KINČOK, Branislav. Fight against Trotskyism in Slovakia after 1956. The case of Michal Tušera and accomplices

The study analyses the development of the fight against Trotskyism in Slovakia shortly after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, using the case of the so-called Bratislava Trotskyists Michal Tušera and accomplices, which culminated in the fabricated show trial on 11 – 14 December 1957. Michal Tušera, Karol Terebessy, Jozef Ondruš, Jozef Mičudík and Anton Rašla were convicted and sentenced to 31 and a half years' imprisonment altogether. This court case was part of the "year of trials" – a new wave of show trials that hit Slovakia after the tightening of the political course following the military suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in the autumn of 1956. As the fight against Trotskyism was part of Soviet reality since the second half of the 20th century, the study briefly introduces the foundations of Trotsky's political thinking, the course of his power struggle with Stalin and the nature of persecution interventions against his followers in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. The study doesn't omit the Czechoslovak context, focusing on the issue of the left opposition in the interwar Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and finally on the course of the fight against Trotskyism in Czechoslovakia in the years 1948 – 1954.