Tony goes out into the world: The official travels abroad of the President of Czechoslovakia, Antonín Novotný (1953–68)

Abstract

The long-term First Secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and later also President of the Republic, Antonín Novotný (1904–75), was popularly known as “Nice Tony”. As a communist politician and statesman, Novotný was well known as a great disciple and follower of Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev, famous for his personal and very contact-oriented diplomacy. The main contours of several of Novotný's official visits have already been analysed from political and diplomatic history perspectives. Based on archival research and available memoirs, this article tries to reconstruct the still non-visible and unknown view of transport history and, consequently, traveling and tourism history. It outlines the general contours and several aspects of V.I.P. communists’ international travels on the cases of several trips abroad which took place during the 1950s and 1960s of the Cold War era.