The Slánský Trial

JAN 01 1952 · 12:00

The 1952 show trial of Rudolf Slánský and thirteen co-defendants. Eleven were hanged on 3 December. Place: Pankrác Prison courtroom · Ruzyně interrogation cells Figures: Rudolf Slánský, former General Secretary of the Communist Party · Vladimír Clementis, former Foreign Minister · Otto Šling, Otto Fischl, Bedřich Geminder, and ten others Rudolf Slánský is, until November 1951, the second man in the Czechoslovak state, General Secretary of the Communist Party, organizer of the February coup. He is also Jewish. After Stalin's break with Tito and Israel, Moscow needs a Czechoslovak parallel to the Hungarian Rajk trial and the Bulgarian Kostov trial. Soviet advisors arrive in Prague in autumn 1949 and select their candidates. Slánský is arrested in November 1951, Clementis with him. The fourteen defendants are held at Ruzyně for a year of vyšetřování: continuous interrogation, sleep deprivation in three-hour cycles, beatings. Confessions are written, memorized, re-written, rehearsed. The script names the accused as Trotskyist-Titoist-Zionist conspirators. Eleven of the fourteen are Jewish. The indictment specifies this.