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Even then, Jakes resisted internal party pressure to convene an emergency session of the Central Committee. "It wasn't just the Central Committee; it was the regional party officials who were shouting for it," says Antonin Mlady, a factory foreman and member of the newly formed Politburo. Finally the Politburo overruled Jakes and called a meeting. On Friday, Nov. 24, the session opened in an austere hall in the Stalinist-era Party Political University on the outskirts of Prague. There, Jakes tried one last tactic to save his job: he proposed a new law that would permit freedom of assembly, thus legalizing the demonstrations that had brought Prague and other cities to a standstill.
But the 148-member Central Committee, by now painfully aware of the revolutionary spirit in the streets, responded by orchestrating an internal purge. The offensive was led by former Prime Minister Lubomir Strougal, 65, who was replaced last year by Ladislav Adamec, 63. Over the past six months, Strougal, who is still a member of the Central Committee, and Adamec had conspired to take advantage of just such a moment. They agreed that Adamec would publicly call for reform while Strougal used his influence within the Central Committee to oust Jakes and other hard-liners in the Politburo. ) Strougal rallied a core group of 20 moderates within the Central Committee to their cause. "In the main hall, everything looked calm," says a participant. "Behind doors all around it, people were negotiating like crazy, shouting and threatening."
Through some eight hours of back-room combat, Strougal and his allies gradually broke down the resistance of Jakes holdouts, including trade-union representatives, while wooing the bloc from the Slovak republic, which was trying to boost its own influence. In exchange, the reformist camp had to make three concessions. They allowed two hard-liners, Prague party leader Miroslav Stepan and trade-union boss Miroslav Zavadil, to keep their Politburo seats. The five Slovak members of the Politburo also would retain their posts, including Jozef Lenart, despised for his collaboration with the Soviets in the post-invasion era. And no Strougal partisans would replace the ousted Politburo members. Hence the appointment of Karel Urbanek, a relative unknown, to the prime ministry. Presented with a fait accompli, Jakes reluctantly resigned, along with six of his Politburo allies.
But Urbanek, it turned out, was a closet Strougal partisan determined to finish the housecleaning. In communication with Gorbachev, he pledged to carry out the party rehabilitations that Jakes had reneged on. Then Urbanek clinched a deal in which key figures among those expelled from the party 21 years ago refused to rejoin until the last hard-liners were thrown out of the Politburo. On Nov. 26 Urbanek reconvened the Central Committee and secured the resignations of Stepan, Zavadil and Lenart. The purge was complete.