72 years ago, in February 1948, the Communist Party achieved its long-term goal - the conquest of political power in the Czechoslovak Republic. Let me pause briefly on the February coup d'état and define why I believe it was not in conformity with the constitutional order in force at the time.
On 20 February 1948, 12 ministers of the government (ministers from the National Socialist, People's and Democratic Parties) resigned; on the morning of 25 February, 14 ministers (two Social Democrats - Václav Majer and František Tymeš - joined them) out of 26, i.e. more than half. The Gottwald government was therefore to fall in accordance with the traditions of the First Republic. However, the Communists transferred the struggle for political power from the parliament to the streets. The illegally formed and armed People's Militia - about 11,000 men - marched through Prague, intimidating not only political opponents. I should add that the People's Militia was only retrospectively legalised in December 1948 by the amended Act No 286/1948 on the National Security Corps. Similarly, the illegally created National Front Action Committees carried out purges in all strata of society; they were legalised in July 1948 in Law No 213/1948 on the protection of the public interest. By that time they had managed to expel at least 300,000 citizens from their jobs, offices and schools, including 69,000 members of all levels of the National Committees, some 4,000 persons who had not taken part in the general strike on 24 February, 28,000 officials and 3,000 members of the security forces. One out of four officers, over 27%, were expelled from the army at that time.
If we add to this the unlawful detentions of several members of the National Assembly (I mean the fact that they were arrested without being stripped of their immunity), the movements of the Emergency Regiments to strategic places in Prague, the arbitrary searches of the secretariats of non-communist political parties, we cannot speak of a clearly illegal seizure of power by the communists except in the case of the February 1948 government crisis. In Prime Minister Gottwald's discussions with President Beneš about the solution to the government's problems, then, there were apparently threats of further mobilisation, deployment and involvement of the communist masses, or the outbreak of civil war in the Czechoslovakia, reminders of the extremely sensitive events of Munich 1938 for Beneš, and the potential military intervention of the USSR from abroad.
The coup in February 1948 was followed by the gradual destruction of democratic traditions and the elimination of human and civil rights. The Communist Party carried out purges that affected the whole of society in their intensity, depth and nature. Non-Communist political parties (Slovak Democrats, National Socialists, People's Party) were given obedient leadership to the Communists. The Social Democrats were merged with the Communists in June 1948. Unruly citizens lost their jobs and either left the country voluntarily (while they still could) or, if they did not make it, were persecuted and in many cases deprived of their personal liberty, imprisoned and some of them executed.
What were the preconditions for the rise of the Communists to power in the Czechoslovakia? In the longer term, the favourable results of the Communist Party were mainly due to the reflection of the Great Depression and Munich 1938, combined with the negative experience with the Western democracies. The Soviet determination to help Czechoslovakia in the critical days of September 1938 was not in doubt then and for the next 40 years. Another point to take into account was the traditional Czech Russophilia. The belief in a great Slavic lime tree that would protect the Slavic Central European nations from aggressive Pangermanism. Here we need only sigh at the fact that, for example, the Polish experience of the Russian and Bolshevik regimes during the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries was diametrically opposed to the Czech experience. The admiration for the USSR was also helped by the fact that Soviet troops liberated a large part of the Czechoslovakia, and that no one, or almost no one, had direct negative experience of the nature of the Russian or Bolshevik regime.
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was founded as a left-wing faction of Social Democracy. In May 1921, the Social Democracy split and began its own political existence. However, the democratic principles and practices within the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia were coming into conflict with the terms the party had accepted by joining the Communist International. The struggle over the shape of the party then led to the rise of a clearly pro-Moscow leadership led by Klement Gottwald at its Fifth Congress in February 1929, 91 years ago today. From that moment on, the Communist Party and its leadership consistently submitted to the interests and tasks from Moscow. It is important to note that until September 1938 the party behaved as anti-system, i.e., it did not identify with the political structure of the state.
In this respect, the nature of the Communist Party of the Czechoslovak Republic changes in the period of the so-called Third Republic. Some historians speak of the period 1945-1948 as a limited democracy. Communists gained a share of power after the Second World War. They concentrated on controlling all key positions in the state. This was as true in the political sphere as it was in the economic and security spheres. The non-Communist parties were internally divided, unable to overcome individual partisan interests. They relied on the personality of President Edvard Beneš and traditional democratic mechanisms.
After February 1948, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia concentrated on consolidating its acquired power. It uncompromisingly and dogmatically promoted its (and hence Soviet) interests and, in the spirit of the slogan "Whoever does not go with us, goes against us", created a climate of undeclared, but effectively implemented civil war with a broad class-hate aspect. To do this, it used both the party apparatus and its cadres in the security services, which it then used in the construction of political processes. Their aim was not only to compromise the politicians of the non-communist parties, some diplomats, officers of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, and the Communist Party. army officers, representatives of churches and culture, extraordinary sportsmen and so on, but to subjugate society as a whole. A mechanism of state injustice was being created and perfected. The intellectual elite of society, the opponents of collectivisation and the policy of the Communist Party faced loss of personal freedom, torture, loss of dignity, humiliation. More than 240 of them were executed by the Communist Party for political reasons. The terror unleashed in the early 1950s affected literally almost every citizen. In addition to national cases with an extraordinary propaganda impact, there were local trials whose exemplary significance was related to the specific local conditions. Political trials thus fulfilled not only a warning and educational function, but also a propaganda, mobilisation and stabilisation function. In the time period in question, the processes were not limited to Czechoslovakia. Parallel processes took place in the Soviet Union, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Albania and Yugoslavia.
But why did the Communist Party actually construct political processes? An important aspect was undoubtedly the development of the international situation. In addition to the Soviet models and concepts that Czechoslovakia willingly introduced, the strained relations between the USSR and the West (the first Berlin crisis, the Korean War from the early 1950s onwards) played a role. Some of the motives can also be found in the changing relations with Israel or the conflict within the Soviet bloc with Yugoslavia.
The internal reasons lay in the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia's attempt to break any even potential resistance and subjugate society. One more aspect of the construction of the trials I would like to mention: it was related to the expectations that the Communist Party gave to the public in the pre-February and post-February period - promises that were real, less real, and even completely unrealistic. Soon after February 1948, however, the Communist Party found that it could not fulfil its visions. In the early 1950s, the regime faced an economic, social and political crisis. It was necessary to find someone responsible for the failure to fulfil the ambitions. The catalyst for the crisis was therefore also a strong wave of repression. Logically, the regime first targeted opponents operating outside the Communist Party. Later, with direct Soviet assistance, it embarked on a purge within the Communist Party itself. The hitherto unchallenged representatives of the regime were now presented in a new constellation and interpretation, which, of course, brought with it a great shake-up within the party apparatus and provoked an avalanche effect in the milieu of those who represented the communists on trial.
The communists also cannot be considered the main target group of repression in terms of the analysis of the impact of judicial persecution on specific segments of the population. They constituted only three-tenths of one percent of those convicted and at the same time six percent of those executed for political reasons. In the Czechoslovak case of Slánský and Co., communists from the party apparatus, diplomacy, foreign trade, and the economic sphere were tried, but also, for example, representatives of the military, security, and the media. There were people who had fought in Spain in the 1930s and then worked in the West during the Second World War; there were people who were Jewish; there were people who had links to Tito's Yugoslavia (now called Titoists or bourgeois nationalists) or who had to undergo self-criticism within the Party in the pre-war period. They faced unbelievable, even fantastic charges, were found guilty and executed without mercy. But these were not innocent people. They were often direct actors in a series of communist crimes.
Rudolf Slánský was one of the outstanding personalities of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. He was a close collaborator and friend of Klement Gottwald. After the war, he became the second man of the Communist Party of the Czechoslovakia. He was General Secretary of the Party until September 1951. He managed the party apparatus, the communists in the security apparatus, and coordinated the activities of the various departments of the party's central secretariat. He often acted authoritatively, referring to the Soviets and Gottwald.
I would like to briefly introduce the two most important symbols of the political depravity unleashed by the Communist Party after February 1948, other than the Slánský case, tragic as it was. The first is General Heliodor Píka - a Czechoslovak legionnaire, a patriot involved in the anti-Nazi resistance, chief of the Czechoslovak military mission in the USSR during the Second World War and deputy chief of the Czechoslovak army's main staff until February 1948. In May 1948 he was arrested while undergoing treatment at the Central Military Hospital and subsequently charged with espionage and treason, which he was alleged to have committed during the Second World War. His interrogator, prosecutor and judge in one person, Karel Vaš, produced forged documents for the purpose of the trial, on the basis of which Píka was sentenced to death in January 1949 and executed in June 1949 in the prison in Pilsen Na Borech.
The second prominent victim of the Czechoslovak communist regime is Milada Horáková - a lawyer, member of the National Socialist Party, active in the women's movement and the anti-Nazi resistance, and a member of parliament. Although she left political life after February 1948, she did not escape the attention of the communist security forces. She was under surveillance. In September 1949, she was arrested and accused, for example, of plotting to start a new war. In reality, however, she had academic debates with some politicians about developments after the potential fall of communism. The trial, in which the so-called Soviet advisers were already directly involved, was carried out in May-June 1950. Horáková was sentenced to death. Although the world public (e.g. Albert Einstein) asked for clemency, President Klement Gottwald did not grant it. She was executed in June 1950. It is this innocent victim that well describes the amorality of the regime that took power in Czechoslovakia after February 1948.
The persecution involved a large part of the public, who, for example, showed their disdain for the order established in February 1948. The system of society-wide repression was pyramidally organised. For example, the security commissions at the central level had their copies in the regions and districts (security fives and security threes, respectively). At the same time, it is also necessary to recall the extra-judicial punishments, such as the delegation of people allegedly "averse to work" to forced labour camps (at least 23,000 people passed through them between 1948 and 1954) or the conscription of allegedly class-unreliable people into the Auxiliary Technical Battalions (about 60,000 people passed through them by spring 1954).
Finally, I would like to briefly mention the method and form of punishing the perpetrators of political purges and trials that the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia applied in the years 1948-1989. The first revision of the trials was initiated by Khrushchev's secret speech on the cult of personality of J.V. Stalin, delivered at the XX Congress of the CPSU in February 1956. This was a supremely sensitive issue for the leaders of the Communist Party because of its overlap with the highest levels of Communist politics. Politically, the person responsible for the monstrosities of the first half of the 1950s was Gottwald's son-in-law and Minister of National Defence, Alexei Chepichka. Punishments for so-called violations of socialist legality were rather isolated and exceptional. In the Ministry of the Interior and Defence, for example, they concerned about 30 officers. In spite of this number, the sentences handed down by the courts were quite rare. The Communist regime, by its very nature, tried to protect those responsible for the trials from legal sanction. For example, Ladislav Mácha, who during the investigation in February 1950 (which was 70 years ago) beat the Číhošt' parish priest Josef Toufar to death, was transferred to another job within the security services and was subsequently given a party reprimand.
The revisions of the 1955-1968 processes in the form of party commissions ran up against their own internal limits. Their tasks were set by the party leadership, including the range of cases they were to deal with. These were mainly cases of convicted and executed communists. The intersection between the past and the present could not be avoided. The people who decided on the purges, on the form of the trials and on the sentences handed down still held important party and state positions (by this, of course, I do not mean only the First Secretary of the Communist Party and President Antonin Novotny). The absurdity of this endeavour is underlined by the fact that, for example, one of Slánský's main investigators, Karel Košt'ál, eventually sat on the Barák Commission for the Ministry of the Interior in 1955, and thus had to effectively assess his own contribution to the construction of the trials and other related illegalities.
The Communist Party has never been genuinely interested in a thorough review and rehabilitation of the victims of political persecution.
The author presented this paper at the seminar for high schools Crimes of Communism, which took place on 24 February 2020 in the Senate of the Czech Republic.