Václav Kopecký

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Václav Kopecký 1955

Václav Kopecký (born August 27, 1897 in Kosmonosy , Okres Mladá Boleslav , Středočeský kraj ; † August 5, 1961 in Prague ) was a Czechoslovak politician of the Communist Party KSČ ( Komunistická strana Československa ) , who was among other things Minister of Information between 1945 and 1953 1953 to 1961 Deputy Prime Minister and between 1953 and 1954 also Minister of Culture. In his functions he was the leading ideologist and propagandist of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and, thanks to his strongly demagogic foundation, he was the representative of communist cultural policy of the 1940s and 1950s. As a member of the party leadership he took an active part in the measures of the 1950s to eliminate political opponents, including the preparation of show trials such as the Slansky trial . He contributed significantly to the allegations against members of non-communist parties, the Catholic Church and "internal enemies" within the Communist Party.

Life

After attending grammar schools in Mladá Boleslav and Prague, Václav Kopecký began studying at the Faculty of Law at Charles University , which he did not graduate. In 1918 he joined the Social Democratic Party and in 1919 was one of the founders of the Marxist Association (Marxistické sdružení) , an association of left-wing intellectuals . He worked as an administrative officer until 1924.

Party official, MP and exile in Moscow

On May 14, 1921 Kopecký was a co-founder of the Communist Party KSČ ( Komunistická strana Československa ) and there joined the faction around Klement Gottwald , which subordinated all of its activities to the Stalinist version of communism . In the mid-1920s he became editor of communist daily newspapers such as Dělnický deník, which appears in Ostrava , and since 1928 as editor of Rudé právo , the central organ of KSČ.

As early as the second half of the 1930s, Kopecký joined the radical, Moscow and Comintern-oriented group around Klement Gottwald, which later went down in history under the nickname Buben von Karlín ("karlínští kluci"). At the 5th party congress of the CPC in February 1929, these young functionaries took over power in the CPC and subsequently oriented the party rigorously towards the line of the Comintern and the CPSU. Kopecký, who had excellent contacts in Moscow, took on the role of party ideologist. At this party congress he became a member of the Central Committee (ZK) of the KSČ for the first time and belonged to it until the party was banned in 1938.

On October 27, 1929 he was also elected for the KSČ as a member of the National Assembly (Národní shromáždění) , which he formally belonged until March 21, 1939. On the VI. At the 7th party congress (March 7th to 11th, 1931), he was initially a candidate for the Central Committee's Politburo and, at the following 7th Party Congress (March 11th to April 14th, 1936), he became a member of the Central Committee's Politburo and the Central Committee's Secretariat and was part of them Bodies until the party was banned in 1938. He then emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1938 , where, alongside Rudolf Appelt , Klement Gottwald, Čeněk Hruška , Robert Korb , Josef Krosnář and Rudolf Slánský , he formed the exile leadership of the KSČ in Moscow . From this point on he was represented with the directives of the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and reported to the party leadership there consistently on the situation in the KSČ and the general situation in Czechoslovakia. In 1941 he intervened against the work of the Czechoslovak military representation in Moscow, Heliodor Píka . In December 1943 he took part in negotiations with Edvard Beneš and was one of the authors of the so-called “Christmas Agreement”, which initiated cooperation between the Czechoslovak government- in- exile in London and the center of communist emigrants in Moscow.

Post-war period, February revolution

While still in exile in Moscow, Kopecký was one of the authors of the Kosice program , which enabled the formation of the first government at the end of World War II. After returning to Czechoslovakia, he was Minister of Information in the government of Zdeněk Fierlinger I from April 5 to November 6, 1945 . At the same time he became a member of the office of the Interim Central Committee of the Communist Party on April 8, 1945, where he took second place after Klement Gottwald. On October 21, 1945 he was elected member of the Interim National Assembly (Prozatímní Národní shromáždění) . On November 6, 1945, he again took over the office of information minister in the Zdeněk Fierlinger II government and held this ministerial office in the Klement Gottwald I government (July 2, 1946 to February 25, 1948) and the Klement Gottwald II government (February 25 , 1946) until June 15, 1948) and in the Antonín Zápotocký government (June 15, 1948 until the ministry was dissolved on January 31, 1953). The radio he controlled was only known in Czechoslovakia as the “voice of Moscow”. In the struggle between the state and the Catholic Church and especially with the Archbishop of Prague , Josef Beran , which culminated in the so-called "Church Trials", he initially tightened the tone behind the scenes, although he warned at the end of 1948: "It would be fatal fail to bring the religious feelings of the people into conflict with the Slavic feelings. We will not allow the sovereignty of the Vatican to count more than that of the state. "

At the 8th Party Congress (March 28 to 31, 1946) he became a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee and belonged to this top committee of the party after his re-election at the IX. Party Congress (25-29 May 1949), Xth Party Congress (11-15 June 1954) and XI. Congress (June 18-21, 1958) until his death on August 5, 1961. He was a member of the Constituent National Assembly (Ústavodárné Národní shromáždění) between May 26, 1946 and May 29, 1948, and from August 28, 1946 to February 25, 1948, he was also Minister for Technical Planning. He played a special role after the death of Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk , who after the communist upheaval in February 1948 was found dead in the courtyard of the Czernin Palace , the seat of the Foreign Ministry, under the bathroom window, the so-called “ third party ” Prague window lintel ”. In his funeral address, Prime Minister Gottwald repeated the claim that an "organized campaign by the West" had "driven our dear Jan to suicide". President Beneš ignored Gottwald and the cabinet during the funeral and instead exchanged a few words with the American ambassador Laurence Steinhardt . A few days after Masaryk was laid to rest next to his parents in Lány, Kopecký ordered radio and the press, which had been in line since the coup, not to mention the deceased's name.

On May 1, 1948, the city awarded him Liberec the honorary citizenship . He became a member of the National Assembly (Národní shromáždění) on May 30, 1948 , which was also a member until his death on August 5, 1961. In October 1949, as Minister of Information, he signed an ordinance that placed the entire book trade in the country under the government. After that, the bookstores could only obtain books and teaching materials from a state-controlled cooperative. The exchange of books among publishers, however, was banned. At the meeting of the Central Committee on December 6, 1951, he was elected as a member of the Political Secretariat of the Central Committee along with Antonín Novotný , to which he belonged until June 15, 1954. He was also formally head of the State Broadcasting Corporation Československý rozhlas from 1952 to 1953 .

The 1950s

On January 31, 1953, Václav Kopecký became Deputy Prime Minister in the Antonín Zápotocký government and took over this office on March 21, 1953 in the Viliam Široký I government , in which on September 14, 1953 became First Deputy Prime Minister. In addition, he was from September 14, 1953 to December 12, 1954 also Minister of Culture in the Viliam Široký I government. He also took over the post of Deputy Prime Minister in the Viliam Široký II government (December 12, 1954 to July 11, 1960) as well from July 11, 1960 until his death on August 5, 1961 also in the government of Viliam Široký III .

In his functions he was the leading ideologist and propagandist of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and, thanks to his strongly demagogic foundation, he was the representative of communist cultural policy of the 1940s and 1950s. As a member of the party leadership, he actively participated in the measures taken in the 1950s to eliminate political opponents, including the preparation of show trials such as the Slansky trial , the trial with Milada Horáková's group , the so-called trial with bourgeois nationalists and others who took place from 1948 to 1954. He contributed significantly to the allegations against members of non-communist parties, the Catholic Church and "internal enemies" within the Communist Party.

In 1955 he was awarded the Klement Gottwald Order (Řád Klementa Gottwalda) . In his honor, the Strossmayer Square in the Holešovice district of Prague was named Kopeckého náměstí from 1961 to 1968 . His son Ivan Kopecký was a diplomat and temporarily head of the Soviet Union department in the Foreign Ministry.

Publications

  • Třicet let KSČ (1951)
  • ČSR and KSČ (1960)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karel Kaplan, Pavel Kosatík: Gottwaldovi muži. Paseka, Praha 2004, ISBN 80-7185-616-9
  2. ↑ Karel Kaplan, Pavel Kosatík: Gottwaldovi muži , Paseka, Praha / Litomyšl 2004, 336 pages; quoted here from a German review, available online at: bohemia-online.de / ... , page 266, there note no. 3.
  3. ↑ Komunistická strana Československa (KSČ), bolševizace KSČ , encyclopedic keyword of the Totalita.cz portal, online at: totalita.cz / ...
  4. ↑ Václav Kopecký , curriculum vitae of the ČSFD.cz portal, online at: csfd.cz / ...
  5. ↑ TSCHECHOSLOWAKEI: Rudolf Slansky crime . In: Der Spiegel from December 19, 1951
  6. ↑ On quiet feet . In: Der Spiegel from January 17, 1948
  7. ↑ a b Karel Kaplan: The political processes in Czechoslovakia 1948-1953 , R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1986, p. 11ff. or 144ff.
  8. ↑ Prague's Cardinal Question. Let's have another drink on it . In: Der Spiegel from November 27, 1948
  9. ↑ FIVE MEN CAME AFTER MIDNIGHT . In: Der Spiegel from April 7, 1965
  10. ↑ Medium . In: Der Spiegel of October 27, 1949
  11. ↑ "BRESCHNEW IS POLITICALLY DONE" . In: Der Spiegel from May 19, 1969
personal data
SURNAME Kopecký, Václav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czechoslovak minister and party official
DATE OF BIRTH August 27, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Kosmonosy , Okres Mladá Boleslav , Středočeský kraj , Czech Republic
DATE OF DEATH 5th August 1961
Place of death Prague