Zdeněk Fierlinger (11 July 1891 – 2 May 1976) was a Czechoslovak diplomat and politician. He served as the prime minister of Czechoslovakia from 1944 to 1946, first in the London-based Czechoslovak government-in-exile and then in liberated Czechoslovakia. Long close to the Soviet Union, he has his name often associated with the merger of his Czech Social Democratic Party with the Czechoslovak Communist Party after the communist coup in 1948.
He was the uncle of Paul Fierlinger, the famous animator for numerous PBS cartoons.
Early life
Zdeněk Fierlinger came from a lower-middle-class Czech family in the city of Olmütz in Moravia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Olomouc, Czech Republic). His father worked as a teacher of French and English in the local high school. Fierlinger was described as a mediocre student but one who was excellent with languages. He graduated from business school in 1910 in Olmütz and then worked as a sales representative in Russia as a sales agent for the MacCormick International Harvester Company of Chicago in Rostov-on-Don. Fierlinger was one of the 70,000 or so Czechs living in Imperial Russia in 1914.
First World War
He had no loyalty to Austria-Hungary and, like many of the other Czechs living in Russia, chose not to return to the Empire upon the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 but instead stayed in Russia.
Fierlinger, together with several other Czechs living in Rostov-on-Don, organised themselves into the Česká družina ("Czech Companions"), which joined the Imperial Russian Army to fight in Galicia against Austria. Like many other Czechs of his generation, Fierlinger was a Russophile and saw Russia as the great Slavic power that would liberate the other Slavic peoples like the Czechs from Austrian rule.
During the war, he joined the Czechoslovak Legion, which fought for independence from Austria. He was described as a "brave and selfless soldier". For his bravery on the battlefield, he was awarded the Order of St. George four times. Among other battles, he participated at the Battle of Zborov as the commander of the 9th Company.
After the battle, he was promoted to the commander of a battalion. In July 1917, the Czechoslovak National Council, led by Tomáš Masaryk and Edvard Beneš, sent Fierlinger and Emanuel Voska to the United States. The purpose of the American tour was to recruit Czech-Americans and Slovak-Americans for the Czechoslovak Legion, which led him to spend most of his time in the industrial towns of the Midwest and the Pennsylvania coal and steel towns, and he appealed to Czech and Slovak immigrants to fight for independence from Austria.
After completing his American recruiting tour, he went to France in late 1917 to resume his career with the Czechoslovak Legion. Unlike the other members of the Czechoslovak Legion, who remained in Russia and subsequently fought for the White Movement during the Russian Civil War during an epic march across Siberia, Fierlinger did not share the anticommunist feelings of the veterans of the Czechoslovak Legion although it fought against the Reds. Upon arriving in France, Fierlinger was promoted to the rank of colonel.
The Czechoslovak National Council, which was based in Paris, was recognized in 1918 by the governments of France, the United Kingdom and the United States as a government-in-exile, as the Allies committed themselves to the dissolution of Austria as a war aim. During his time in Paris, Fierlinger first met Beneš, who served as the right-hand man to Masaryk, the leader of the government-in-exile.
Fierlinger got along very well with Beneš, who became his patron. The Czech historian Zbyněk Zeman and the German historian Rainer Karlsch wrote: "Neither had close friends and both were industrious and ambitious. There was a trace of arrogance in Fierlinger, who was extremely practical and less academically gifted than Beneš. They complemented each other and the similarities in their character helped to draw them together. Their long association left a strong mark on the history of Czechoslovakia".
In the interwar period, Beneš and Fierlinger lived on the same street in Prague. The villa that Beneš owned in the countryside outside Sezimovo Ústí was just right next to Fierlinger's villa. Both men ascribed to the same centre-left politics.
Zeman and Karlsch state, "Beneš used Fierlinger as an important piece on the diplomatic chessboard".