Hubert Ripka - Tragédie demokrata – Pernes Jiří (2018)

The life of the fighter for the Czechoslovak Republic, Hubert Ripka (1895–1958), was one of the important figures in modern Czechoslovak history who has unjustly fallen into oblivion. He was a significant politician and journalist who fought tirelessly for democracy and the independence of Czechoslovakia. Born in 1895 in Moravia, in Kobeřice near Slavkov, he spent his youth and most of his active life in Prague, where he studied at a gymnasium and the Faculty of Arts at Charles University. He became a journalist and later was one of the closest political collaborators of Edvard Beneš, who entrusted him with secret missions to Belgrade, Berlin, Paris, and London. In an effort to secure the independence of the republic, Ripka increasingly oriented himself towards the Soviet Union at Beneš's direction and was one of the pioneers of Czechoslovak-Soviet alliance and cooperation. In 1938, he went into exile and began organizing the foreign resistance in London and Paris. He became a member of Beneš's Czechoslovak government-in-exile and returned to the liberated republic in 1945, where he served as Minister of Foreign Trade and was an influential official of the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party. He was the initiator of the unsuccessful resignation of non-communist ministers in February 1948. Adventurous...