(b. near Bratislava, 15 Nov. 1895; d. 20 Sept. 1979) Slovak; President of Czechoslovakia 1968 – 75 Svoboda fought in the Czech Legion on the Eastern Front at the end of the First World War. He joined the new Czechoslovak army after his return home in 1919. In 1939 he fled to the Soviet Union. At the end of 1943 he was appointed commander of the Czechoslovak Army Corps attached to the Red Army and his forces helped the Red Army liberate Czechoslovakia in 1944. He was appointed Minister of Defence in Beneš's coalition government and held this post until 1950. Beneš and the non-Communist ministers of his government were not aware that Svoboda was a secret Communist. He played a part in the Communist seizure of power in February 1948, by keeping the army demobilized, and joined the Communist Party later in the year. Svoboda disappeared from public life at the beginning of 1952. Stalin had become suspicious of him and he was briefly imprisoned. After his release he worked as an accountant in an agricultural collective. In 1963 Khrushchev built up Svoboda's image as a Communist hero because of his exploits in the Second World War. In 1965 the Brezhnev regime made him a Hero of the Soviet Union; he became a Hero of the Czechoslovak Republic at the same time. On 30 March 1968 he was elected President, replacing Novotný, and worked closely with Dubček in support of the reforms of the "Prague Spring". After the Warsaw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia in August 1968 Svoboda was taken to Moscow along with the other reformist members of the party leadership, where they defended their reforms in the face of Brezhnev's threats. Svoboda remained in office until the beginning of 1975 when he retired on grounds of ill-health. Throughout this period he was only a figurehead.

(lʊd'vĕk svô'bôdä) , 1895–1979, Czechoslovak general and political leader. Svoboda served in the Czech Legion in World War I and became an officer (1922) in the army of the newly founded Czechoslovak republic. He was forced to flee (1939) to the USSR when the Germans entered Prague. In World War II he organized and led a Czech army unit that fought (1941–45) under the Soviet high command. After the war Svoboda was (1949–50) Czechoslovak minister of defense. Regarded as a national hero, he emerged from retirement in 1968 to serve as president of Czechoslovakia after the resignation of Antonín Novotnÿ. He continued in this largely ceremonial post after the liberal regime was suppressed by the USSR (Aug., 1968); he retired in 1975.