RAN, ALOIS

born Oct. 18, 1867, Nechanice, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now in Czech Republic] died Feb. 18, 1923, Prague, Czechoslovakia Czech statesman, one of the founders and first finance minister of the Republic of Czechoslovakia. A leader of the Czech revolutionary organization Omladina, Ran was arrested and imprisoned for conspiring against the Austrian authorities after nationalistic rioting in Prague in 1893. Granted amnesty in 1895, he joined the Young Czech Party and then founded a new Radical-Progressive Party (1899); later, however, Rasn rejoined the Young Czechs and became a close associate of the party's leader, Karel Kramr. Ran was elected to the Austrian Reichsrat (lower house of parliament) in 1911; but, following the outbreak of World War I, he was arrested (July 1915) and was sentenced to death for treason (June 1916). Given amnesty a year later, he was one of the home defense leaders who effected the bloodless revolution at Prague (Oct. 28, 1918) that established a national republican government. As first finance minister of the fledgling Czechoslovak republic, R asn managed partially to check postwar inflation. In January 1923 he was shot by a Communist revolutionary and subsequently died of his wounds.