Rašín – Svoboda Jiří (2018)

A dramatic story of an uncompromising man in the moments of the struggle for an independent state. The book captures a segment of Alois Rašín's life from the assassination of the heir to the throne on June 28, 1914, to the assassination of this possibly most remarkable of all "men of October 28," i.e., until January 5, 1923, or rather until his death on February 18, 1923. The story itself is dramatic, and the authors combine it with an equally dramatic factual context, valuable especially for understanding the events that preceded the establishment of an independent Czechoslovakia. While Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and Edvard Beneš were making diplomatic efforts abroad to free themselves from the grip of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, Karel Kramář, Josef Scheiner, Přemysl Šámal, and especially Alois Rašín, along with others, did not hesitate to risk their own freedom in the anti-Austrian resistance, facing the highest penalty of losing their lives for treason against the empire. They narrowly escaped the execution of the death sentence. The euphoria associated with the establishment of an independent state was transformed by Alois Rašín into active state-building efforts. His immense intellectual capacity, foresight, and diligence were fully manifested in the first Czechoslovak government, where as Minister of Finance he managed to carry out...