O „bílých místech“ v životě Bedřicha Reicina
Gaps in the Biography of Bedřich Reicin

Summary/Abstract: This article discusses the life of Bedřich Reicin (1911–1952), an important postwar functionary in the Czechoslovak Communist Party, who was sentenced to death in the show trials of Rudolf Slánský and his alleged co-conspirators against the state. Using archive records and the recollections of eyewitnesses it casts light on unclear aspects of Reicin’s career. Reicin came from a Jewish family of teachers in the Ukraine, who later moved to Moravia. From his youth he was a fanatic adherent of Communist ideology. From the age of eighteen he worked as a paid functionary of the Party, took part in subversive operations against the democratic First Republic, and was several times arrested and briefl y imprisoned. Soon after the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia and the establishment of the Protectorate, he was arrested by the Gestapo. After being released he left the country for the Soviet Union in October 1940. According to the author all available sources demonstrate that Reicin left the country with permission and that he did not became an agent of the German secret police (which he was later accused of in the trial in the early 1950s). The article also casts light on Reicin’s activity in the USSR during the war, his role in the formation of the Czechoslovak military units in Buzuluk (the base of the First Czechoslovak Field Battalion), his links to members of the Czechoslovak Communist Party in Moscow, and his role in intensifying the infl uence of the Communist Party in the Czechoslovak Army in the East.

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