Рудольф Сланский ісі және Чехословакиядағы саяси қуғын-сүргін

Antisemitic show trial

The Slánský trial (officially Proces s vedením protistátního spikleneckého centra v čele s Rudolfem Slánským English: "Trial of the Leadership of the Anti State Conspiracy Centre Headed by Rudolf Slánský") was a 1952 antisemitic show trial against fourteen members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), including many high ranking officials. Several charges, including high treason, were announced against the group on the grounds of allegedly conspiring against the Czechoslovak Republic. General Secretary of the KSČ Rudolf Slánský 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.

After World War II, Czechoslovakia initially enjoyed limited democracy. This changed with the February 1948 coup, carried out by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia without the direct assistance of the Soviet Union. According to literature scholar Peter Steiner, the one party Communist state had to find or conjure up imaginary enemies from within to justify its continuing existence; this was the motive for show trials. After the 1948 Tito–Stalin split, a sequence of high level political trials against alleged Titoist and Western imperialist elements were held in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Albania, but these trials were not overtly antisemitic. The anti cosmopolitan campaign, a thinly disguised antisemitic campaign in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin,
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. On the last day of the trial, Rudolf Slánský, 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, 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 cs called for "a dog's death for [such] dogs"
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". Many other political trials followed on, sending many innocent victims to jail and hard labour in the Jáchymov uranium mines and labour camps. is a major source about the trial. L'Aveu (1970), a film based on London's book, was directed by Costa Gavras and starred Yves Montand 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.

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, the son and granddaughter of Rudolf Margolius, both executed after the trial, and the three children of Artur London, sentenced to life imprisonment.