Read online at https://workersliberty.org/node/18244
The Slansky Trial: the rehearsals Submitted by Matthew on 6 February, 2012 - 8:38
At the centre of the supposed conspiracy was Rudolf Slansky, a lifelong member of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (CPC). He had joined the party at its inception in 1921 and been elected to its Central Committee in 1929.
Elected to the Czechoslovak National Assembly in 1935, Slansky fled to the Soviet Union after the German annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938. He returned to Czechoslovakia in 1944, taking part in the Slovak National Rising, and was elected CPC General Secretary the following year.
Following the CPC putsch of 1948, in which the non-CPC parties were driven out of what had previously been a coalition government, Slansky was the most powerful person in the country, second only in name to President Klement Gottwald.