The World - News from Dec. 16, 1988
Vasil Bilak, a member of Czechoslovakia’s old guard that supported the Soviet-led invasion of 1968, resigned from the Politburo and his other Communist Party jobs, the party announced at the beginning of a two-day plenum of the Central Committee. Bilak, 71, is a party ideologist linked to the late Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev and was believed to oppose economic reforms favored by Lubomir Strougal, the Czechoslovak premier who resigned in October. In his letter of resignation, Bilak also gave up his posts as Central Committee secretary and head of the committee’s foreign policy commission.
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