[1] He came from a working-class family, joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia as a young man and wrote several very tendentious pro-Communist books, most notably The Americans in Western Bohemia (1953), which dealt with the "rampage and anti-popular activities" of American soldiers (described as occupiers) in Plzeň and the surrounding area after the liberation of the region.
He studied history at the Faculty of Philosophy of Charles University, became a professor there and was a member of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences from 1960 to 1970.
He was prominently involved in the Prague Spring of 1968, was expelled from the Communist Party, worked as an auxiliary worker at Vodní stavby and was imprisoned for six months in 1972.
[2] In 1982, after the StB sent a coffin home to his family saying he was dead, he emigrated to France, where he joined the CNRS.
[3] In 1999, he co-authored The Black Book of Communism, which attempts to summarize the various crimes (murder, deportation, torture, etc.)