Czechoslovak Communist Leader Milos Jakes Dies At 97: Report

Umer Jamshaid Published July 15, 2020 | 01:40 AM

Prague, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 15th Jul, 2020 ) :Milos Jakes, former Czechoslovakia's Communist leader who was overthrown by the 1989 Velvet Revolution, has died aged 97, the CNN Prima News tv channel reported Tuesday, citing two sources.

The Prague-based news channel said Jakes, a worker turned politician, was buried in Prague on Tuesday, without giving the date of his death.

Jakes was appointed general secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in December 1987.

He quit two years later as former Czechoslovakia joined a chorus of central European Communist countries steered by Moscow and moved towards freedom and democracy.

Led by dissident playwright Vaclav Havel, the Velvet Revolution sparked by a student march crushed by the Communist police in November 1989 ended four decades of totalitarian rule in Czechoslovakia.

Havel became the country's president in late 1989 and Czechoslovakia went on to split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993. Havel died in 2011.

Jakes made a mark with a confused speech at a Communist Party meeting in July 1989.

Its leaked recording made him a butt of jokes among the anti-Communist dissidents and ordinary Czechs and Slovaks alike, serving as evidence that the Communist regime was crumbling.