The Modern Inquisition. Hugo Dewar 1953
THE first official statement following the arrest and imprisonment of Sling and Svermová was to the effect that they had plotted the murder of Rudolf Slánský, then General Secretary of the party. The very charge was a measure of the esteem in which Slánský was held and the high position he occupied in the hierarchy. In the Soviet world the honour of being the object of a murder plot is reserved — as we have seen from the Moscow Trials — for the ‘beloved leaders’ only. A couple of months later, however, the Czech radio broadcast an alleged confession from Sling that he had murdered his own mother. In the long run neither of these tentative scenarios proved to be acceptable to the stage managers of the trial in preparation. For Slánský himself was arrested just over a year after the arrest of Sling. Naturally it was then realised that Sling’s first confession was a mistake: for both Sling and Slánský had all the time been plotting to murder Klement Gottwald. In these circumstances Sling’s other confession — that he had actually murdered his mother — was forgotten altogether and never mentioned again.
It took three years to piece together the separate parts of the jigsaw, but at long last the stage was set, and on 20 November 1952 the so-called Slánský Trial opened in Prague.
The producers of this political show evinced a cynical contempt for probability and verisimilitude only surpassed by the producers of the Moscow Trials in the 1930s, and the crudeness of its presentation shocked even a world whose sensibilities have become somewhat blunted by successive performances of a similar nature. The Slánský Trial not only gave evidence of a deep-going party purge affecting hundreds of leaders and officials, and thousands of rank-and-file members, but it also reached a new low level of moral degeneration in its utilisation of anti-Semitic prejudice for political ends. This was the most perfect example of the methods of the Red inquisition seen since the Moscow Trials, and the fact that it took place in Czechoslovakia, formerly the white hope in Europe of democratic liberalism, made the spectacle all the more horrifying, the implications all the more alarming.
Fourteen high-ranking members of the Communist Party and the government stood in the dock, charged with sabotage, plotting to murder, plotting to overthrow the government, and espionage for Western powers. Of these fourteen, eleven were of Jewish origin. Some of those involved have already been indicated in the previous chapter; the positions and records of the others will be given in the course of our discussion of the trial proceedings. Let us first examine some of the more breath-taking crudities of the show.
One of the accused is André Simone, a member of the party for some thirty years, active for the Communist International in many countries; in Moscow from 1930 to 1932; fought in the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War; during the war was in France, then in the United States, then in Mexico; returned to Czechoslovakia via France on the cessation of hostilities, and became an editor and diplomatic correspondent of the leading Communist daily Rudé Právo.
In the course of his testimony, or ‘confession’, Simone asserted that in March 1948 Rudolf Slánský had instructed him to write a book on the February events (the seizure of power by the Communists). ‘Slánský asked me to describe him as the chief personality of this period and told me to model my book on Reed’s Ten Days that Shook the World’, which was ‘written in the Trotskyist spirit’. ‘By falsifying history Slánský wanted to gain popularity among the Czechoslovak people and to suppress the leading and decisive part played by Gottwald.’
To understand the purport of this the reader must know that John Reed’s book deals with the Bolshevik conquest of power in Russia in 1917, and that it depicts Stalin as playing hardly any part at all in those crucial events, while Trotsky is shown as playing a leading role. If, therefore, one substitutes in the above sentence of Simone the word ‘Trotsky’ for ‘Slánský’ and ‘Stalin’ for ‘Gottwald’, the meaning of the reference is clear. The trial organisers, through the mouth of Simone, are simply transferring the ‘ethics’ of the early inner-party struggle in Russia to the Czech scene. But either they were singularly stupid or — which is perhaps more probable — Simone was singularly acute. For if anyone could be proved by the example Simone gives to be falsifying history it is Stalin. One strongly suspects that Simone, who was a journalist, who had lived and worked in many countries, and who had been in the party for thirty years, knew perfectly well what he was doing; and one equally strongly suspects that the organisers of the trial do not know the history of their own movement. For John Reed’s book was given an introduction by none other than Lenin. And this is what he had to say of this book ‘written in the Trotskyist spirit’:
With the greatest interest and with never slackening attention I read John Reed’s book, Ten Days that Shook the World. Unreservedly do I recommend it to the workers of the world. Here is a book which I should like to see published in millions of copies and translated into all languages. It gives a truthful and most vivid exposition of the events so significant to the comprehension of what really is the Proletarian Revolution and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. These problems are widely discussed but before one can accept or reject these ideas, one must understand the full significance of such a decision. John Reed’s book will undoubtedly help to clear this question, which is the fundamental problem of the universal workers’ movement.
This makes it transparently clear that Simone’s confession was no confession at all; on the contrary it was damning evidence against Stalin through the person of Gottwald. The Prague inquisitors had only to look at a copy of Reed’s book with Lenin’s introduction to understand at once how dangerous any reference to it would be. But you may search every bookshop in every satellite state and in Russia itself, and you will not find a copy of this book. How dangerous it is to the Stalinist myth is shown by the fact that when the News Chronicle wished to serialise it some years ago the Communist Party refused to release the copyright unless all reference to Trotsky was deleted from the serialisation. (Today, of course, even this proviso would be unacceptable; Stalin has had history so thoroughly rewritten that it would now be necessary to go further and substitute Stalin’s name wherever Trotsky’s appeared. Incidentally, the book was reprinted in England as late as 1932, but it is a very rare item indeed.)
It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Simone’s reference to Reed’s book was an attempt to utilise the ignorance of the stage managers to say covertly what he dare not say openly. In any case the effect is the same; it gives to his confession a meaning exactly the opposite of its apparent one.
The manner in which Simone described how he was recruited as a spy strengthens the view that he deliberately concocted a ‘confession’ that would pass muster with his inquisitors, self-hypnotised by their own spy mania and with a peculiarly puerile conception of Western intelligence methods, but that would not deceive any normal mind for one moment. After signing on as a spy with ‘the French Minister Mandel in Paris, a Jewish nationalist’, in September 1939, he met Noel Coward, ‘who at the time held an important position in the British intelligence service’. Coward told him he knew he was a spy for the French, ‘but pointed out that this method of collaboration did not meet present-day needs’. ‘He appealed to me’, said Simone, ‘to join him. I told him that I would think it over.’ The prosecutor evidently had never heard of Noel Coward, for he asked Simone who he was (alas for fame!). Simone described him as ‘a British novelist and playwright’.
In due course Simone decided to sign on with the British:
This happened later when I met Willert [one of Noel Coward’s henchmen] in the Café Marine. After a brief conversation I told him that I accepted his proposal to work for the British intelligence service. Willert replied that it was customary for every agent of the British intelligence service to pledge himself in writing.
So off they went to Willert’s office, where:
Willert sat behind the typewriter and began to write out the pledge for my collaboration with the British intelligence service. It was written in triplicate in English and the last copy was on blue paper.
Prosecutor: ‘Did any of these copies come into your hands?’
Simone: ‘Yes, all three.’
Prosecutor: ‘What were the contents of this written pledge?’
Simone: ‘In the document I pledged myself to supply the British intelligence service with reports on all questions in which it was interested. The document further stated that my pledge must be kept secret in all circumstances, that I pledged myself of my own free will and that I took upon myself the responsibility for all consequences. It further stated that in case of my apprehension, the British authorities would in all circumstances deny my statement and testimony.’
The following points are worth noting.
a) Simone’s unusual knowledge of British official procedure — the pledge was in triplicate and the last copy on blue paper; this is the first time in any of these trials that a spy has signed on in triplicate — and it had to be with the British government. b) Simone’s modesty — he was going to supply espionage reports on ‘all questions’. c) The British were farsighted enough to forestall Simone’s confession by putting their denial of it in writing.
Simone continued:
... one paragraph of the pledge stated that in case of loss or damage [sic] through my activities I was entitled to compensation. Afterwards I signed all three copies of the pledge, with the name of Otto Katz and André Simone in brackets, which was my pseudonym at the time. Willett also asked me to provide him with three passport photographs of myself which I handed to him at our next meeting. We then proceeded to Noel Coward’s office which was on the same floor of the building, only a few doors away. Noel Coward welcomed me as the new member of the British intelligence service. Willett then handed him all three copies of my pledge.
The remarkable cunning of British intelligence is here well brought out. After agreeing to pay Simone compensation (amount unspecified) in case of ‘loss or damage’, the wily old hand Coward took all three copies of the agreement and left the trusting Simone without any proof to back up a claim for compensation. All that was missing to make this picture perfect was for Simone to have confessed that the go-between for Noel Coward and the ‘well-known agent of British imperialism’, Zilliacus, was a well-known music-hall comedian.
It goes without saying that everyone from the West Simone met in the course of his duties as foreign editor of Rudé Právo was an espionage agent. Among those so characterised by him in his confession was Alexander Werth, who occasionally in his writings has almost, but not quite, lost his balance in leaning over backward to be fair to the Stalinists. In this particular instance, however, Simone had anticipated his confession by more than two years: for early in 1950 he had ‘exposed’ Werth in the columns of Rudé Právo as a ‘notorious spy’. After the trial Werth commented:
The interesting thing is that this phrase was then used in the indictment as a ‘fact’, although it had been coined by Simone, now a full-fledged ‘traitor’ and an ‘agent of American imperialism’. In short, any dirt about citizens of the Western democracies will do, even if it has been invented by the very people who are now being tried for their abominable crimes against the Communist state! (Letter to the Manchester Guardian, 28 November 1952)
Another British left-winger labelled ‘espionage agent’ was Konni Zilliacus. His name cropped up over and over again during the trial. As one who, up to the Tito defection from Stalinism, made no bones about his pro-Communist sympathies and who consequently was persona grata with most of the satellite leaders, he appeared to the Czech authorities admirably suited to the role of liaison agent between the plotters and the British intelligence service. With some care even this fantastic notion might have been made to bear a faint resemblance to real life for the politically unweaned in the Western democracies. But the manner in which the case was presented was so incredibly clumsy that it would be a compliment to call anyone who accepted it a half-wit. The evidence on this score reveals unmistakable signs of its origin in the inquisition chamber. A deposition on the score of Zilliacus’ alleged activities was taken from Mordechai Oren, the Israeli citizen arrested by the Czech authorities in December 1951, and held incommunicado ever since. A member of the pro-Soviet Mapam (may one now say ‘formerly pro-Soviet'?), it was apparently considered that he could be used to give colour to the picture of Israel’s involvement in the Anglo-American espionage network in Czechoslovakia. Listen to what he was made to say about Zilliacus.
In 1947 Herbert Morrison told him that ‘Zilliacus is a staunch champion of British imperialism and a veteran agent for British reactionary governments as well as a diehard enemy of the USSR and the People’s Democracies’. In addition Morrison informed Oren that ‘Zilliacus told me in confidence in 1947 that great political changes were afoot in Yugoslavia and that Tito already had one foot in the US camp’.
The stupidity of putting such language into the mouth of Herbert Morrison is at once apparent. Oren — or rather, the inquisitors — make Morrison himself confess and speak in the jargon of the Stalinists. Nothing could serve more clearly to show the automatic nature of the responses of the accused and witnesses. Everyone speaks in the same way, uses the same adjectives and epithets, and this applies not merely to the accused and witnesses, but even to persons whom they quote. They are unable to alter the record imprinted on their minds. And even the inquisitors themselves cannot for a moment escape from the set phrases they have been screaming and shouting at the accused for days and weeks and months beforehand.
Because of Zilliacus’ marked admiration for the Soviet regime and his approval of its postwar expansion into Eastern Europe, he had entry to all the top-ranking Communists in the satellites. Why should such an allegedly old hand at the espionage game have sacrificed this incomparable vantage point just for the sake of adding one more voice to the chorus of approval for Tito in his fight against the Kremlin? Oren stated that Morrison told him that ‘thanks to Zilliacus’ visits to Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria influential friends had been placed in important government and party posts’. Observe what tremendous power lay in Zilliacus’ hands! He had only to make his wishes known and they were granted. Yet this allegedly hard-bitten, hard-headed ‘imperialist agent’ threw all this power away with a single gesture. In what way did his support of Tito aid his work as an agent? The question answers itself. And yet no one at the Slánský Trial bothered about such an elementary matter.
Is it not crystal clear that if Zilliacus had never come to his belated understanding of the true aims of Stalin his name would then never have been mentioned in any of the confessions?
The next example of the trial’s crudities has a truly comic opera aspect. It concerns the accused Dr Vavro Hajdu, a close associate of Clementis and formerly Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. Hajdu pleaded guilty to having been, among other things, a spy in British service from 1941 until his arrest. This was established by the following testimony:
Prosecutor: ‘Now tell us about the circumstances, how you were enrolled by the British for espionage services.’
Hajdu: ‘In 1941 I was called to the police station in Wiveliscombe to give some information about my past. I was led to the head of the police. When he knew that I had been in Slovakia in 1939 he asked me about some industrial undertakings there. I gave him information about some factories in the neighbourhood of Bratislava. He was satisfied with my information and asked me to supply similar reports in future.’
Hajdu did not mention that the population of Wiveliscombe is around two dozen. In the circumstances one feels that ‘the head of the police’ must have been closely related to Robb Wilton. [1]
Hajdu was a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference in 1946 and there he met Sir Gladwyn Jebb. [2] ‘In the course of conversation he told me that he knew that I had signed on with the British police at Wiveliscombe and suggested that I should therefore continue my espionage connections with him.’
What unsuspected depths have our village constabulary, who instantly realise the significance of Slovakia to the war effort, who in a flash recognise good espionage material, and lose no time in getting the signature on the dotted line!
So what was the espionage information passed by Hajdu to Jebb?
Hajdu: ‘Jebb asked me a few general questions... I informed him in detail about conditions in the Ministry... I told him, at his request, what the Czechoslovak delegation’s views were on the progress of the Peace Conference and what preparations we were making for further negotiations. At the end of our talk Jebb was highly satisfied with my espionage information...
And what was Hajdu’s excuse, or reason, for betraying all this top secret information? The only answer he gave was: ‘Because I had been enlisted.’ By the village constable in Wiveliscombe.
At this point in the proceedings the prosecutor produced a ‘document’ worthy of the Moscow Trials themselves. He showed Hajdu a photograph and asked him to identify the person shown with Masaryk. And who should it be but Gladwyn Jebb! Which proved? That Masaryk also was a spy in British service? Or that Gladwyn Jebb was — Gladwyn Jebb? On the basis of such comic ‘documents’ it would be claimed that the case against the accused had been ‘proved by the testimony and the documents’ (remember the telephone book in the Moscow Trial).
In Slánský’s confession there were in particular two remarkable absurdities. The presiding judge called his attention to the fact that he had not ‘yet mentioned another very serious crime’ he had committed, and requested him to describe the death of Jan Sverma. Slánský then made the following statement:
It happened on 10 November 1944, during a march from the Chabenec Mountain in the Low Tatras. On that day I failed to do all I could have done to save Sverma’s life. Before the beginning of the march I had not given Sverma, whose constitution was weak, sufficient cover. I had failed to make arrangements to help him. At the beginning of the snowstorm Sverma walked slowly and was frequently forced to rest. This was also due to the fact that his boots were too small. He had been forced to put on these boots after he had lost his own pair. When the snowstorm arose Sverma fell behind and I did not arrange for assistance to him. I feel, therefore, that I am responsible for Sverma’s death and I admit this responsibility.
In order to clinch Slánský’s ‘feeling of responsibility’ the judge then produced a pocket watch which had been stolen from Sverma by a certain Sebasta, one of the partisans who had been present when he died. Sebasta and other participants of that particular march ‘confirmed Slánský’s responsibility for Sverma’s death’.
Thus the principal witness for the prosecution, apart from Slánský himself, was a self-confessed petty thief who stooped to pick the pocket of a fallen comrade. For something like seven years no one thought of connecting Sverma’s death with Slánský. Slánský himself only speaks of a feeling of responsibility, which the prosecution translates into a ‘very serious crime’. The tale carries not the slightest conviction, but apparently the authorities thought that it would help to give some support to the equally fantastic tale that followed later.
Slánský deposed:
I knew that the obstacle to the realisation of our final plans was Klement Gottwald, who would never consent to the restoration of capitalism; and I was aware that if I came into power it would be necessary to get rid of Klement Gottwald. I admit that I arranged for Dr Haskovec to attend the President of the Republic. Haskovec was a Freemason, and therefore an enemy, a fact which I hid from the President of the republic. Dr Haskovec, being an enemy, did not provide proper medical care for the President, and thus caused the shortening of the President’s life. I could have used Haskovec for the liquidation of the President for the purpose of my full usurpation of power.
It is at once obvious that this part of the scenario has been lifted holus-bolus from the 1938 Moscow Trial, where Yagoda allegedly also made use of doctors to get rid of inconvenient persons. Only in Moscow they managed to get the doctors concerned to confess — after all, in that case, the alleged victims were actually dead. But neither the elaborate Moscow version nor the sketchy Prague copy will stand the test of close investigation. In Moscow Dr Levin in his final plea said that he had really had not the slightest intention of harming anyone, and was pulled up by the president: ‘Cannot you refrain from blaspheming in your last plea?’ (Trial III, p 781) In Prague they either cannot or do not want to produce the doctor. And Slánský says both that he was going to get rid of Gottwald after usurping power, and that he could have usurped power by ‘liquidating’ Gottwald — but did not do so. All that he did was to ‘shorten Gottwald’s life’ — no one will know by how much until Gottwald actually dies, always presuming, that is, that he does not come to an unnatural end by confessing himself. It almost seems that Gottwald will have to come to an early grave just to prove that his life actually was shortened.
One could fill a volume with similar examples of the crude manner in which the script of the trial was prepared, but let us now proceed to examine a particularly repellent aspect of the trial.
As has already been noted, eleven out of the fourteen accused were of Jewish origin. Here, for the first time in any confession trial, a calculated appeal was made to anti-Semitism, which is deep-rooted in Czechoslovakian soil. In the official broadcasts of the proceedings in the Czech language (these were given out some hours after the daily sessions, thus allowing time for the necessary cutting and editing) the word ‘Jewish’ crops up dozens of times. It is not enough for an accused to be described as a ‘bourgeois nationalist’, it must be over and over again emphasised by the prosecution that he is Jewish into the bargain. Thus the accused Fischl, asked why he is hostile to the regime, replies that he could not be otherwise. This answer is not in accord with the script prepared beforehand, so the question is repeated. And Fischl then replies to the satisfaction of the court: ‘Because I am a Jewish bourgeois nationalist.’ So marked is this feature of the trial that one recalls some words written by Stalin many years ago and dismissed as a joke, although admittedly in very bad taste. Reporting on the Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Party in 1907, Stalin informed his readers that most of the Bolsheviks were pure Russians, whereas a large number of the Mensheviks were Jews. ‘With reference to this’, he continued, ‘one of the Bolsheviks (I think, Comrade Alexinsky), jokingly made the observation that the Mensheviks are a Jewish, but the Bolsheviks a pure Russian, fraction, and that it would not be bad if we Bolsheviks organised a pogrom in the party’ (first published in Bakinski Proletarii, nos 1 and 2, 20 June and 10 July 1907, under the pen-name of Koba Ivanovich, and not expunged from the Collected Works). When one considers subsequent events in Russia these words would appear to have a bearing on Stalin’s character. Certainly no student of Freud could dismiss them as a ‘slip’. Now with the Prague trial they seem to acquire an added significance.
The accused Slánský had this to say of his fellow conspirators:
I deliberately shielded them by abusing the campaign against so-called anti-Semitism. By proposing that a big campaign be waged against anti-Semitism, by magnifying the danger of anti-Semitism and by proposing various measures against anti-Semitism — such as the writing of articles, the publication of pamphlets, the holding of lectures, etc — I criminally prevented the waging of a campaign against Zionism and the revelation of the hostile character of Zionists and Zionist organisations.
Thus a campaign against anti-Semitism in Czechoslovakia is unequivocally equated with treason. ‘It is not an accident’, said the prosecutor in his summing up, ‘that of the fourteen accused eleven are the product of Zionist organisations... Zionism and Jewish bourgeois nationalism are two sides of the same coin, which was minted in Wall Street.’ The authorities, however, knew perfectly well that not one of the accused had ever been a Zionist. Any support they may have given to the state of Israel was strictly in accord with the policy of the party at the given time. In deliberately concealing this fact, those responsible for the trial were for the purpose of their propaganda equating Jew with Zionist. They were in effect implying that simply because a man was of Jewish origin, he must be regarded as a Zionist; all Jews, therefore, are tarred with the same brush.
The anti-Semitic character of the Slánský trial has created alarm and despondency in the Communist parties of the West. They have sought to argue that this anti-Semitism exists only in the fevered imagination of Cold War propagandists. But, to turn their own favourite method of reasoning against them, even if anti-Semitism was not subjectively intended, what was the objective result of such statements as the following:
Sling then said that as a Jewish bourgeois nationalist...
In the second half of 1945 Sling said he had been visited by Boris Kopold... a Jewish bourgeois nationalist...
Sváb stated... that Slánský had entrusted the Jewish bourgeois nationalist Bedrich Reicin...
Since his childhood [said Bedrich Reicin], he had been brought up in a bourgeois and religious spirit in the Jewish Zionist Scout organisation Tekhelet Lavana, which had brought up young people in the spirit of Jewish bourgeois nationalism. (Rudé Právo, 26 November 1952)
The entire proceedings were studded with similar references. What is the objective result of this? Without question it is to foster and encourage all those primitive instincts founded on prejudice and superstition. And anyone seeking to combat the spread of anti-Semitism by educative articles, speeches, pamphlets — does he not immediately lay himself open to the same charge that was levelled against Slánský of seeking to cover up his treachery by ‘magnifying the danger of anti-Semitism'? Of course he does. The truth of this particular, inevitable effect of the Prague trial is inescapable. And, as though deliberately seeking to leave no room for doubt as to their intentions, the authorities made sure that constant reference should be made at the trial to the ‘Jewish financiers’, Morganthau, Mandel, Rothschild, Baruch, recalling the Nazi propaganda of an ‘international conspiracy of Jewish finance’ of infamous memory.
Objectively, then, there can be no doubt of the effect of this aspect of the trial. But can there be much doubt that it was also calculated to have this effect? The very fact of the constant use of the adjective ‘Jewish’ strongly suggests, to put it mildly, that this is precisely what was intended.
Geminder speaks of the spy and Jewish bourgeois nationalist Otto Sling. Clementis (Gentile) says that the people who joined forces with the English reaction were ‘above all, the Jewish bourgeois nationalists...’. Löbl says that he ‘began to work along these lines during his London exile, ‘with the direct support of the Economic Commission, whose members were also Jewish bourgeois nationalists’.
The witness Oskar Langer (himself naturally a self-confessed traitor) refers to this matter, saying that he had written to Slánský about organising a campaign against anti-Semitism but had destroyed his reply, because ‘it would have been dangerous to keep letters which would have incriminated Slánský in his anti-state activities’ (author’s emphasis). Could the equation of anti-state activities with propaganda against anti-Semitism be put more clearly?
In the report of the trial proceedings given in the English edition of the Cominform journal (For a Lasting Peace, For a People’s Democracy) the word ‘Jewish’ is used only once. It is plain from this that the anti-Semitic aspect of the trial was intended for internal purposes; outside the satellite states it has proved a source of considerable embarrassment for the Stalinists.
Reaction of organised Judaism to the Prague trial was sharp and immediate. The American Zionist Council issued the following statement on 26 November:
The injection of a classic libel of an international Jewish conspiracy has been built up on elaborate trumped-up ‘evidence’ in order to stir up the dark currents of anti-Semitism throughout Eastern Europe... There is not a scrap of objective evidence to substantiate the charges. (New York Times, 27 November)
Speaking at a meeting of the Board of Deputies of British Jews (21 December) Dr A Cohen said: ‘This is the first time that Zionism has been declared a crime against the state outside the Arab countries and we dare not ignore it.’ At the annual meeting of the Anglo-Jewish Association on the same day, its president, Ewen Montagu, QC, referred to the trial as the ‘writing on the curtain wall’ of Europe and asked: ‘What of the mass of Jewish people lying in the prison of Eastern Europe without even that means of escape which at least some of the German Jews had.’ What had happened in Prague, he went on, was no surprise to them, since information received had indicated clearly that sooner or later the Communists would require a Jewish scapegoat.
Jewish people, after the savage atrocities inflicted on them by the Nazis, are naturally and rightly sensitive to anything that serves to perpetuate or to foster anti-Semitism. Jewish alertness to any hint of a recrudescence of this moral disease in Europe is not only understandable, it is also fully justified. This would be hardly worth affirming were it not for the fact that the organisers of the Prague trial not only did not even take this into account, but, on the contrary, went out of their way to ignore it in a manner that can only be characterised as calculated. From the whole tenor of the proceedings the Jewish people could do no other than conclude that it aimed deliberately at utilising anti-Semitic prejudices for the political purposes of the regime.
Alarmed at the repercussion within its own ranks of the whole sordid affair, the Communist Party of Great Britain advanced the following defence (Daily Worker, leading article, 22 December):
Anti-Semitism, to our minds, has two features. It seeks to prove that most of the evils of society are due to the machinations of Jews and that, therefore, there must be legal and social discrimination against Jewish people.
There was no suggestion of any such thing in the Prague trial.
Gentiles and Jews stood in the dock together accused of hostile acts against the people’s democracy of Czechoslovakia.
The essence of this Stalinist argument is that anti-Semitism could not have been present in the Prague trial simply because no one in Czechoslovakia, at the moment, demands the passing of laws that specifically discriminate against Jews as such. This is obvious nonsense. If the trial fostered, as we have shown it must have done, the idea that most of the present economic difficulties experienced by the Czechoslovakian people are due to ‘Jewish bourgeois nationalists'; if it encouraged the belief, as it did, that a Jew, simply by virtue of his race, must necessarily be a Zionist, therefore — a traitor; and if it further spread the view that propaganda against anti-Semitism is merely a cover for Zionists’ efforts to subvert the authority of the state — then it is manifest that all this amounts to very much more than a ‘suggestion’ of anti-Semitism. What, in these circumstances, must be the feelings of any Jewish person in Czechoslovakia? Is it of any comfort to him to know that there are at the moment no laws discriminating against members of his race?
Referring to the meeting of protest called by the Jewish Board of Deputies, the Daily Worker leader continued:
Some very extraordinary statements were made at yesterday’s meeting.
‘It was a mistake’, Professor Brodetsky said, ‘to try so many Jews at a time.’ The authorities in Prague, he said, should have cut down the number of Jews in the trial.
Really! The number of Jews involved was decided by the number who participated in the anti-state conspiracy and not by the authorities at all.
The Stalinists are here attempting to pull the wool over their readers’ eyes. In the first place they state that ‘Gentiles and Jews stood in the dock together’ — a half-truth worse than a lie. For they pointedly refrain here from calling attention to the fact that only three of the fourteen were Gentiles. In the second place they studiously avoid dealing with Professor Brodetsky’s argument. He may have been naive in referring to a ‘mistake’ on the part of the authorities, but he here clearly seized on a vital matter that requires explanation. Was or was not the disproportion of Jews against Gentiles deliberately arranged by the authorities? No, reply the Stalinists, it was ‘decided by the number of Jews who participated in the anti-state conspiracy’. The argument, as we shall show, does not hold water for a single moment.
The editor-in-chief of Rudé Právo, Vilem Nový, under arrest and in prison as a member of the ‘conspiratorial centre’, appeared at the trial only as a witness, while his subordinate, André Simone, stood in the dock. Who selected André Simone, the Jew, and ‘reserved’ Vilem Nový, the Gentile? Of two equally ‘guilty’ deputy ministers of defence, Reicin, the Jew, was put on trial and Lastovichka, the Gentile, was not. Who arranged this? Who arranged also that Mária Svermová (a Gentile), self-confessed arch-accomplice of the traitor Sling (a Jew), should not stand in the dock? All these were willing, if not eager, to confess to anything required of them. In choosing Gentile instead of Jew the authorities would not have had minor figures in the dock, for both had held positions of high trust in party and government. The proportion of Jews to Gentiles would then have been reduced from eleven against three to eight against six. Moreover, there was a host of other high-ranking party and government officials from among whom the authorities could, had they wished, have found many more Gentiles to stand in the dock with the others. That they did not do so is clear and irrefutable evidence that they preferred to select Jews.
In addition to its utilisation of anti-Semitism for purposes of internal propaganda, the Czechoslovak government’s attack on Zionism had another objective. This was to court the favour of the Arab states. For it is in the troubled waters of the Arab countries that the Soviet agents are now busy fishing. Accounts of the proceedings were used extensively in Moscow’s radio propaganda to the Middle East and have not been without a measure of success. Damascus radio made eager use of these accounts, accepting them without question at their face value. The Czechoslovak treason trial, it said, ‘clearly illustrates the criminal activities of the Zionists... shows how the Zionists prosecuted their aggressive policy and the imperialisation of the Middle East’. Haj Amin al Husseini, Chairman of the Arab Higher Committee, made use of the trial to say:
What Zionists did to Czechoslovakia, which helped them and supplied them with arms and ammunition before and after the Palestine War, they did likewise to Great Britain and America, both partial to Zionists and eager to assist them, when some Zionists of those two states handed over atom secrets to an Eastern country.
He went on to justify Hitler’s campaign of extermination against the Jews. One more example of the encouragement the Prague trial has given to racial enmity.
The plainly pro-Arab, anti-Israel character of the Prague trial shows beyond question that its organisers were briefed by the Soviet government — for a matter of policy so important for the latter could not have been decided upon by the Czechoslovak government alone. The ‘confessions’ of the accused proclaimed publicly for the first time what is now the policy of the Kremlin towards the Middle East. The former policy of aid to, and encouragement of, the state of Israel failed in its purpose of binding Israel to support of the Soviet government. Those who were responsible for giving practical effect to this now discarded policy — for it was to the Czechoslovak government that Israel largely turned in its search for arms and ammunition during the Palestine War — were thrown to the wolves.
The Prague trial was not, however, concerned solely with fostering anti-Semitism, nor was this even its main purpose. The bulk of the defendants were not only of Jewish origin, they were also, and this was more important for the Kremlin, top-ranking members of the party and the government. Their condemnation, and the arrest and imprisonment of scores of others of like standing, was condemnation by the Soviet government of all the efforts of the Czechoslovak Communist Party to deliver the goods, to bring order and stabilisation to the economy of the country.
Let us note who the defendants at this trial were.
At their head stood Rudolf Slánský. On the occasion of his fiftieth birthday (31 July 1951) the government organ, Rudé Právo, said of him:
Rudolf Slánský’s outstanding feature is loyalty. Loyalty to the principles of Marx-Leninism. Loyalty to the Soviet Union, the foundation stone of socialism in the whole world, loyalty to the teaching and achievements of the great Stalin. And he shows the same unshakable loyalty and devotion to our working class, to our whole people, our Communist Party and its pilot, Comrade Gottwald. Comrade Slánský has been a close and faithful adjutant to Klement Gottwald for twenty-five years.
At the same time the Presidium of the Central Committee of the party sent Slánský the following message:
Dear Comrade. Our whole party and our entire working people greet you as its faithful son and champion inspired by love for the working people and loyalty to the Soviet Union and the mighty Stalin.
This message was signed by none other than Gottwald himself, together with the Premier, Zápotocký.
Less than two months later Slánský was dismissed from his post of General Secretary of the party, and on 27 November of the same year his arrest and imprisonment was announced.
On Slánský’s fiftieth birthday the workers of Czechoslovakia were persuaded to pledge themselves to work extra shifts in his honour. When he was condemned to be hanged by the neck until dead they were again persuaded to pledge themselves to work overtime, to forgo their Sunday rest and holidays — in order to ‘clear the name of the party'!
Slánský joined the Communist Party at the age of 21 and at a time when the possibility of the Communists ever coming to power in Czechoslovakia was, to say the least, remote. He was on the staff of Rudé Právo when he was 23; editor of Delnicky Deník (Workers’ Daily) in Ostrava at the age of 24 (1925); became Regional Secretary of the party in Ostrava in 1926; went to Moscow in 1938, where he worked in the Czech section of Moscow Radio; in 1944 was on the General Staff of the partisan movement in Kiev and in September of the same year took part in the Slovak uprising at Banská Bystrica against the German occupation. With the defeat of this uprising he escaped to join the Red Army in Russia. He was appointed General Secretary of the Czech Communist Party, a post he held for six years, on the recommendation and with the full support and approval of his friend, Klement Gottwald.
Yet it is now said of this man, and he himself confirmed it in his confession, that he had never in his life been a Communist. If he was never a Communist, if he, to quote his own words, ‘prepared war, yet talked of peace, talked democracy and socialism and prepared for Fascist dictatorship’, what, then, of Pollitt, of Togliatti, Duclos, of every Communist leader in every country of the world? May not the whole of their active lives in the service of Stalin also one day prove to be a mere sham, a cover for treachery? The case of the two French Communist leaders, Marty and Tillon, gives us the answer to that question. Like Slánský, these two men have during their entire political careers been held in high reverence by their party and its supporters as prototypes of the Stalinist revolutionary; now their names are dragged in the mud by that same party. But, unlike Slánský, Marty and Tillon refuse to confess. No one can doubt, however, that if France were Czechoslovakia they would be made to toe the line and confess. (The titular head of the French Communist Party has been in Moscow for the last two years, allegedly too ill to return home. It looks as though he may die there — like Dimitrov, the Bulgarian Communist leader.)
On the same high level of devotion to Stalinism as Slánský stood also these other accused: Otto Sling, Secretary of the party in Brno, controller of the political trustworthiness of the Czech volunteers in the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War; Bedrich Geminder (also known as Bedrich Vltaysky), head of the foreign affairs department of the party, member of the Executive Committee and the Secretariat of the party, editor of its journal Funkcioner; André Simone, a member of the party for thirty-odd years, in Moscow from 1930 to 1932, active for the Communist International in many countries, particularly in Spain during the Civil War, was in Mexico during the war, returned to Czechoslovakia via France and became an editor and diplomatic correspondent of Rudé Právo; Josef Frank, deputy Secretary-General of the party, spent five and a half years as prisoner of the Nazis, became a member of the Executive Committee in 1946 and held various high party posts, including head of the Propaganda department; Ludwig Frejka (formerly Freund), a member of the party from the 1920s, became economic adviser to Gottwald in March 1948, was a member of the Economic Planning Commission, editor-in-chief of the economic weekly Hospodár (now extinct), was in England during the war and worked on the Daily Worker; Bedrich Reicin worked for Communist newspapers in Prague before the war, took refuge in the Soviet Union in 1939, where he became a corporal in the Czech Brigade, promoted to officer, trained in military intelligence, in 1948 appointed head of the counter-intelligence department of the Czech General Staff and finally promoted to major-general; Karel Sváb, with the vital post of Deputy Minister of National Security (little is known about him but he clearly comes in the Slánský-Sling category of highly trusted Communists); Artur London, served in the International Brigade and in the French underground movement until captured by the Gestapo in 1942 and held in various concentration camps for some years, appointed to the Czech embassy in Paris after the war, and at the beginning of 1949 to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs; Evzen Löbl, also a party member of long standing, escaped to Poland with the help of Field in 1939 and eventually came to Britain, where he spent the war years, at one time Secretary of the British-Czechoslovak Friendship Club, became one of the four Deputy Ministers of Foreign Trade after the Communists took power; Dr Rudolf Margolius, spent the war in German prison camps, became a top official in the Ministry of Foreign Trade after February 1948; Otto Fischl, foundation member of the party, became a Deputy Minister of Finance in 1949 and in December of that year went to Eastern Germany as head of the Czech Diplomatic Mission, recalled in June 1951.
The purge of the Czech party, of which the Slánský trial was the high spot, has been the most thoroughgoing of any that has taken place since 1946. It has not been a matter of removing just one or two top leaders, but of a whole host of leaders great and little, and vast numbers of the rank and file. It reflects the most profound dissatisfaction of the Russian government with the work of the party in every sphere. Among the accused at the trial were not only those suspected of having been contaminated by contact with the West, but also those hitherto regarded as enjoying the confidence of the Kremlin. The fact that Gottwald, who now reigns supreme as the little Stalin of Czechoslovakia, was for long regarded as a ‘moderate’ Communist has led some to the conclusion that Gottwald has utilised the technique of the confession trial to put one over on Moscow by removing its staunchest supporters. This is no more than wishful thinking. However much the choice of who is to be a scapegoat and who is to survive may depend on superior manoeuvring ability within the party and the government bodies, the purge itself is dictated by Moscow, and its effect is to strengthen and not weaken Russia’s hold over the country, to accelerate and not retard the process of economic integration into Russian economy.
When one examines that aspect of the trial dealing with the accused’s sabotage of the country’s economy, it is again evident that Russian interests were the dominant motive for the trial.
The accused Frejka deposed that in the autumn of 1950, during trade negotiations with the USSR, he ‘pressed... for the USSR to buy from us light industry products which the USSR did not need...’. He had previously said that the implementation of the plan for the development of heavy industry had been postponed from 1950 to 1952, thereby creating a problem that it was impossible to tackle. (Yet later he says, that the ‘acts of sabotage’ were put right, ‘in particular after the report made by the President to the February conference of the Czechoslovak Communist Party in 1950 and 1951.) The accused Frank contradicted Frejka’s statement by saying that in 1950 the Soviet Union had of its own volition, in order to help Czechoslovakia, increased its orders for consumer goods, but some members of the conspiracy had refused such orders. He further stated that another method of sabotage practised was to over-price these goods, so that the Soviet Union refused to buy them. Both Frank and Frejka agreed that the aim was to make the country dependent on the West. The accused Löbl also confessed that in collaboration with Slánský, and in particular with Margolius and Frejka, he had pursued a policy of ‘tying Czechoslovak economy to the capitalist West’, and that they had obstructed the development of heavy industry. They had sold goods at a loss in the West and offset this by charging exorbitant prices to the USSR and other friendly states. Margolius characterised as ‘damaging’ agreements made with Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Iceland, etc, because these agreements called for the import of large quantities of fish, although Poland could easily have met all Czechoslovakia’s demands for fish. He had also not only agreed to, but actively supported, the export of television valves to Great Britain, thereby adding to the war strength of the capitalists. He had, further, been responsible for the reintroduction of bread and flour rationing in February 1951, because he had honoured agreements to export grain made with Holland, Switzerland and Belgium, with the excuse — obviously regarded as paltry by the court — that if he did not do so those concerned would be sued for breach of contract. But when it came to the USSR: ‘We did not adhere to contractual conditions; in particular we did not abide by delivery time limits, and finally we conducted a hostile price policy.’
Many similar points could be adduced from the trial proceedings, but there is space only for one final quotation, this time from the prosecutor’s summation:
To do away with dependence on capitalist countries [he said], it would have been necessary to promote cooperation with the USSR and the People’s Democracies. This would have required a change of structure, particularly increased productive capacities of plants, chiefly in steel production.
All of this boils down to the fact that the Soviet government was acutely dissatisfied with Czechoslovakia’s contributions to Soviet economy. Incidentally, this aspect of the trial exposes as a fraud the so-called Economic Conference held in Moscow from 3 to 12 April 1952. This conference claimed to have as its objective the increase of trade between East and West. Dr O Pohl, Director-General of the Czechoslovak National Bank, speaking at this gathering, deplored the fact that Czechoslovakia’s ‘trade with the Western countries was 32 per cent less than in 1938’, and stated that ‘if normal conditions in international trade were established Czechoslovakia would be able to achieve a total trade turnover of 40 or 50 milliard crowns per year with capitalist countries in the next two or three years’ (News from Czechoslovakia, Volume 2, no 14). Dr Imre Dégen, head of the Hungarian delegation, echoed the wishes of the other satellites’ representatives when he said: ‘As we wish to put international economic relations on a normal basis we propose to increase our trade with Western countries to a considerable extent in the present year.’ (Hungarian News and Information Service, 17 April 1952) And the Moscow English-language News quoted (15 April 1952) the communiqué of the conference: ‘The conference revealed vast potentialities for enlarging trade between the countries of Western Europe, the United States...’ In an appeal to the United Nations General Assembly this conference even had the gall to refer to ‘the disruption and shrinkage of economic relations between nations caused by all kinds of artificial restrictions and obstacles...’.
One of the countries ‘represented’ at this Moscow propaganda meeting was Israel.
Although we know that a Prague purge was decided on at least as long ago as the Rajk trial in Hungary, its wide scope and deep-going nature was determined by the grave economic situation of the country, resulting in general unrest as well as a failure to deliver the goods demanded by the Soviet Union. Economic failure is not confined to the Soviet plans to develop Czechoslovakia’s heavy industry, but extends also to agriculture. Czechoslovakia’s severe economic difficulties constitute the solid ground of fact on which the fantastic propaganda structure of the trial was built. The failure of the party to cope with the economic difficulties and to pacify the country widened the purge from Clementis and Sling to Slánský and every single government body. It is worth noting that during all the time the so-called Slánský conspirators were in the saddle, not a single month passed without one or more trials of ‘espionage agents, saboteurs and traitors in the pay of the West’. The sentences meted out were savage, including very many death sentences. If so many martyrs are forthcoming it is evident that opposition to the regime is considerable. One of the crimes of the accused Communists is that they have failed to overcome this resistance in spite of the most savage measures of repression. They thus serve as scapegoats for more than one failure of the regime. But the very frequency of espionage trials when the Slánský faction controlled the state security organs is in itself a conclusive refutation of the charge that they were agents of Anglo-American imperialism — unless the authorities now suggest that all those sentences of death and life imprisonment were also part of the Slánský gang’s criminal activities!
Another proof, if one were needed, that the Prague show was a Moscow creation is the involvement of leading Communists in Eastern Germany in the ‘conspiracy of the Western imperialists’. Paul Merker would not have been referred to in the confessions unless this had been arranged beforehand by those whose authority extends over all the Communist parties. This obviously was intended to prepare the ground for a further purge in Eastern Germany, a matter which does not come within the competence of the Czechoslovak authorities. Sure enough the Slánský trial was followed by a fresh purge in Eastern Germany; fresh names were added to the list of those already disgraced and awaiting their fate (by the time these lines are in print a confession trial may already have taken place). There is clearly nothing haphazard about these purges; they are directed in the final analysis from one centre, with one aim. Long before the Slánský trial the accused at the Rajk trial specifically referred to the relations of the ‘notorious American spy’ Noel Field with Czechoslovak Communists.
Another point worth noting is the virulent attack on the International Brigade. Beginning with the Rajk trial, this attack has now so sharpened that for the Stalinists the term ‘International Brigades’ is an insult second only to ‘Zionist’. The International Brigade is now depicted as having been no more than a training ground for Anglo-American espionage agents. How many Communists or fellow-travellers at the time of the Spanish Civil War would have believed such a transformation possible? But here, too, is seen the directing hand of the overseers, whose job it is to keep a tight rein on all the parties. It is necessary for them to destroy the popularity, or the reputations (real or false), of men who have ceased to be useful or who refuse to be used. The attack on the International Brigade aims at former cardboard heroes, Communist-created, like the Frenchman André Marty (a narrow- and evil-minded fanatic if ever there was one), as well as at ex-Communists like the Englishman Fred Copeman (a truly sincere man).
It would take another volume to discuss all the ramifications of the Slánský trial; there is space here only for a few further points of particular interest.
It has been noted that Mária Svermová was not in the dock with her fellow conspirators. In a statement made by the Minister of Information, Václav Kopecký (News from Czechoslovakia, 9 March 1951), it was stated that after the arrest of Sling she:
... had refused to see his guilt and had tried to defend him. She claimed to be surprised that the owner of the forest chalet at which she had secret meetings with Sling was caught hiding a secret transmitter for broadcasting abroad. [She]... now stood exposed as Sling’s leading fellow conspirator and therefore was responsible for the full weight of his crimes as well as her own.
In spite of this categorical assertion she was not tried, but she was none the less given a role to play in the court scene (this was undoubtedly her side of the bargain; whether the authorities will keep their side of the bargain with her remains to be seen). She said nothing about the alleged wireless set for sending messages abroad (this matter was ‘forgotten’). She painted her erstwhile comrades in the most lurid colours, and then she grovelled before the great Gottwald — the unsleeping, ever-vigilant father of his people. In an hysterical, tear-choked voice she spoke her lines and was led away behind the scenes. Somehow the wide-awake Gottwald had got separated — ‘isolated’ was the word she used — from his flock. The conspirators saw to it that access to him was denied to honest party workers. The ever-vigilant Gottwald did not realise what was going on. But at last he learned the terrible truth — the highest party and government bodies, the party press, the army, the state security bodies were all chock-a-block with traitors and espionage agents. His eyes once opened to this state of affairs he struck — mercilessly. Just like the hero of an old-time film serial Gottwald miraculously escapes when the odds seem hopelessly against him.
How was it possible for these traitors to infiltrate everywhere and remain undetected for so long? The same question was asked after all the other trials; it will be asked again after the next trial, with each fresh discovery that these parties are rotten through and through with intrigue, corruption and treachery. But it will never receive a sensible answer, because the situation that raises the question is too absurd for a sensible answer. According to the indictment in the Slánský trial the Western powers held Czechoslovakia in the hollow of their hand for something like three years. The Czechoslovak people are themselves puzzled, and are asking how it is possible that it took so long before Slánský and his accomplices were exposed although they had been sabotaging so obviously, writes Mr Roman Kalisty in the Bratislava Lud (28 November). ‘It was a very well organised conspiracy’, Mr Kalisty explains; it avoided exposure because it had ‘seized the most important positions even in the control and security organs'; they were ‘exceptionally clever people'; moreover Slánský was Secretary-General of the party; in addition ‘the Western espionage agencies recruited’ from among ‘Jewish bourgeois émigrés’, who naturally appeared reliable to an anti-Fascist regime. In other words — they were not exposed because they were not exposed. Gottwald was temporarily ‘isolated’ and there was no one left whose eyes were wide enough open to see the ‘obvious acts of sabotage’.
The same problem was mentioned by the Minister of Education, Professor Nejedlý, in a broadcast on 14 December. ‘People in Czechoslovakia were asking themselves two questions’, he said. ‘Why had the conspirators not been unmasked before, and why had they confessed?’ He dismissed the first by saying that it displayed a bourgeois mentality unworthy of the Communists who asked it; but to the second he gave a startling response.
This question, he said, indicated a belief either that the conspirators had hoped to save their lives by confessing, or that force or drugs were used. Neither of these explanations was correct. The building up of the confessions had been a long process. Some people said it was a psychological process; that was near the truth, because the accused had been broken down by overwhelming and irrefutable evidence that was gradually accumulated against them.
This is a surprising reply because it comes so close to the real truth demonstrated in the abundant evidence collected in this book. Nejedlý used the stock argument current ever since the Moscow Trials — ‘irrefutable evidence gradually accumulated'; but by his reference to ‘a long process’, ‘psychological process’ and his use of the term ‘broken down’, the ghastly reality suddenly looms up through the fog of lies.
1. Robb Wilton (1881-1957) was a popular British comedian whose characters often parodied incompetent officials and other figures of authority, including in one notable sketch a policeman. Wiveliscombe is a very small town in the depths of rural Somerset, its population is currently 2670 — MIA.
2. Gladwyn Jebb (1900-1996) was a British career diplomat and was the acting Secretary-General of the United Nations during 1945-46, and the British ambassador to the UN during 1950-54 — MIA.