The Stalinist Purge that Changed the Course of the Cold War

The postwar Stalinist purge of the communist ruling elites in Eastern Europe (1948^–^1953) caused a sensation in the early years of the Cold War. It targeted some of the brightest stars of the communist firmament who had shown themselves to be unbreakable during imprisonment at home or in the trenches of the Spanish Civil War. Yet, if the official indictments were to be believed, it now appeared that the internationally-known communists had undertaken their revolutionary activities to hide that they were all along lackies of the capitalist enemy and agents of western intelligence services. The purge reached into Czechoslovakia late but with pent-up fury. Dozens of Communist Party and government officials were arrested, and Soviet advisors dispatched by Stalin taught the local security personnel how to make even the strongest human beings confess to fictitious crimes. The situation took a dramatic turn when Stalin demanded that Rudolf Slansky, a life-long Stalinist, be dismissed from his post as Communist Party secretary general. Unbeknownst to officials in both Moscow and Prague, Stalin's decision to sack Slansky placed him in the crosshairs of OKAPI, a CIA-affiliate intelligence organization. The Stalinist Purge in Prague, 1948^–^1953 brings new evidence regarding Operation GREAT SWEEPER. Its objective was to play on Stalin's paranoid view of the world and cause the Soviet and Czechoslovak security services to suspect that Slansky was actually a long-term penetration agent of US Intelligence. This caused and accelerated Slansky's arrest and led to his execution.The vast majority of the officials executed as members of the fictitious conspiracy headed by Slansky were Jews, and the trial made use of some of the worst antisemitic stereotypes. Initially, some foreign policy planners in Moscow had suggested that the more advanced countries in Eastern Europe, primarily Czechoslovakia, would make socialism attractive outside the Soviet bloc. This hope was crushed with the purge, as it infused Stalin's realm in Europe with the same totalitarian odor that emanated Moscow in the early 1950s.