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Airbrushing

By K.C. Johnson

When asked for an anecdote of why history is important, I usually cite a story from March 1948, shortly after a coup that installed totalitarian rule in Czechoslovakia, when the Czech Communist Party (KS?) convened a celebratory gathering in Prague?s Old Town Square. Tens of thousands braved chilling temperatures to hear KS? leader Klement Gottwald speak. The new communist foreign minister, Vladimír Clementis stood beside Gottwald on the podium, and gave up his fur hat to shield the prime minister?s bare head from the cold. Four years later, a wave of anti-Semitic show trials occurred throughout the Eastern Bloc; Czechoslovakia experienced the most spectacular purge. In late 1952, the government denounced Clementis, KS? first secretary Rudolf Slánský, and twelve other prominent Communists as ?Trotskyite-Zionist-Titoist-bourgeois-nationalist traitors, spies, and saboteurs...continue to full post

Full post as published by Durham-in-Wonderland on August 11, 2008 (boomark / email).