Tomáš Baláž: Štefan Dubček in the Communist Resistance 1938 – 1945

This study deals with the activities of Štefan Dubček in the communist resistance during World War II in Slovakia. Before he became a resistance fighter of the illegal Communist Party of Slovakia, he was a rank-and-file leader of the workers' movement. The beginnings of his involvement in this movement date back to the period shortly before the outbreak of First World War, when his worldview convictions were taking shape. But he had already spent the period of the First World War in the United States, where he became an active member of the workers' movement. After the end of the war and the establishment of Czechoslovakia, he returned to his homeland as the father of a family. There he became a founder of the local cell of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in his native Uhrovec. In the mid-1920s, however, he and his family left for the Soviet Union, where he spent the next thirteen years of his life. He returned to his homeland shortly before the outbreak of World War II. He was thus able to put the experience he had gained during his life to good use as a resistance fighter for the illegal Communist Party, and in the early years of the war, he experienced significant career development. He went from being a rank-and-file resistance fighter and later a distributor of the illegal press to becoming a member of the third illegal Central Committee of the Communist Party of Slovakia. However, he was one of the victims of a wave of arrests by the state authorities and spent the second half of the war in prison. He even survived the last months before the German surrender in the Mauthausen concentration camp. After the end of World War II, however, he did not get involved in politics and spent the rest of his life in seclusion.