Liz Kohn

(she/her)

Postgraduate research student

Research

My dissertation in on Communist women in the Slánský show trial during the 'Stalinist' 1950s.

Thesis

 

	Cardiff University     Master of Philosophy. Submitted June 2024.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contents:

 

Summary                                                                                    1

 

Introduction                                                                                 2

 

Chapter 1
Literature Review                                                                        6

 

Chapter 2
Into the Public Sphere. The Position of Women in the
Communist Party.                                                                        20

 

Chapter 3
Equality before the Law. The Position of Women under
the Communist Regime.                                                              34

 

Chapter 4
The Slánský Trial. Privacy Lost – Women’s Experience
of Arrest and Imprisonment.                                                        52

 

Chapter 5
Private Women or Public Figures?                                              80

Conclusion                                                                                  96

 

Bibliography                                                                                100

                                                     

 

 

 

        

 

 

Summary

 

This study examines the impact of the Slánský trial on the Communist women arrested. Their treatment resulting from the political trials between 1949 and 1955, both in prison and after their release, shows how their relationship with the party was affected by the experience. Comparing the reality of women’s treatment with the Communist rhetoric of equality, provides an insight into their specific experience and the culture of the party.

Public and private spheres as gendered spaces is an important way of examining women’s experience. By entering the public sphere, usually associated with men, politically active women, were judged and treated differently from men in similar positions. The concept is particularly significant when related to Communism, which intruded upon the private sphere of all its citizens, particularly its party members. Secret Service records, including testimony from cellmates, provide an insight into the physical and psychological effects of the years of imprisonment and interrogation. Other sources, such as memoirs and letters, provide information about events, reactions, and emotions during the women’s early years of Communist involvement and those that followed their release.

 Historians and other commentators were also affected by gendered and other assumptions. The post-1989 binary view, that framed Communists as villains and prisoners as victims was exaggerated when applied to women political prisoners, who were easier to portray as victims. Assumptions of equality from the Communist era were strongly held and many of the battles fought by feminists in western Europe and America, were irrelevant to Czechoslovak women. Therefore, a post-Communist understanding of feminism and gender issues needed to be developed.

The Slánský trial forced Communist women to reassess their position within the party. Having been encouraged to participate as equals in the public sphere of political activism in the 1930s, later governments reneged on those promises. 

 

 

 

Biography

My first degree was in English and Russian Studies (Keele University, 1977). I first became interested in the 1950s political show trials in Czechoslovakia when I discovered a family connection to the Slánský trial. In addition to learning Czech, as part of my research I have travelled to Spain, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, working in Communist Party, prison, secret police and other archives and collecting research materials. I have written a blog about my research and in December 2022 was interviewed as part of the Cold War Conversations podcasts.

I am a member of the British Czech Slovak Association and have had several articles published in their magazine, as well as coming second in their short story competition in 2022.   

Supervisors