 He criticized the state of the party, the executive and the society.During the 1989 Velvet Revolution Štrougal was one of the candidates for the communist party chairmanship, but later left political stage and in February 1990 he was expelled from the party.The Office for the Documentation and the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism Police of the Czech Republic () accused Štrougal, that in his function in 1965, he prevented investigation of crimes conducted by the communist State Security in 1948 and 1949.