Vladimír Clementis
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| Vladimír Clementis | |
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| In office 1948 – 1950 |
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| Preceded by | Jan Masaryk |
| Succeeded by | Viliam Široký |
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| Born | September 20, 1902 Tisovec, Austria-Hungary |
| Died | December 3, 1952 (aged 50) Prague, Czechoslovakia |
| Political party | Czechoslovak Communist Party |
Vladimír "Vlado" Clementis (September 20, 1902 Tisovec (Tiszolc) - December 3, 1952 Prague) was a Slovak politician and a prominent member of Czechoslovak Communist Party. He married Lída Pátková, a daughter of a branch director of Czech Hypothec Bank in Bratislava, in March 1933. He became a Communist MP in 1935. Before the beginning of the World War II, in 1938, he emigrated to Paris. His criticism of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in 1939 contradicted to a politics of Czechoslovak Communist Party in Moscow exile and triggered an intra-party investigation executed by Viliam Široký (who came to Paris from Moscow). After that, he decided to spend the war in London, where he broadcast radio speeches calling for all Slovaks to fight against the Nazis. Returning in 1945, he became Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs under the first post-war government. As a representative of Czechoslovakia, he signed UN Charter in San Francisco on 26 June, 1945. After a coup d'état, which he helped to organise, he succeeded Jan Masaryk as Foreign Minister. In 1948, in his new role, he played a decisive role in organising Czecholovakian's part of the Operation Balak by providing a help to new Israeli Air Force. In 1950, he was forced to resign amid accused of being a "deviationist." He was then arrested and officially charged for an illegal attempt to cross the state boundaries, later changed for a more serious crime to be a "bourgeois nationalist" and participating in the Trotskyite-Titoite-Zionist conspiracy. After being, obviously, convicted in a show trial, he was hanged, along with Rudolf Slánský, on 3 December 1952. His ashes were scattered on a road close to Prague. His wife, Lída, received only her husband's two pipes and tobacco and was discharged from a prison. [1]
In the famous photograph from 21 February, 1948 (the story is described in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera), Vladimír Clementis stands next to Klement Gottwald, who later, after a coup d'état, became the President of Czechoslovakia. When Vladimír Clementis was executed in 1952, he was erased from the photograph (along with the photographer Karel Hájek). [2] [3]
[edit] See also
[edit] Footnotes
[edit] References
- Margolius, Ivan (2006). Reflections of Prague: Journeys through the 20th century. London: Wiley. ISBN 0470022191.
- Biography at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic
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| Preceded by Jan Masaryk |
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia 1948–1950 |
Succeeded by Viliam Široký |
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