Václav Bartuška

Currently the Ambassador-at-Large for Energy Security at the Foreign Ministry in Prague, Václav Bartuška was also the Czech Commissioner General at EXPO 2000 in Hannover, Germany. He was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Columbia University (1994-95) and a Marshall Fellow in 1999.

Bartuška graduated from the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University in 1992. As a student there, he was among those who started the strike in November 1989; the result of which--to the suprise of everyone--was the peaceful overthrow of Communism (the so-called Velvet revolution). Because of his previous experience with the Secret Police, Bartuška was elected as the students’ representative to the parliamentary committee which oversaw the investigation of the Communist Party security apparatus. He then published his first book, Polojasno, which sold 230,000 copies and made him independent enough to spend most of the 1990’s travelling, writing three more books and basically avoiding any serious work.