Josef Špaček (7 August 1927 – 11 July 2004) was a Czechoslovak communist politician who was an important member of the government during the 1968 reformist period known as the Prague Spring.
In the years following the collapse of the Dubček government, Špaček was relegated to low-level, non-political positions, including working as a forestry official.
Following the death of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, however, some degree of reform took place in several of the Iron Curtain countries of central and eastern Europe.
Špaček, a party official from Moravia, was soon appointed to the Central Committee, along with other reformist communist politicians, where he was a voice for increased democratization.
[1] Five weeks before the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, Špaček was injured in a head-on automobile collision outside the town of Havličův Brod (along the Bratislava-Prague highway) and briefly hospitalized.