Rudolf Slánský (July 31st, 1901 with Nezvěstice close to Blovice - December 3rd 1952 with Prague) is a Communist militant, politician and general secretary of the Czechoslovakian Communist party after the Second world war. It is carried out following the Procès of Prague.

Beginnings

Slánský receives its education with the Academy of trade of Plzeň. After the First World War, it joined Prague and a Marxist club of inspiration. At the time of its creation (secession of with the socialist party) in 1921, it is registered with the Czechoslovakian Communist party.

With the fifth congress of the party, in 1929, Slánský is elected at the political office and of the presidium of the party whereas Klement Gottwald becomes the general secretary about it.

From 1929 to 1935, Slánský lives in clandestinity because of the illegal character of the Communist party which is not authorized as a party and to take part in the elections only in 1935. Slánský and Gottwald are then both elected officials with the National Assembly.

They do not remain not appointed a long time: in 1939, following the invasion of the Czechoslovakia by Reich, Slánský which is Jewish and communist flees the country in direction of the the USSR. From there, he works with Radio Moscow in the emissions intended for Czechoslovakia. To Moscow, it binds bonds with the Apparatchik S Communists, is also familiarized with the sometimes brutal methods to impose the discipline within the party. It takes part against the Wehrmacht in the Bataille of Moscow between 1941 and 1942.

In 1943, his/her little girl Naďa ( Nadia ) is kidnapped whereas she plays in a park with her older brother, Rudolf junior. Neither Naďa, nor its kidnappers will never be found.

Whereas it is in Russia, Slánský organizes Czechoslovakian Resistance and takes part in the release of Slovakia in 1944.

With the capacity

In 1945, Slánský cooperates with the government in exile of Edvard Beneš in London. The Czechoslovakian former president prepares a coalition government there. Slánský becomes general secretary of the Czechoslovakian Communist party with the eighth congress of the party in March 1945 as Prime Minister for the coalition government whereas Klement Gottwald becomes president of the party an honorary station (1945-1953) and Deputy Prime Minister (1945-1946) for the coalition government of Czechoslovakia.

In February 1948, the Coup of Prague gives the full powerss to the Communists. According to certain historians, Stalin wishes a total obedience of the Communist parties and threat of purging the “national Communists”; Gottwald, fearing for its own future, would then have decided to sacrifice Slansky. According to other specialists, it is the increasing competition between Gottwald and Slansky, especially after the blow of February 48, which explains the discredit of Slánský which places its men at stations - keys of the apparatus of State (altogether normal gesture when one knows at which point the State, in the communist countries, is pledged with the party) but which violates the capacity of Gottwald.

They are, first of all, two close relations of Slánský, Otto Šling and Bedřich Reicin, which is shown crimes against the party. Slánský lets make. Then the projectors are directed on him and makes him carry the blame of the economic and industrial problems, thus cutting it popular support. It does not receive from it less the Ordre of socialism, the highest distinction, on July 30th, 1951 and the book of its speeches is on the way to be published under the title of Towards the Victoire of socialism .

Fall and lawsuit

In November 1951, Slánský and thirteen other people are stopped and shown Titoism, the Set language of the party charges it with a Conspiration with the western powers to reverse socialism and affirms that its exemplary punishment would repurchase the murders by the Nazis of the Communists Jan Šverma and Julius Fučík during the Second world war.

Slánský is wounded of this charge of Titoism on behalf of its former partners, Gottwald and Antonín Zápotocký, both populist, to bind it to the middle-class. Slánský and its co-defendants were made enemies in the rows of the members of the Communist party, the government and especially of the Political office of the Communist party. In prison, Slánský is tortured, tries to commit suicide, is forced to show itself publicly at the time of the lawsuit of crimes against the State and the party requiring for itself the Capital punishment.

Assumptions

The opposition between Slánský and Gottwald is hardly satisfactory to explain why a man placed also high within the apparatus of the Communist party is suspected, imprisoned and carried out. Also some assumptions flower on this subject.

Firstly, the “Hungarian track” affirms that the fall of Slánský is caused by the lawsuit of László Rajk, chief of the diplomacy Hungarian and large rival of the chief of the government, Mátyás Rákosi which, Stalinist pure and hard, would have invited Klement Gottwald to seek a “Czechoslovakian Rajk”. This assumption has a weak point: one does not include/understand why Rakosi would insist at such a point to widen the investigation in Czechoslovakia. On the other hand, the example Rajk could consolidate Gottwald on the “feasibility” of a legal victory.

Secondly, the “Soviet track”: with the beginning of the year fifty, nothing, in the Eastern bloc, could be done without the assent of the Soviet authorities. The Soviet theory explains the anti-Jewish character of the lawsuits and why the majority of condemned was of Jewish origin: at the same moment when the Soviet Union changed its policy with regard to Israel. Czechoslovakia was particularly touched by this change of position and would seek “to remake a virginity” with the eyes of the Soviets, because it had delivered weapons to Israel. According to the third track known as “American”, the the CIA which wanted to draw aside the national Communists to replace them by the Communists pro-Soviet who would incite the people with the revolt, would have knowingly compromised Slánský and its assistants. According to the fourth theory, the fall of Rudolf Slánský would be the work of a group of Czechoslovakian in exile which, in a letter, inviting Slánský to emigrate would have sought to compromise that which had caused their expatriation. The letter, seized by the police force and used at the time of the lawsuit, would not be a Contrefaçon, work of the secret police as opposed to what affirms the investigation, open in the Sixties (by the communist police force!) but a “true forgery”.

The Revolution eats his/her children

The Procès of Prague which followed from November 20th, 1952 to November 27th, 1952 are famous for their “Mise in scene” (the defendants learn their “text” before the meeting with the court. The “little story” tells that a judge having jumped a question, the defendant submissively followed nevertheless the scenario of his answers). An undeniable context anti-semite surrounds them (eleven of the fourteen marked ones are Jewish).

The charges of high treason, Espionage and Sabotage are returned on November 27th. The appeals for clemency are, one imagines it, promptly rejected.

The president of the Czechoslovakian Republic, Antonín Zápotocký hates Rudolf Slánský personally since in 1929 with the process of bolchevisation of the Party, Slánský had tried évincer Zápotocký at the time of Ve congress of the PCT. One can see a personal revenge in the refusal on the presidential pardon pled by Slánský, one can as guess as, in a noxious atmosphere where Zápotocký sees itself threatening of middle-class deviance (not very front, it publicly supported the land small holders against the forced collectivization of the grounds), it cannot give his support for his former “comrade”.

Slánský is hung on December 3rd, 1952 with ten others of his/her companions in misfortune (three, whose Artur London is condemned to the prison with perpetuity). Its ashes are dispersed on a covered road of white frost of the surroundings of Prague.

One year later, it is with the turn of Gustav Husák, future president, to see itself condemned to the prison with perpetuity for “middle-class nationalist deviance”.

Like professor Václav Černý in his Mémoires says it: “Before the lawsuit of Slánský they were only the heads of the adversaries which fell. With Slánský, the Revolution started to eat his/her own children”.

Posthumous rehabilitation

The Déstalinisation touches also Slánský which east exonerates in April 1963 and completely rehabilitated at the time of the Printemps of Prague in May 1968.

His/her son, also named Rudolf, is named ambassador at the USSR in 1990 by the president Václav Havel.

See too

Sources and references

  • article on the site of Radio operator Czech

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