Rudolf Slánský

Rudolf Slánský (31 July 1901 – 3 December 1952) was a Czech Communist politician. Holding the post of the party's General Secretary after World War II, he was one of the leading creators and organizers of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia. After the split between Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia and Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, the latter instigated a wave of "purges" of the respective Communist Party leaderships, to prevent more splits between the Soviet Union and its Central European "satellite" countries. In Czechoslovakia, Slánský was one of 14 leaders arrested in 1951 and put on show trial en masse in November 1952, charged with high treason. After eight days, 11 of the 14 were sentenced to death. Slánský's sentence was carried out five days later.

Early life

Born at Nezvěstice, now in Plzeň-City District, Slánský attended secondary school in Plzeň at the Commercial Academy. After the end of World War I, he went to Prague, the capital, where he discovered a leftist intellectual scene in institutions such as the Marxist Club. In 1921, Slánský joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia when it broke away from the Social Democratic Party. He rose within the party and became a senior lieutenant of its leader, Klement Gottwald. At the Fifth Party Congress in 1929, Slánský was named a member of the party Presidium and the Politburo, and Gottwald became General Secretary.