ESTABLISH MINISTRY OF NATIONAL SECURITY; APPOINT KOPRIVA MINISTER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-00809A000600330870-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 26, 2011
• Sequence Number: 870
• Publication Date: August 17, 1950
• Content Type: REPORT

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/08/31: CIA-RDP80-00809A000600330870-9
CLASSIFICATION Y1`IOCflf6
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY REPORT
INFORMATION FROM
FOREIGN DOCUMENTS OR RADIO BROADCASTS CD NO.
nnl 10.1TDV rl-l nal nvaki a DATE OF
SUBJECT Political - Biographical, governmental
reorganization
DATE
PUBLISHED
LANGUAGE
HOW
PUBLISHED Daily newspaper
WHERE
PUBLISHED Prague
OT ITN CONTENTS IN ANY MANNEN TO AN ......0012{0 T ..
NINITID NT LAW. N1NN000CTION of THIN FORM IN NNOHINITID.
7NIN DOCUMENT CONTAINI INFORMATION AFFECTING THE NATIONAL 09[N{{
01 Till UNITED NTATIN WITHIN TIE MOANINM or l{tIO NAME ACT NO
N. N. C., 31 AND NN. AN AMEND10. ITS TNAMNNINNION ON TIN N{TNLATON
DATE DIST. /, Aug 1950
NO. OF PAGES 2
SUPPLEMENT TO
REPORT NO.
ESTABLISH MINISTRY OF NATIONAL SECURITY;
APPOINT KOPRIVA MINISTER
WILL EASE WORK OF INTERIOR MINISTRY -- Rude Pravo, No 123, 24 May 50
On 23 May 1950, the cabinet approved a decree which establishes, on the
basis of the constitutional law concerning the regulation of organization of
public administration, the'Ministry of National Security, in accordance with
a proposal of Minister of the Interior V. Nosek.
The new ministry will fulfill tasks of national security which formerly
were the responsibility of the Ministry of the Interior and were handled in
Siovuaia th ou?h t;'- CoW is_ion of the Interior.
The Minister of Interior justified the necessity of establishing the
new ministry chiefly by the fact that the functions of the Ministry of Inte-
rior have grown considerably in recent times. In addition to the continu-
ously growing work of the national committees and the tasks connected with
the organization of the state apparatus, the ministry has received other
tasks, particularly those connected with the organization of communal enter-
prises, and at the same time has fulfilled all the demands of national se-
curity. The tasks of socialist construction require that independent atten-
tion be devoted to the problems of security service and that these problems
be solved centrally for the entire nation.
On the recommendation of the Prime Minister, the President appointed
Representative Ladislav Kopriva Minister of National Security.
LADISLAV KOPRIVA A COMMUNIST SINCE 1921 -- Rude Pravo, No 123, 24 May 50
Ladislav Kopriva, Minister of National Security, was born on 28 June
1897 in Ivanovice na Hane (Vyskov Okres, Brno Kraj). His father was a
joiner and a small farmer, and his mother was an agricultural worker. He
graduated from a 2-year trade school. In 1915, he wad .inducted into the
Austro-Hungarian Navy. In January 1919, he joined the;,Social. Dcnccratic
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Party, where he became a functionary of the basic organization. He joined the
party's left wing, with which he moved to the Communist Party in 1921, when he
began working in Bohemia and Moravia as an employee and functionary of the co-
operative movement. He exercised functions in local, okres, and kraj organi-
zations of the Communist Party. In 1928, he was summoned to the cooperative
section of the secretariat of the Central Committee of the Party, and at the
end of that year he left for the USSR. Following his return in 1929, he par-
ticipated in the struggle for "Vcela" (Bee) fa- workers' consumer cooperative,
founded in 1906, taken over by the Communists in 19207, where he became a
member of the board of directors and agent (jednatelj. He was the spokesman
of the proletarian cooperative opposition in Czechoslovakia.
He was a representative of the Communist Party in the National Assembly
from 1935, and was elected a member of the Central Committee of the Communist
Party at the Seventh Party Congress.
During the Second Republic, when the Communist Party was illegal, he was
a member of the small leading group of the Party. In spring 1939, enroute to
the Soviet Union, he was arrested, together with Antonin Zapotocky, Dr Jaromir
Dolansky, and Augustin Kliment, and from that time until 1945 he was imprisoned
in the concentration camp at Dachau. Following his return to Czechoslovakia,
he became a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist
Party, and worked as the chairman, and security referent of the Provincial Na-
tional Committee in Prague. He participated in building an organization of
political prisoners and was president of the SOPVP /Union of Prague Liberated
Political Prisoners27. He is president of the Union of Fighters for Freedom.
He was elected representative to the National Assembly in 1948. Follow-
ing the abolition of the provincial organization, he worked as leader of the
cadre section of the secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist
Party. He was again elected member of the Presidium of the Central Committee
at the Ninth Party Congress.
REM 0 ON Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/08/31: CIA-RDP8O-00809AO00600330870-9