Jiří Ruml was a Czechoslovak journalist, writer and politician. He was born in 1925 in Prague, and studied at a grammar school in Pilsen. After his studies, he worked as a journalist – at first in regional newspapers and after moving to Prague in 1948, he became an editor for Czechoslovak Radio, the newspaper Večerní Praha, Czechoslovak Television and the magazine Reportér. Jiří Ruml went through several phases regarding his relation to the communist regime. He tended towards radical Stalinism after the Second World War. Shortly afterwards, during the time of several political trials and de-Stalinization, he sympathised with the reform communists. The most significant turn in his views came in 1968, when Czechoslovakia was invaded by armies of the Warsaw Pact; Ruml condemned the invasion. He was expelled from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1969 and worked as a blue-collar worker during the 1970. He signed Charter 77 and became its spokesperson in 1984. He was also a member of the Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Prosecuted (VONS). He was prosecuted twice and held in pre-trial detention (1981–1982, 1989). Jiří Ruml was a direct representative of the illegal cultural opposition, especially when he was editor-in-chief of publishing (at that time as a samizdat periodical) the renewed Lidové noviny in 1987. After the fall of the Communist regime, he was still active in Lidové noviny – now a legally published daily newspaper – and in politics – he became a deputy for the Chamber of the People of the Federal Assembly for the party Civic Forum. He was the author of several books, reports and articles.
