MOCENSKO-POLITICKÉ ZÁPASY VO VEDENÍ KOMUNISTICKEJ STRANY SLOVENSKA V ROKOCH 1950 – 1953

The paper is focused on the Communist Party of Slovakia, power and political relations between communist functionaries in the 1950s. During the 9th Congress of the Slovak Communist party in 1950 the so-called bourgeois nationalists, previously influential high communist functionaries like Gustáv Husák, Ladislav Novomeský or Karol Šmidke, were finally eliminated and criticized. After elimination of these members of the Slovak communist elite the position of the Chairman of the Communist Party of Slovakia, Viliam Široký, was strengthened. He was the most powerful politician in the party at that time. However, this situation was changed by the development during the next three years, which were characterized by ongoing political downfalls and arrests of many communist functionaries, some of them Široký’s close co-workers. After the death of Josif Vissarionovič Stalin and Klement Gottwald in 1953 the position of V. Široký weakened and functionaries oriented towards the First secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia Antonín Novotný prevailed on the political scene.