Great Trotskyist Council

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The Great Trotskyist Council , Velká Trockenistická rada in Czech , was a construct of the Czechoslovak secret police Státní bezpečnost with the aim of staging a political show trial of alleged Trotskyists . The trial took place in 1954.

backgrounds

Trotskyism also played an important role among the numerous and varied allegations made during the show trials in Czechoslovakia (“bourgeois nationalism”, “subversive conspiracy”, “ Titoism ”, etc.). He was one of the usual accusations for mostly Communist officials who were to be accused of treason. Trotskyism was automatically considered a hostile crime directed against socialism and the Soviet Union .

Trotskyism also appeared in the trial of Milada Horáková and Rudolf Slánský , but there were only two major, pure Trotskyist trials. In addition to the trial of Záviš Kalandra and 12 other co-defendants (June 1950), the trial of the so-called "Great Trotskyist Council" has become particularly well known; some other individuals charged with Trotskyism and treason have been tried individually.

The process with the so-called “Great Trotskyist Council” was, in this respect, just another settlement with political and ideological opponents.

The group

The so-called “Great Trotskyist Council” was an informal group of left-wing Czech intellectuals. A large number of the accused were active resistance fighters against the German occupation forces during the time of the Protectorate , who were involved in the left-wing resistance group Předvoj , and some, like Oldřich Černý , spent several years in concentration camps because of resistance activities . Some of them also appeared before the Second World War as critics of the trials against Trotskyists in the Soviet Union, including the so-called Moscow Trials 1936–1938. As a result, after the communist seizure of power in Czechoslovakia in 1948 , they got into a list of so-called Trotskyist elements, which was kept in the Secretariat of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and later in the Commission for Party Control (KSK).

They met occasionally for general discussions on political issues and called themselves - more or less for fun - the "great council". As one of the investigators himself, Bohumil Doubek , later reported, the interrogations did not reveal any evidence of illegal, factional or hostile intentions.

Among them were some economists who discussed alternative plans for the development of the Czechoslovak economy, particularly understood as an alternative to the Stalinist restructuring of the economy preferred by the communists. For example, they advocated the rapid expansion of the Škoda car factory in Mladá Boleslav , which was not affected by war events at the time, with the help of US capital and technology, and the delivery of automobiles for all of Europe, the Sudeten German skilled workers not to be deported, but for the rapid reconstruction of basic industries such as mining, To use metallurgy, chemistry and others - all projects which contradicted Stalin's plans for the political and economic transformation of Czechoslovakia.

process

On December 21, 1953, the Commission for Party Control decided to accuse the group of Trotskyism and created a new name for the group, which was to be called the "Grand Trotskyist Council" from now on; this body also approved the wording of the indictment and the amount of the penalties subsequently imposed.

The trial, which was also carried out under the label "Dr. Václav Vlk, Prof. P. Hrubý, Ing. O. Černý, etc." took place from February 23 to February 25, 1954, the convicts were sentenced to several years imprisonment, at the same time, their property was confiscated and their civil rights were denied for 70 years. In detail, the following judgments were made:

A commission set up by the party to review the legality of the trial recommended in its final report in 1955 that the judgments not be changed. The Central Committee of the Communist Party accepted the result and ordered an additional investigation against two other people, Kálal and Dvořák, who also took part in the meetings of the so-called council but have not yet been convicted. Some of the convicts were rehabilitated in the 1960s, all of them after 1989, partly because it was targeted manipulation by the secret police, and partly because it was a matter of resistance against the communist regime.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karel Kaplan, Political Persecution in Czechoslovakia 1948 - 1972, Study No. 3 of the research project Crises in Soviet-Type Systems, Cologne, Index 1983, p. 23
  2. ↑ a b c d Státní bezpečnost o sobě, with an accompanying word by the historian Karel Kaplan, materials of the Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic (Word document), online at: aplikace.mvcr.cz/archiv2008  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info : The link was automatically marked as broken. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , in Czech with a German summary (Karel Kaplan: Die StB about themselves - testimony of investigator Bohumil Doubek), p. 143 and 144 (note 64), accessed on January 25, 2011@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / aplikace.mvcr.cz  
  3. ↑ a b c Osobnost: In memoriam Oldřicha Černého, ​​in: Neviditelný pes, Internet newspaper, April 9, 2012, online at: neviditelnypes.lidovky.cz/osobnost ... , Czech, accessed July 10, 2012
  4. ↑ a b c Zakázaný document. Zpráva komise ÚV KSČ o politických procesech a rehabilitacích v Československu 1949-68 (Prohibited document. Report of the Commission of the Central Committee of the KSČ on the political processes and rehabilitation in Czechoslovakia 1949-68), Europa-Verlag, Vienna 1970 (Czech edition; English Edition The Czechoslovak Political Trials 1950 - 1954, Stanford University Press, 1971, online at: books.google.com )
  5. ↑ Státní bezpečnost o sobě, with an accompanying word by the historian Karel Kaplan, materials of the Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic (Word document), online at: aplikace.mvcr.cz/archiv2008  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was opened automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Czech with German summary (Karel Kaplan: Die StB über zu sich - Testament of the investigator Bohumil Doubek), p. 5, accessed on July 11, 2012@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / aplikace.mvcr.cz