Prague Trials
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The Prague Trials were a series of Stalinist and largely anti-Semitic show trials in Czechoslovakia. On November 20, 1952, Rudolf Slánský, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and 13 other Communist leaders or bureaucrats (11 of them Jews) were accused of participating in a Trotskyte-Titoite-Zionist conspiracy and convicted: 11 were executed and 3 sentenced to life imprisonment.
The trials were the result of a split within the Communist leadership on the degree to which the state should emulate the Soviet Union, and were part of a Stalin-inspired purge of "disloyal" elements in the national Communist parties in Central Europe, as well as a purge of Jews from the leadership of Communist parties. Klement Gottwald, president of Czechoslovakia and leader of the Communist Party feared being purged, and decided to sacrifice Slánský, a long term collaborator and personal friend who was the second-in-command of the party. The others were picked to convey a clear threat to different groups in the state bureacracy. A couple of them were brutal sadists conveniently added for a more realistic show.
Those put on trial were tortured and forced to confess all crimes and ask for punishment, including death, before the court. Slánský attempted suicide while in prison. As it was typical for Soviet show trials during the Great Purge, the court sessions were thoroughly rehearsed beforehand to ensure the greatest effect and to avoid surprises. The trials were heavily attended by the public and covered by the media, serving as an effective propaganda tool. The people of Czechoslovakia were ordered to sign petitions asking for death for the "traitors". The harsh treatment given to those on trial was a way of showing that the Communist Party would stop at nothing and that potential dissidents could expect no mercy.
Though support for Zionism was only one of the accusations made against the defendants, the trials were widely considered to be an extension of Stalin's 1948-53 anti-Semitic campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans", and took place between the arrests and executions of Yiddish writers in the Soviet Union and the so-called Doctors' Plot of early 1953. Defendants were also accused of attempting to destroy socialism and replace it with capitalism, cooperation with foreign secret services and "imperialists", and attempting to put a wedge between their own country and the Soviet Union.
These trials were only the tip of the iceberg. In an attempt to obtain absolute control, the Communist Party routinely set up mock courts where people were sentenced to imprisonment or even executed as "enemies of the new socialist order". Information about such smaller trials was made available on a local level, where it could be most effective.
After Stalin's death in March 1953, the harshness of the persecutions slowly decreased, and the victims of the trials quietly received amnesty one by one, including those who had survived the Prague Trials. Later, the official historiography of the Communist Party was rather quiet on the trials, vaguely putting blame on errors that happened as a result of a "cult of personality".
The Prague Trials were dramatised in the 1970 film L'Aveu ("The Confession"), directed by Costa-Gavras and starring Yves Montand and Simone Signoret. The film was based on the book of the same name by Artur London, who was a survivor of the trials.