Searching for Enemy: Political Showtrials in former Czechoslovakia

As of 1948 the big wheel of various political show trials started spinning.  These were also called, "Monster Trials," and they were organized against political elites, clergymen, but also former Communist party functionaries.  These trials were mainly run by the state secret police.  They prepared the trials very well, in many cases they were actually fabricating them: constructing the charge, coercing the victims with physical and psychological violence, pushing them to memorize the scenario of the trial.  The accusations were supposed to be very serious because the punishments to fit the crime were to be very severe.  This way, the Communist regime was strengthened and Czechoslovakian population was threatened and afraid. The Soviet consultants were taking part in the biggest trials, making them up, and giving advice to the investigators on how they should obtain the confession.   Besides this, they were also providing psychological help.  They legitimized the violent access of the investigators and if there were some doubts towards the political trials and the tactics used, then they told them that the Soviet Consultants had extra secret information.  Since Czechoslovakian investigators didn't have this information, these steps could have seemed excessive.  One of the main investigators who worked on the big trials wrote in his memoirs, "I remember one chat with a guy from the people's militia named Mr. Bruha, who told me shortly after his entrance into the secret police, ‘You know, if there weren't these consultants I wouldn't believe anything and I would think we're doing some pretty dirty business, but this way it's different. Those people know what they are doing.'"[1] 

The main wave of the political trials took five years.  The national court, which was established for these purposes gave out 232 death penalties out of which 178 was executed.  This number is the highest number of executions of European countries gathered in the Soviet Bloc.  One of the biggest trials was the one with General Heliodor Píka[2], who worked in one of the foreign partisan groups during WWII.  In January 1949 he was sentenced to the death and was executed[3]. By the way, General Heliodor Píka used to be a schoolmate of the French President DeGaulle.  When he was executed a whole day of national sorrow was observed in France.

The whole world was paying attention to the trial of the ex-National Socialist politician Milada Horáková[4] in June 1950. There were another twelve politicians, publishers and public officers involved in that. The prep time for the trial was coordinated by Soviet Consultants, who among others established a special preparation for the accused. The accused people had to learn and memorize their speeches for the court over and over again. The way the processes looked and that everything was decided before the trial are illustrated in words of Antonie Kleinerová, who was one of the thirteen accused in Horáková´s process, "Šváb was present at my hearing three times. During each visit he smashed my face until it would bleed. At the last meeting he yelled at me, "If you confess or not, that doesn’t matter. We have sentences for you anyways...". 

The whole trial was effected by communist propaganda. In factories, offices, and even schools, people got tickets to enter the courtroom. Working people were taken there by buses[5]. The trial was extraordinary also for its public acceptance. After the first three days the court was swamped with appeals from factories, offices, and towns. All of them demanded cruel punishment and most of them for the death penalty. Similar appeals had been even voted on by pupils at some primary schools. The whole thing went so far that the accused peoples' kids were forced to disown their own parents[6]. 

Although the process was prepared in detail, its continuance sometimes got out of the hands of organizers and the accused worked to defend themselves in court, trying to disprove some accusations. The whole trial lasted for nine days. Each day, after the court was over, people from the secret police met a member of government and evaluated the run of the day. The whole process ended with 4 death penalties and none of the protests from abroad helped avert the executions.[7] 

Another group of people who often got long sentences were clergy and Catholic intellectuals. The Catholic Church was gradually becoming an object for persecution since the spring of 1949. In December 1949, an alleged miracle happened in a small village named Čihošť in Eastern Bohemia. During the mass, given by priest Josef Toufar, a half-meter-long cross (19 inches), placed on the great altar, moved a couple times from side to side. This event was recorded in the history of the country as the "Čihošť miracle." The secret police locked up pastor Toufar in January 1950. During the process they started with him, he was supposed to "confess" that he staged the cross's movement. He was tortured and as a result of the torture he died on February 25th 1950. 

The universities and colleges, where future Czechoslovakian intellectuals were growing-up were not left out from pursuit either. On March 4th 1948 a meeting of teachers and professors was held at the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy at Charles University. So-called "reactive" teachers and students were suspended. The only person who stood up against that decision was the art historian professor Růžena Vacková[8]. She paid for her courage and ended up in prison for fifteen years. 

Political processes were launched against all sections of society and did not miss even the main representatives of the communist party. From 1950 the state secret police concentrated on "Searching for the enemy even among its own." The leading communist investigated was the General Secretary of the communist party Rudolf Slánský[9]. His process was nothing special in the Eastern Communist block. Similar processes were run in other countries as well. In Hungary the Secretary of Foreign Affairs Laszlo Rajko was sentenced, in Bulgaria it was Trajčo Kostov, in Poland Wladyslav Gomulka. After months of physical force and never ending trials, all of the accused people in the process with Slánský got together at the courthouse in Pankrác. The trial took place from November 20th - 27th, 1952. All of the accused had to memorize their testimonies, which were written by investigators. All of them had to rehearse a couple of times before the main trial. The process was strongly supported throughout the whole country; more then 8500 people openly supported the sentences, out of which a majority voted for the death penalty. 

There were fourteen people on the trial, besides General Secretary Slánský there were also Vladimír Clementis, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Artur London[10], the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Karel Šváb, the Deputy Secretary of the Interior. All these people stood high in the communist hierarchy. Finally, eleven death penalties were passed and all sentences were executed on November 3rd in the morning hours at Pankrác prison. Ashes of the condemned were scattered by members of the secret police on a road near Prague.

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