Word: gottwald
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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CZECHOSLOVAKIA-Represented at the first Cominform meeting by Rudolf Slansky. A fierce, red-haired butcher's son who became the Kremlin's hatchet man in Czechoslovakia, he was considered the real power behind Klement Gottwald, front man in the coup of 1948. But in Czechoslovakia's recent struggle for power, it was Gottwald, not Slansky, who came out on top. Accused of "activities against the state" last December, Slansky was stripped of all offices. Disposition: "in custody," awaiting trial...
...switch was like to that recently carried out in Czechoslovakia, where Moscow-trained Rudolf Slansky was dumped in favor of native son Clement Gottwald. But in Rumania, although arrests of minor government officers and army officers are taking place on all sides, the trouble does not yet seem serious enough to warrant a full-dress trial of the big-time scapegoats. Ana still hangs on to her job at the Org-buro, the organizational center of the Communist Party-in the shadow, but still around in case of another unpredictable change in the weather...
Still Czechoslovakia's performance displeased Moscow, and the people's discontent grew. At an emergency meeting of government officials and party leaders last September, President Gottwald complained that the blame was traceable to one man-Rudolf Slansky. "Comrade Gottwald speaks a holy truth," said Slansky dutifully, "when he says the blame is all with me." Slansky's job as secretary general was abolished, and the party was placed more firmly in Gottwald's control...
...History Unveiled. Then the script changed. Slansky did not disappear. He was "promoted" to Vice Premier and given control of all Czech economic affairs. He continued to get a big play in the Czech press. On his soth birthday last July 30, he got the Order of Socialism from Gottwald. Only last month the government unveiled with a flourish Slansky's two-volume history of Communism...
...first time in all the bloody postwar history of satellite purges that a 100% Muscovite had been picked as the victim. On the surface it looked as if Gottwald had eliminated a dangerous competitor, and there were even people ready to believe that Gottwald was proving himself a potential Tito. More likely, the Kremlin had decided to jolt Czechoslovakia's rulers into meeting Soviet demands by striking down the man who had seemed safest of alL If the most loyal of them all could be convicted of disloyalty, so might men charged with even greater responsibility-President Gottwald...