Klement Gottwald was a Czechoslovak communist politician who from 1945 until his death in 1953 was chairman of the KSČ, prime minister and later president of the republic.
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Klement Gottwald (23 November 1896 Dědice, Vyškov District – 14 March 1953 Prague) was a Czechoslovak communist politician, chairman of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), prime minister and later president of the republic [1][2].
Origins and youth
He came from a poor family of an agricultural labourer and was born out of wedlock [1][2]. From 1908 to 1914 he lived with relatives in Vienna, where he trained as a carpenter. From 1912 he was active in the Viennese workers' gymnastics movement and in the social democratic youth [1]. After completing his apprenticeship he worked briefly as a carpenter's labourer in Lipník nad Bečvou and in Hranice [1].
During the First World War he was a soldier of the Austro-Hungarian army from 1915 and fought on the Eastern and later the Italian front. In the summer of 1918 he deserted from the army and hid until the end of the war [1][2]. After the republic was founded he served two years in the Czechoslovak army, took part in the fighting in the Těšín region in January 1919 and, during the spring and summer of 1919, in the fighting against the Hungarian Red Army in Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus [1][2].
The road to the party leadership
In 1920 and 1921 he worked in a factory in Rousínov. He took part in the December general strike of 1920 and in the founding of the KSČ in May 1921 [1]. From 1921 to 1926 he was a party functionary in Slovakia, edited the communist newspapers there and directed the magazine of the communist gymnastics movement [1]. From 1925 he was a member of the party's central committee and politburo, and from 1926 to 1929 he worked in the central secretariat in Prague [1][2].
His supporters around the secretariat in Prague's Karlín were given the name "the Karlín boys". At the Fifth Congress of the KSČ in February 1929 this group reached the party leadership and Gottwald was elected general secretary [2]. In the same year he became a member of the National Assembly. From 1928 to 1943 he was a member of the executive of the Communist International [1][2].
The 1930s and the war
In the first half of the 1930s, according to the Úřad vlády České republiky, he pursued a radically left-wing policy in line with the course of the Comintern [1]. The Office of the President of the Republic states that at that time he and those closest to him regarded the Czechoslovak state as a product of the First World War and the Versailles system [2]. In 1934 an arrest warrant was issued for him and in August of that year he left for the Soviet Union, where he helped prepare the Seventh Congress of the Communist International in 1935 and was elected secretary of its executive [1]. In February 1936 he returned to Czechoslovakia. At the Seventh Congress of the KSČ in April 1936 he pushed through a programme of a broad popular front for defending the republic against Nazi aggression [1].
In September and October 1938 he was among the main representatives of the opposition to accepting the Munich Diktat [1][2]. The Úřad vlády České republiky states that on 9 November 1938 he left for Moscow, from where he directed the KSČ's foreign leadership until liberation. He headed the Moscow centre of the Czechoslovak resistance abroad, which existed alongside the London one [1]. In December 1943 he held talks in Moscow with President Edvard Beneš about the political arrangement after the war, and in March 1945 he took part in drawing up the Košice Government Programme [1].
Postwar offices
On 4 April 1945 he was appointed deputy chairman of the first government of the National Front and elected chairman of the National Front. From 1945 to 1948 he was a member of parliament. From 1945 until his death he stood at the head of the KSČ [1]. After the communist victory in the 1946 elections he was appointed prime minister on 2 July 1946. He held that office until 25 February 1948 and then again from 25 February to 14 June 1948 [1]. The Office of the President of the Republic counts him among the Czechoslovak presidents [2].