
The Slánský trial (officially English: "Trial of the Leadership of the Anti-State Conspiracy Centre Headed by Rudolf Slánský") was a 1952
antisemitic
Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...
[Blumenthal, Helaine. (2009). Communism on Trial: The Slansky Affair and Anti-Semitism in Post-WWII Europe. UC Berkeley: Berkeley Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies.]
Read online
show trial
A show trial is a public trial in which the guilt (law), guilt or innocence of the defendant has already been determined. The purpose of holding a show trial is to present both accusation and verdict to the public, serving as an example and a d ...
against fourteen members of the
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia ( Czech and Slovak: ''Komunistická strana Československa'', KSČ) was a communist and Marxist–Leninist political party in Czechoslovakia that existed between 1921 and 1992. It was a member of the Com ...
(KSČ), including many high-ranking officials. Several charges, including
high treason
Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its d ...
, were announced against the group on the grounds of allegedly conspiring against the
Czechoslovak Republic
Czechoslovak Republic (Czech and Slovak: ''Československá republika'', ČSR), was the official name of Czechoslovakia between 1918 and 1939 and between 1945 and 1960. See:
*First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938)
*Second Czechoslovak Republic ...
.
General Secretary
Secretary is a title often used in organizations to indicate a person having a certain amount of authority, Power (social and political), power, or importance in the organization. Secretaries announce important events and communicate to the org ...
of the KSČ
Rudolf Slánský
Rudolf Slánský (31 July 1901 – 3 December 1952) was a leading Czech Communist politician. Holding the post of the party's General Secretary after World War II, he was one of the leading creators and organizers of Communist rule in Czechoslova ...
was the alleged leader of the conspirators.
All fourteen defendants were found guilty of crimes that they did not commit. Eleven of them were sentenced to death and executed; the remaining three received life sentences.
Background
After World War II, Czechoslovakia initially enjoyed
limited democracy. This changed with the
February 1948 coup, carried out by the
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia ( Czech and Slovak: ''Komunistická strana Československa'', KSČ) was a communist and Marxist–Leninist political party in Czechoslovakia that existed between 1921 and 1992. It was a member of the Com ...
without the direct assistance of the
Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
. According to literature scholar Peter Steiner, the
one-party Communist state
A communist state, also known as a Marxist–Leninist state, is a one-party state in which the totality of the power belongs to a party adhering to some form of Marxism–Leninism, a branch of the communist ideology. Marxism–Leninism was ...
had to find or conjure up imaginary enemies from within to justify its continuing existence; this was the motive for
show trial
A show trial is a public trial in which the guilt (law), guilt or innocence of the defendant has already been determined. The purpose of holding a show trial is to present both accusation and verdict to the public, serving as an example and a d ...
s. After the 1948
Tito–Stalin split, a sequence of high-level political trials against alleged
Titoist
Titoism is a Types of socialism, socialist political philosophy most closely associated with Josip Broz Tito and refers to the ideology and policies of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) during the Cold War. It is characterized by a br ...
and Western imperialist elements were held in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Albania, but these trials were not overtly antisemitic. The
anti-cosmopolitan campaign
The anti-cosmopolitan campaign (, ) was an anti-Western campaign in the Soviet Union which began in late 1948 and has been widely described as a thinly disguised antisemitic purge. A large number of Jews were persecuted as Zionists or rootless co ...
, a thinly disguised antisemitic campaign in the Soviet Union under
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...
,
began in the fall of 1948. In the year before
Stalin's death in 1953 another Soviet antisemitic campaign, the
Doctors' Plot
The "doctors' plot" () was a Soviet state-sponsored anti-intellectual and anti-cosmopolitan campaign based on a conspiracy theory that alleged an anti-Soviet cabal of prominent medical specialists, including some of Jewish ethnicity, intend ...
, began to unfold. During this period, the
Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, abbreviated as JAC, was an organization that was created in the Soviet Union during World War II to influence international public opinion and organize political and material support for the Soviet fight against ...
's leadership was murdered and antisemitic purges spread to other countries in the Soviet's
Eastern Bloc
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc (Combloc), the Socialist Bloc, the Workers Bloc, and the Soviet Bloc, was an unofficial coalition of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America that were a ...
.
Arrests and interrogation
The trial was orchestrated (and the subsequent terror staged in
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...
) on the order of Moscow leadership by Soviet advisors, who were invited by
Rudolf Slánský
Rudolf Slánský (31 July 1901 – 3 December 1952) was a leading Czech Communist politician. Holding the post of the party's General Secretary after World War II, he was one of the leading creators and organizers of Communist rule in Czechoslova ...
and
Klement Gottwald
Klement Gottwald (; 23 November 1896 – 14 March 1953) was a Czech communist politician, who was the leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia from 1929 until his death in 1953 – titled as general secretary until 1945 and as chairman f ...
, with the help of the Czechoslovak State Security personnel following the
László Rajk trial in
Budapest
Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...
in September 1949.
Klement Gottwald, president of Czechoslovakia and leader of the Communist Party, feared being purged and decided to sacrifice Slánský, a longtime collaborator and personal friend, who was the second-in-command of the party. The others were picked to convey a clear threat to different groups in the state bureaucracy. A couple of them (Šváb, Reicin) were brutal sadists, conveniently added for a more realistic show.
Those put on trial confessed to all crimes (under duress or after torture) and were sentenced to punishment. Slánský attempted suicide while in prison. The people of Czechoslovakia signed petitions asking for death for the alleged traitors.
Apropos of the conspiracy theories of ''
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'' is a fabricated text purporting to detail a Jewish plot for global domination. Largely plagiarized from several earlier sources, it was first published in Imperial Russia in 1903, translated into multip ...
'', prosecutors claimed that a "Zionist-Imperialist" summit had taken place in Washington DC in April 1947 with President
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. As the 34th vice president in 1945, he assumed the presidency upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt that year. Subsequen ...
, undersecretary of state
Dean Acheson
Dean Gooderham Acheson ( ; April 11, 1893October 12, 1971) was an American politician and lawyer. As the 51st United States Secretary of State, U.S. Secretary of State, he set the foreign policy of the Harry S. Truman administration from 1949 to ...
, former treasury secretary
Henry Morgenthau Jr.,
David Ben-Gurion
David Ben-Gurion ( ; ; born David Grün; 16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the primary List of national founders, national founder and first Prime Minister of Israel, prime minister of the State of Israel. As head of the Jewish Agency ...
and
Moshe Sharret in attendance. The prosecution charged that defendants were acting in accordance with a so-called "Morgenthau Plan" (not to be confused with the contemporaneous
Morgenthau Plan
The Morgenthau Plan was a proposal to weaken Germany following World War II by eliminating its arms industry and removing or destroying other key industries basic to military strength. This included the removal or destruction of all industria ...
for German heavy industry) to commit espionage and sabotage against Czechoslovakia for the US in exchange for American support for Israel. Czechoslovakia was seen as especially pro-Zionist due to their
armament support for Israel during the
Palestine War. In actuality, most of the defendants were known to be ardent anti-Zionists.
Trial
The trial of Rudolf Slánský and 13 other high-ranking Communists (11 of whom, the lead prosecutor said, were "of Jewish origin") began on 20 November 1952. They were charged with being
Titoists and
Zionists. Those tried with Slánský were
Bedřich Geminder,
Otto Šling,
André Simone,
Karel Šváb,
Otto Fischl,
Rudolf Margolius,
Vladimir Clementis,
Ludvik Frejka,
Bedřich Reicin,
Artur London, ,
Josef Frank and .
The trial lasted eight days. Many of the defendants admitted their guilt and requested death.
On the last day of the trial,
Rudolf Slánský
Rudolf Slánský (31 July 1901 – 3 December 1952) was a leading Czech Communist politician. Holding the post of the party's General Secretary after World War II, he was one of the leading creators and organizers of Communist rule in Czechoslova ...
, General Secretary of the KSČ, and other leading party members were pronounced guilty. Eleven, including Slánský, were
hanged at
Pankrác Prison in Prague on 3 December,
and three (Artur London, Eugen Löbl and Vavro Hajdů) were sentenced to
life imprisonment
Life imprisonment is any sentence (law), sentence of imprisonment under which the convicted individual is to remain incarcerated for the rest of their natural life (or until pardoned or commuted to a fixed term). Crimes that result in life impr ...
. The state prosecutor at the trial in Prague was
Josef Urválek.
Reaction
Domestic
A Czech worker sent to attend the trial reported that the defendants did not display any emotion. He wondered why they were not afraid for their lives.
On 14 December 1952, a few days after the execution,
Zdeněk Nejedlý, Minister of Education, denied rumors that the confessions had been obtained with torture or drugs. Instead, the defendants admitted to their crimes because of the overwhelming evidence against them and because of their shame and guilt. Many Czechoslovak citizens were in favor of harsh measures against the supposed traitors. Czech poet called for "a dog's death for
uchdogs" ().
After the deaths of both Stalin and Gottwald in March 1953, the harshness of the persecutions slowly decreased, and the victims of the trial quietly received amnesty one by one, including those who had survived the Prague Trial. Later, the official historiography of the Communist Party was rather quiet on the trial, vaguely putting blame on errors that happened as a result of a "
cult of personality
A cult of personality, or a cult of the leader,Cas Mudde, Mudde, Cas and Kaltwasser, Cristóbal Rovira (2017) ''Populism: A Very Short Introduction''. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 63. is the result of an effort which is made to create ...
." Many other political trials followed on, sending many innocent victims to jail and hard labour in the
Jáchymov
Jáchymov (; or ''Joachimsthal'') is a spa town in Karlovy Vary District in the Karlovy Vary Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 2,300 inhabitants.
Jáchymov has a long mining tradition, thanks to which it used to be the second most popu ...
uranium mines and labour camps.
The full transcript of the trial was released in 1953; Steiner described it as "an utterly indigestible book, crammed with so many names, dates, and particulars that I had a hard time finishing it and remembering all the details."
International
Raphael Lemkin
Raphael Lemkin (; 24 June 1900 – 28 August 1959) was a Polish lawyer who is known for coining the term "genocide" and for campaigning to establish the Genocide Convention, which legally defines the act. Following the German invasion of Poland ...
considered the trial an example of
judicial murder and, along with the fabrication of evidence to claim Jewish doctors were plotting to kill Soviet officials (the spuriously alleged
Doctors' Plot
The "doctors' plot" () was a Soviet state-sponsored anti-intellectual and anti-cosmopolitan campaign based on a conspiracy theory that alleged an anti-Soviet cabal of prominent medical specialists, including some of Jewish ethnicity, intend ...
), a potential precursor to the genocide of Jews in the Soviet bloc. He asked the
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...
to launch an investigation into the alleged genocide of Jews in the Soviet bloc. In ''
Commentary'', Peter Meyer wrote that "the Prague trial with its lurid tale of a 'Zionist conspiracy' recalled the Czarist-invented and Nazi-popularized legend of the Elders of Zion".
David Ben-Gurion, speaking hypothetically in the wake of both the Doctors Plot trial and the Slánský trial, considered suppressing
Maki, the Israeli communist party. In internal discussions, Ben-Gurion suggested he would favor this even to the point of throwing communist activists in concentration camps, though he spoke of this as being a potential response rather than an imminent necessity. "If there is a need to build camps, we will do it. If there is a need to shoot, we will shoot. We have already been through times when there was a need to shoot people – people who were even closer to us." This last comment referred to an earlier moment in Israel's recent history where he first
warned and then approved firing on the right-wing paramilitary group Irgun. A majority of the cabinet opposed Ben-Gurion's view, including
Golda Meir
Golda Meir (; 3 May 1898 – 8 December 1978) was the prime minister of Israel, serving from 1969 to 1974. She was Israel's first and only female head of government.
Born into a Jewish family in Kyiv, Kiev, Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine) ...
and
Pinhas Lavon
Pinhas Lavon (; 12 July 190424 January 1976) was an Israeli politician, minister and labor leader, best known for the Lavon Affair.
Early life
Lavon was born Pinhas Lubianiker in the small city of Kopychyntsi in the Galicia region of Austria ...
. Lavon observed in the discussion that an attempt to detain members of Maki would result in greater, not lesser influence for the party. The cabinet, by a vote of 13–7, voted for an alternate proposal which permitted "the employment of all means at the government's disposal, in the framework of the existing law and of laws yet to be passed, to deny Maki the opportunity to take public action, without declaring it an organization that exists outside the law."
Defense of the American Jewish Soviet spies
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Julius Rosenberg (May 12, 1918 – June 19, 1953) and Ethel Rosenberg (born Greenglass; September 28, 1915 – June 19, 1953) were an American married couple who were convicted of First Chief Directorate, spying for the Soviet Union, including ...
surged in November and December 1952 and was organized by the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),. Abbreviated in Russian as КПСС, ''KPSS''. at some points known as the Russian Communist Party (RCP), All-Union Communist Party and Bolshevik Party, and sometimes referred to as the Soviet ...
—confirmation of which occurred with the publication of
KGB
The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...
documents obtained by
Alexander Vassiliev
Alexander Yuryevich Vassiliev (; born 1962) is a Russians, Russian-British people, British journalist, writer and espionage historian living in London who is a Subject-matter expert, subject matter expert in the Soviet KGB and Russian Foreign In ...
in 2011. Proponents of clemency argued that the Rosenbergs were actually "innocent Jewish peace activists". According to American historian
Ronald Radosh, the Soviet Union's goal was "to deflect the world's attention from the sordid execution of the innocent
lánský trial defendantsin Prague".
Modern interpretations
The Israeli-American scholar Martin Wein observed that although Slánský was not guilty of the charges he was forced to admit, he was guilty of mass murder as a high-level functionary in the Communist government. In Wein's opinion, because all of the defendants (except Simone and Margolius) occupied high positions in the Czechoslovak Communist regime, they had
command responsibility
In the practice of international law, command responsibility (also superior responsibility) is the legal doctrine of hierarchical accountability for war crimes, whereby a commanding officer (military) and a superior officer (civil) are legally r ...
for crimes committed by it. Wein further commented that the three reprieved defendants all came from an upper-class background, while all of the middle-class and working-class defendants were executed. He hypothesizes that this was because if an upper-class person was a traitor to the Communist Party, he was not a traitor to his class. According to
Stephen Norwood, the Slánský trial was the "clearest illustration yet of state-sponsored antisemitism in the Soviet bloc" and "a secularized version of the Spanish Inquisition's racialized antisemitism", because it insisted on that Jewish origin was an indelible defect which would pass to all descendents (similar to the guilt of
Jewish deicide
Jewish deicide is the theological position that Jews as a people are collectively responsible for the killing of Jesus, even through the successive generations following his death. The notion arose in early Christianity, and features in the wri ...
).
In popular culture
Artur London, one of the survivors of the trial, eventually moved to France, where he published his memoirs in 1968. His book ''L'Aveu'' ("The Confession"), is a major source about the trial. ''
L'Aveu'' (1970), a film based on London's book, was directed by
Costa-Gavras
Konstantinos "Kostas" Gavras (; born 12 February 1933), known professionally as Costa-Gavras, is a Greek-French film director, screenwriter, and producer who lives and works in France. He is known for political films, such as the political thril ...
and starred
Yves Montand
Ivo Livi (; 13 October 1921 – 9 November 1991), better known as Yves Montand (), was an Italian-born French actor and singer. He is said to be one of France's greatest 20th-century artists.
Early life
Montand was born Ivo Livi in Stignano, a ...
and
Simone Signoret.
The Slánský trial is also a key element of the book
''Under a Cruel Star''. A memoir by
Heda Margolius Kovály, the book follows the life of a Jewish woman, starting with her escape from a concentration camp during World War II, up until her departure from Czechoslovakia after the
Warsaw Pact countries invasion of 1968. Kovály's husband,
Rudolf Margolius, a fellow Holocaust survivor, was one of the 11 men executed during the Slánský trial. More encompassing information is available in the more recent book ''Hitler, Stalin and I'', an interview of
Heda Margolius Kovály by Helena Třeštíková published in 2018. Martin Wein was critical of the positive image of Margolius in Kovály's book and in other media (
Igor Lukes described him as "a clean man in a filthy time"), which he felt downplayed Margolius' complicity with the Stalinist regime. David Hertl on the other hand emphasised the mystery of
Rudolf Margolius inclusion in the trial in his recent Czech interview program, ''The Youngest Hanged in the Trial with the Slánský Group was Rudolf Margolius. But Why Him, is a Mystery to Historians.'' (''Nejmladším oběšeným v procesu se skupinou Slánského byl Rudolf Margolius. Proč zrovna on, je ale pro historiky záhadou.'') broadcast on Czech Radio Plus, December 1, 2022.
The Slánský trial is the subject of the documentary ''
A Trial in Prague'', directed by Zuzana Justman (2000, 83 min).
On 22 March 2018, it was announced that insolvency administrators discovered 8.5 hours of original footage from the trial at a factory near Prague. The film was heavily damaged, and restoration is expected to take several years, to be paid for by the
Ministry of Culture Ministry of Culture may refer to:
* Ministry of Tourism, Cultural Affairs, Youth and Sports (Albania)
* Ministry of Culture (Algeria)
* Ministry of Culture (Argentina)
* Minister for the Arts (Australia)
* Ministry of Culture (Azerbaijan)Ministry o ...
.
Film documentary
''Le Procès – Prague 1952'', an 1hr 10min French documentary film by Ruth Zylberman for ARTE France & Pernel Media had the world premiere at FIPADOC International Documentary Festival, Biarritz, France on January 18, 2022. The new documentary made from the Slánský trial film and audio archives found by chance in 2018 in a warehouse in the suburb of Prague served as a starting point for the film. The director tells the trial through the descendants of three of the condemned: the daughter and grandson of
Rudolf Slánský
Rudolf Slánský (31 July 1901 – 3 December 1952) was a leading Czech Communist politician. Holding the post of the party's General Secretary after World War II, he was one of the leading creators and organizers of Communist rule in Czechoslova ...
, the son and granddaughter of
Rudolf Margolius, both executed after the trial, and the three children of
Artur London, sentenced to life imprisonment.
Footnotes
References
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Further reading
*
*
London, Artur (1971). ''The Confession'', New York: Ballantine Books, .
* Margolius Kovály, Heda (1997).
''Under A Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941–1968'', New York: Holmes & Meier,
''Na vlastní kůži'', Academia, Praha 2003.
* Margolius Kovály, Heda and Třeštíková, Helena (2018). ''Hitler, Stalin and I: An Oral History''. DoppelHouse Press (Los Angeles). , .
* Margolius, Ivan (2006). ''Reflections of Prague: Journeys through the 20th Century'', Chichester: Wiley,
''Praha za zrcadlem: Putování 20. stoletím'', Argo, Praha 2007, .
*
* Scherrer, Lucien in
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
The (''NZZ''; "New Newspaper of Zurich") is German language daily newspaper, published by NZZ Mediengruppe in Zurich. The paper was founded in 1780. It has a reputation as a high-quality newspaper, as the German Swiss newspaper of record
...
, Saturday, 24. February 2024,"Der Justizmord an Rudolf Margolius. Er hat Auschwitz und Dachau überlebt. Dann wird der jüdische Politiker Opfer einer mörderischen antisemitischen Kampagne der Sowjets. Sein Sohn Ivan kämpft bis heute um Wiedergutmachung."
External links
*
Transcripts and original footageof the trials at
National Archives of the Czech Republic Full transcript of the Slansky trialswith English translation, at
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Slansky Trial
1952 in Czechoslovakia
1952 in case law
1952 in Judaism
1950s trials
Anti-Zionism in Europe
Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
Political and cultural purges
Antisemitic attacks and incidents in Europe
Law of Czechoslovakia
Political repression in Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia–Soviet Union relations
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Antisemitism in Czechoslovakia
Antisemitism in the Soviet Union
Trials of political people