We have got rid of Horáková, we will do the same with the american beetle_A Campaign Accompanying the Trial of JUDr. Milada Horáková  Cover Image

„Vypořádali jsme se s Horákovou, vypořádáme se i s americkým broukem!“ (Kampaň provázející proces s JUDr. Miladou Horákovou)
We have got rid of Horáková, we will do the same with the american beetle_A Campaign Accompanying the Trial of JUDr. Milada Horáková

Author(s): Pavlína Formánková
Subject(s): History
Published by: Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů

Summary/Abstract: The slogan in the title, acquired from a temporary cinema weekly, provides a self-explanatory insight into the atmosphere of the Czechoslovak spring and summer of 1950 under the influence of two large-scale propagandist campaigns organised by the ruling regime. Even though two quite different facts were concerned – the trial of JUDr. Milada Horáková and twelve other “traitors” in the first case, and the outbreak of potato beetle in our fields in the other case – a set of identical features will be found in their mechanism. Moreover, the two campaigns closely followed each other. This essay describes the campaign accompanying the trial of JUDr. Milada Horáková. Based on archive materials, an attempt is made to reconstruct the several months spent preparing this campaign, its course and subsequent evaluation. It describes how “spontaneous reactions” to this trial were organised in regions and districts where following the instructions of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party public meetings were summoned where proclamations requesting the most resolute sentence for the “traitors” under trial were signed. The essay also proves that this propagandist campaign was aimed even at children and is an example of one of the saddest ways in which children were manipulated. Pupils at schools not only wrote resolutions asking for a high penalty, but they were also inconspicuously interrogated on how their parents spoke about the trial at home. The essay also describes the role of the Czechoslovak press, radio, film and even theatre as part of the campaign, and how the western media informed about the process. The last part of the essay deals with pleas for mercy for those sentenced to the death penalty, sent to President Gottwald by individuals and organisations from the West, as well as those sent in by Czechoslovak people who took the courage to plea for mercy for Milada Horáková, Jan Buchal, Záviš Kalandra and Oldřich Pecl, which brought them immediately to the attention of the State Police. The campaign accompanying the trial of JUDr. Milada Horáková was one of the “grandest” propagandist campaigns of the Communist regime. The aim of the campaigns was to show how the Communists would treat their opponents, and that they would not hesitate to issue the death penalty in the case of a woman, moreover the mother of a young child. For an essay on a propagandist campaign with the potato beetle or the “American beetle” in the key role, see the next issue of this magazine.

  • Issue Year: I/2007
  • Issue No: 01
  • Page Range: 20-41
  • Page Count: 22
  • Language: Czech