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In-Depth Information
were prescribed fixed-percentage representation within the so-called “multi-party” Národní
fronta.
With the Cold War in full swing, the
Stalinization
of Czechoslovak society was quick to
follow. In the Party's first Five Year Plan, ninety percent of industry was nationalized, heavy
industry (and in particular the country's defence industry) was given a massive boost and
compulsory collectivization forced through. Party membership reached an all-time high of
2.5 million, and “class-conscious” Party cadres were given positions of power, while “class
enemies” (and their children) were discriminated against. It wasn't long, too, before the
Czechoslovak mining “gulags” began to fill up with the regime's political opponents - “ku-
laks”, priests and “bourgeois oppositionists” - numbering more than 100,000 at their peak.
Having incarcerated most of its non-Party opponents, the KSČ, with a little prompting from
Stalin,embarkeduponaruthlessperiodofinternalblood-letting.Astheeconomynose-dived,
calls for intensified “class struggle”, rumours of impending “counter-revolution” and reports
of economic sabotage by fifth columnists filled the press. An atmosphere of fear and Soviet-
styleparanoiawascreatedtojustify
large-scalearrestsofPartymembers
withan“interna-
tional” background: those with a wartime connection with the West, Spanish Civil War vet-
erans, Jews and Slovak nationalists.
In the early 1950s, the Party organized a series of Stalinist
show trials
in Prague, the most
spectacular of which was the trial of Rudolf Slánský, who had been second only to Gottwald
in the KSČ before his arrest. Slánský, Vladimír Clementis, the former KSČ foreign minis-
ter,andtwelveotherleadingPartymembers(elevenofthemJewish,includingSlánský)were
sentenced to death as “Trotskyist-Titoist-Zionists”. Hundreds of other minor officials were
given long prison sentences, and only a handful of defendants had the strength of will to en-
dure the torture and refuse to sign their “confessions”.
After Stalin
Gottwald died in mysterious circumstances in March 1953, nine days after attending Stalin's
funeral in Moscow (some say he drank himself to death). The whole nation heaved a sigh
of relief, but the regime seemed as unrepentant as ever. The arrests and show trials contin-
ued. Then, on May 30, the new Communist leadership announced a drastic currency devalu-
ation, effectively reducing wages by ten percent, while raising prices. The result was a wave
of isolated
workers' demonstrations
and rioting in Plzeň and Prague. Czechoslovak army
units called in to suppress the demonstrations proved unreliable, and it was left to the heav-
ily armed workers' militia and police to disperse the crowds and make the predictable arrests
and summary executions.
In1954,inthelast oftheshowtrials, GustávHusák,thepost-1968president, wasgivenlife
imprisonment, along with other leading Slovak comrades, though he was one of the few with
the strength of will to refuse to sign his confession. So complete were the Party purges of
