a Slovak family of farmers. She graduated from the School of Economics in Bratislava. She was elected to the National Assembly in 1964.
From January 1967, she worked in the Institute of Management in Prague where she helped promote Ota Sik’s economic reforms.
She was immediately sacked due to her stance on the 1968 invasion and she was stripped of her deputy’s mandate, too. She had problems to find a job in the following years. She worked as an accountant and later as an information system officer in Tesla Prague company.
After the collapse of the communist regime in November 1989, Fukova was co-opted into the Federal Assembly in January 1990. She was a member of the commission supervising the departure of Soviet troops from Czechoslovakia. She worked with the Foreign Affairs Ministry until she retired.
Fukova was awarded for her courageous stance.
Slovak president Ivan Gasparovic gave her the Order of Ludovit Stur in 2006. Czech President Milos Zeman presented her with a medal of merit, first degree, in 2014. In the same year, she received the Frantisek Kriegel Award for civic courage from the Charter 77 Foundation.
Kriegel (1908-1979) was the only of the Czechoslovak leading politicians, whom Russia interned in Moscow following the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, not to sign the protocol expressing their agreement with the occupation. He joined the anti-communist dissident movement and signed the Charter 77 manifesto.
