Skip to main content
Gifts from The Morning Star
Zdenek Horeni 1930 – 2021: to the last barricade
DR JOHN CALLOW remembers the famous editor of socialist Czechoslovakia’s leading newspaper who remained true to the socialist cause until the very end
In November 1989 Zdenek Horeni chaired a last session of the press commission that stretched on late into the night and appeared before his loyal staff at Rude Pravo to say farewell and to thank all of those who “had not turned their coats for a place in the sun”

ZDENEK HORENI, the former editor of Rude Pravo and leading correspondent for the Morning Star’s sister paper Halo Noviny, died in Prague’s Thomayer Hospital, on Friday February 12 2021, at the age of 91.

His long, rich and adventurous life as a campaigning journalist was shaped by his experiences of growing up under the Nazi occupation, by the February revolution of 1948 and by the struggle to maintain socialism in Czechoslovakia and latterly, the Czech Republic.   

Born in the northern town of Frydstejn, on February 9 1930, on the fault line between Masaryk’s young republic and Hitler’s Germany, he witnessed the collapse of Czechoslovakia after the Munich accords of 1938 and the seizure of his hometown as part of the Sudetenland, territories effectively gifted by Western liberal democracy to Nazi Germany as the price of appeasement.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
WON’T BE SILENCED: Petra Proksanova, head of the Youth Committee of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM) and leader of the Stacilo (anti-capitalist and anti-cuts) movement in the upcoming elections
Features / 5 July 2025
5 July 2025

As the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia rebuilds support through anti-cuts campaigns, the government seeks to silence it before October’s parliamentary elections through liberal totalitarianism, reports JOHN CALLOW

Reliefs cast into 1950s gates show a socialist selection of
Praxis / 6 March 2023
6 March 2023
The problem with the National Museum’s exhibition on the communist-governed era is that the public liked it and the values it represented too much — looking at the beggars under the bridge outside, who can blame them, writes JOHN CALLOW
OBITUARY / 27 March 2022
27 March 2022
John Callow salutes the life and struggle of the gifted and persuasive educationalist who oversaw the unification of teaching unions and refoundation of the Communist Party
It fell to Kidric, as the chief economic thinker within the
History / 24 November 2021
24 November 2021
Tito's famous split with the USSR to walk the path of a mixed economy and the 'self-management' of production was the work of a former partisan hero whose transformative economic project's success still has much to teach us today, argues JOHN CALLOW
Similar stories
WON’T BE SILENCED: Petra Proksanova, head of the Youth Committee of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM) and leader of the Stacilo (anti-capitalist and anti-cuts) movement in the upcoming elections
Features / 5 July 2025
5 July 2025

As the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia rebuilds support through anti-cuts campaigns, the government seeks to silence it before October’s parliamentary elections through liberal totalitarianism, reports JOHN CALLOW

RED FLAG FLYING: The Soviet flag is hoisted over the Reichst
Features / 30 January 2025
30 January 2025
NICK WRIGHT examines the British ruling class's complex relationship with fascism before, during and after the second world war
DISTINGUISHED: Portrait of Hans Hess c1962 (photographer unk
Features / 23 November 2024
23 November 2024
PAUL MACGEE highlights a new series of books that brings together a treasure trove of writings by a Jewish Marxist art historian who offers readers a refreshingly grounded theory of art
Pat Mantle
OBITUARY / 9 October 2024
9 October 2024
Remembering the legendary Morning Star photographer with a knack for being in the right place at the right time