For Milos Jakes, the beginning of the end came early last summer. In a series of private exchanges between the Czechoslovak Communist Party leader and Mikhail Gorbachev and his advisers, the Soviet President made clear that his own internal situation demanded a repudiation of the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. If Jakes, 67, did not want to be undercut by the Soviet move, he would have to act -- and act soon. An agreement between Moscow and Prague was struck. Come October, Jakes would convene a Central Committee meeting and expel all Politburo members tainted by the 1968 invasion -- except himself. After appointing a new team of his own choosing, Jakes would then rehabilitate the 460,000 Communist Party members he had personally ordered purged immediately after the invasion.
There was only one problem: Jakes reneged on his agreement with Gorbachev. That extraordinary double cross began the unraveling of Jakes's two-year rule. Through a variety of sources, TIME has pieced together an account of the final days of the repressive Jakes regime. It is not a sympathetic tale; in the end, Jakes had only his own poor judgment, panic and stubbornness to blame.
Jakes's humiliation within the party began on July 17, when a videocassette circulated among rank-and-file Communists that showed Jakes berating an assembly of provincial party chiefs for failing to implement his directives. With characteristic ineloquence, he scolded his underlings for leaving him "standing like a lonely stake in a fence." Says a Prague journalist: "Jakes was turning into a party joke."
Not long after, agreement between Gorbachev and Jakes was reached on the plan for a Politburo purge. But October came and went with nothing done. In mid-November, hard-line ideology chief Jan Fojtik traveled on short notice to Moscow, where he met with Georgi Smirnov, chief of the Moscow Institute of Marxism-Leninism. Smirnov said that a document condemning the 1968 invasion had been approved by the Soviet Politburo, and he warned that with the Malta summit approaching, the document would soon be published.
Before Jakes could fashion a response, events exploded. On Friday, Nov. 17, Prague riot police cracked down on student demonstrators. With his authority rapidly crumbling, Jakes launched a last-minute bid to crush the uprising. Advised by Czechoslovakia's military that it would take no part in a violent action against the populace, Jakes turned in desperation to the People's Militia, units composed mostly of factory workers that function in effect as the Communist Party's private army. Beginning Nov. 19, militia units were deployed at factory gates and inside industrial compounds around the country. Care was taken to ensure that each unit was deployed outside its own home region. However, the show of militia force served only to spark further protests.