| Jozef Lenárt | |
| Office: | Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia |
| Term Start: | 20 September 1963 |
| Term End: | 8 April 1968 |
| Predecessor: | Viliam Široký |
| Successor: | Oldřich Černík |
| Office2: | Acting President of Czechoslovakia |
| Term Start2: | 22 March 1968 |
| Term End2: | 30 March 1968 |
| Predecessor2: | Antonín Novotný |
| Successor2: | Ludvík Svoboda |
| Birth Date: | 1923 4, df=yes |
| Birth Place: | Liptovská Porúbka, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia) |
| Death Place: | Prague, Czech Republic[1] [2] [3] |
| Nationality: | Slovak |
Jozef Lenárt (3 April 1923 – 11 February 2004) was a Slovak politician who was the prime minister of Czechoslovakia from 1963 to 1968.
Born in Liptovská Porúbka, Slovakia, he graduated from a chemistry high school and worked for the Baťa company. He became a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) and of the Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS).
Lenart was a member of the federal parliament (whose name changed several times) from 1960 to 1990, and was Speaker of the Slovak National Council from 1962 to 1963. He was also a member from 1971 to (?)1990. He served as Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia between 1963 and 1968.
Although ethnically Slovak, he became a Czech citizen after the country split in 1993.
On the basis of insufficient evidence, on 23 September 2002 Lenárt was acquitted of treason charges (along with his co-defendant Miloš Jakeš), related to his handling (or lack thereof) of the Prague Spring events in 1968.[4] He was accused of attending a meeting at the Soviet embassy in Prague on the day after the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion, planning to establish a new "workers and farmers'" government.
Jozef Lenárt was one of the most resilient figures in Czechoslovakia's communist hierarchy, occupying one post or another in the leadership for no less than a quarter of the century. That achievement was all the more remarkable because his career at the top straddled a succession of regimes and several abrupt changes in policy.
He died in Prague in 2004.