Rita Klímová
| Rita Klímová | |
|---|---|
| Czechoslovakia Ambassador to United States | |
| President | Václav Havel |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Rita Budínová 10 December 1931 Romania |
| Died | 30 December 1993 (aged 62) Prague, Czech Republic |
| Political party |
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (1945-1970) Civic Forum (1989-1992) |
| Spouse(s) | Zdeněk Mlynář, Zdenek Klima |
| Children | |
| Occupation | Diplomat, economist |
Rita Klímová, née Rita Budínová (10 December 1931 – 30 December 1993) was a Czech economist and politician. She was Czechoslovakia's last ambassador to the United States before that country's breakup in 1992.
Klímová was born in Romania. Her father was Stanislav Budin (née Bencion Bať), a prominent Communist writer who used the pen name Batya Bat. Her family fled to the United States not long after Nazi Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939. She settled in New York City in 1939, returning to Czechoslovakia in 1946 to finish her education. As a result, for the rest of her life she spoke American English with an "industrial-strength" New York accent.
Like many Central Europeans of her generation, Klímová was initially an ardent Communist. She joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1948. While still a university student, she took a job in a factory in order to get closer to the working class. Also while still in school, she married the intellectual Zdeněk Mlynář.
After graduation, she rose high in the academic world, becoming an economics lecturer at Charles University. Initially a strict Stalinist, she helped purge many of her more liberal colleagues from Charles University during the 1950s and early 1960s. However, during the Prague Spring of 1968, she was very attracted to Alexander Dubček's reform program and helped supply inside information to the Western media. She continued to support reform after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, and was fired from her university post in 1968 and expelled from the party in 1970.
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