Chapter 372
Petřín Hill, Prague, Czechoslovakia.
It is March now, and Prague's winter is quietly fading away. The footsteps of spring are already clearly audible. The sage on Petrin Mountain has sprouted, and the lush green makes the entire mountain look magnificent.
On the stone road paved in the mountains, on both sides of the road, every five or six steps, there is a soldier wearing military uniform and holding an assault rifle guarding. They turn their backs to the stone road and look vigilantly at the densely forested mountains.
Near the foot of the mountain, a beautiful woman, holding the hand of a toddler who looked about two or three years old, was walking down the mountain cautiously. Around the two of them were a dozen men and women. Everyone had a nervous expression, and dozens of pairs of eyes were staring at the toddler who was trembling as he walked down the stairs, as if they were afraid that he would fall.
Twenty meters behind these people, on the stone road in the mountains, there was a group of more than a dozen people walking slowly down the mountain. Among these people, the one walking in the front was Yuri, who was wearing a brown-gray suit, and next to him was a middle-aged man who looked to be in his forties.
"We must clear out the Social Democrats from Prague. Not just the Social Democrats, but all political parties and forces that oppose us must be eliminated once and for all in this purge," Yuri said to the middle-aged man beside him as he walked down the mountain with a cigarette in his hand and frowned. "But we should not expand the contradictions infinitely. The stability of Czechoslovakia is very important to Moscow."
At this point, he stopped, turned around and glanced at the people following him, then continued: "Comrade Stalin has always been paying attention to the situation in Prague. Before I left this time, he expressed some concerns to me. According to the intelligence provided by the intelligence department, the activities of the Americans here have not only not slowed down, but are becoming more and more active. Your hesitation may give Washington a wrong signal, making them even more confident."
After a pause, he continued, "So, you must take more severe measures and launch a more aggressive attack to completely wipe out the American intelligence organization from the map of Prague. In this regard, Moscow will give you unreserved support."
"Comrade Yuri Arkhipovich Kulyokov," followed closely behind Yuri, a burly middle-aged man, who said with a serious face, "Please tell Comrade Stalin that we have formulated a detailed and thorough plan and are ready to take action in the next two days to completely eradicate the traitors headed by the Social Democratic Party and the traitors supported by foreign forces."
Changing the subject, the middle-aged man continued, "However, considering some practical issues, we hope to get some military support to avoid riots."
"Comrade Clement," Yuri nodded and said, "General Kurasov has been authorized by Moscow. If you need direct military support, you can contact him directly. His troops will enter Czechoslovakia within 24 hours after receiving the invitation."
The middle-aged man is Clement Gottwald, the current Chairman of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia. As for the people following behind him, they are all important senior officials of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Only Svoboda, who serves as the Minister of Defense, is not a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, but his position is on the side of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.
As for the guy standing next to Yuri, it was Zorin, Valerian Alexandrovich Zorin , who was once the Soviet ambassador to Czechoslovakia and is now the deputy minister of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In today's Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs, because Molotov is under investigation, the main power is almost in the hands of Zorin and Andrei Yanu Arevich Vyshinsky.
These two people are absolutely ruthless characters, and their style of doing things is consistent with Molotov's . Therefore, during the political crisis that broke out in Czechoslovakia in February, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, at the suggestion of Zorin, used some tricks and took advantage of the situation to send the Social Democratic Party to hell.
Since the liberation of Czechoslovakia, the country's power has been held by the National Front coalition government, which is mainly composed of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the Social Democratic Party. Among them, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia holds 114 seats in the National Constituent Assembly and is the largest party, so it has a greater say in the government.
In the past two years, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia has been gaining more and more influence in Czechoslovakia and has put forward the demand for socialist transformation of the country, which has aroused the dissatisfaction of the Social Democratic Party, which represents the interests of the bourgeoisie. Therefore, in February of this year, the Social Democratic Party, with the support of President Beneš, prepared to use the attack on the Ministry of Internal Affairs controlled by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia to dissolve the current government and hold early elections by means of the resignation of 14 ministers.
The plan instigated by the Social Democratic Party was very detailed and highly feasible. Unfortunately, they underestimated the capabilities of the Soviet Workers' Intelligence Bureau. As a result, while they were formulating the plan, Moscow had already learned the full content of the plan. Subsequently, a series of work began to operate under the surface.
At the end of February, the Social Democrats, who thought they had completed their preparatory work, began to take action. Socialist and Justice Minister Deldina was the first to fire an attack on the Ministry of the Interior. He then submitted his resignation to President Beneš and demanded the dissolution of the government and early elections.
In the next two days, 11 more ministers resigned, demanding the dissolution of the government and early elections. Although the Social Democrats seemed aggressive at the time, those who really knew the situation knew that their plan had gone wrong, because two of the 14 ministers who had been agreed upon, including the non-partisan Defense Minister Svoboda and the Socialist Foreign Minister Masaryk, were absent from this massive resignation. Masaryk did not submit his resignation on the grounds of illness, while Svoboda directly rebelled, announcing his support for the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and ordering the army to enter a state of emergency.
As a result, by the end, only , which did not constitute a majority among the 25 incumbent ministers. According to the Czechoslovak Constitution, if the majority of ministers remain in office, the president has no right to dissolve the government and can only replace the resigned ministers with new candidates, who are nominated by the prime minister.
In this way, the conspiracy of the Social Democrats turned into a farce, and they handed over all the ministerial seats they held to the Czechoslovak Communist Party.
The Social Democrats naturally could not accept such a situation, and President Beneš, who was leaning towards Washington, could not accept this result either. However, by this time, the situation was no longer under their control. The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia organized large-scale demonstrations attended by millions of people, forcing Beneš to accept the resignation of 12 ministers. At the same time, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, controlled by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, launched a large-scale arrest operation against Social Democrats across the country on the pretext that the Social Democrats were instigating a rebellion.
For half a month, Czechoslovakia's police and army were mobilized in large numbers to arrest the so-called "traitors". At the same time, just two days ago, Foreign Minister Masaryk, who had previously announced that he was ill, also died inexplicably. When the police found his body in his villa, he was covered in blood, and the cause of death announced by the police was... suicide.
At this point, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia completely seized state power and became the only ruling party in Czechoslovakia.
However, some bourgeois parties, including the Social Democratic Party, have not been banned. This is mainly because Americans have maintained a close eye on the "February Incident". The US Ambassador to Czechoslovakia, Steinhardt, has been putting pressure on the Czechoslovak Communist Party while providing support to President Beneš.
Moscow was very dissatisfied with the Czechoslovak Communist Party's weakness on this issue. Yuri came to Prague as a representative to put pressure on the Czechoslovak Communist Party on behalf of Comrade Stalin. Moscow's opinion was that the Czechoslovak Communist Party should declare bourgeois parties, including the Social Democratic Party, illegal as soon as possible and take measures to ban them.
As for how to deal with President Beneš, Moscow's opinion was to oust this "two-dealer" and replace him with Gottwald as the new President of Czechoslovakia. As for the non-partisan Svoboda, who served as Minister of Defense, he quickly joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and continued to serve as Minister of Defense.
For Moscow, no matter whether the person in power is Comrade Stalin or not, it cannot sit idly by and watch a Western-leaning government emerge in Czechoslovakia. To put it bluntly, Moscow's dissatisfaction with Beneš has lasted too long.
Perhaps for Czechoslovakia, Beneš was a farsighted president and a true patriot. As the first president of Czechoslovakia after the war, he learned a lesson from the Munich conspiracy and pursued a so-called "bridge between the East and the West" policy in foreign policy, which was neither inclined to the West nor the East, trying to protect the country's independence to the greatest extent. His position in the "February Incident" was also to create a balance between the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the Social Democratic Party, to weaken the power of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and to achieve a balance .
But it is obvious that Moscow does not accept his plan, so his resignation has become inevitable. Not to mention him, even Gottwald will be left out in the cold. After he becomes president, he will only be a nominal head of state and will not have much power in his hands.
