Prague, 1948–1954

   The MGB played an important role in the coup that brought the Czech Communist Party to power in 1947–1948, and an even more important role in the party’s consolidation of power. MGB officers acted as clandestine advisors to Czech communists in planning the coup, and almost certainly were involved in the “suicide” of Czech Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk. Masaryk, the only noncommunist member of the government, was found dead underneath his open window. Between 1948 and 1952, the Czech secret police, under the direction of the MGB, destroyed political diversity. Men and women, democrats and socialists, went to the gallows after garish public show trials. The MGB apparently used the most famous of these, the Slansky Trial in 1952, as a dress rehearsal for a mass trial of Soviet Jews. Public show trials continued for more than a year after Joseph Stalin’s death, as the Czech party ensured its complete control of the society. The MGB, and later the KGB, used the newly sovietized Czech foreign intelligence service. Czech officers played an important role in Soviet active measures in the 1950s and 1960s.