{"id":32444,"date":"2018-03-21T14:31:00","date_gmt":"2018-03-21T18:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/?p=32444"},"modified":"2021-02-03T16:41:18","modified_gmt":"2021-02-03T21:41:18","slug":"pardee-research-seminar-lukes-on-the-death-of-rudolf-slansky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/2018\/03\/21\/pardee-research-seminar-lukes-on-the-death-of-rudolf-slansky\/","title":{"rendered":"Research Seminar: Lukes on Rudolf Sl\u00e1nsk\u00fd"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lukes1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Igor Lukes<\/a>, Professor of International Relations and History\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>at the\u00a0<\/span>Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University,<\/a>\u00a0gave a talk as part of the\u00a0Pardee School Research Seminar Series\u00a0on March 21, 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n

The presentation was entitled “The Murder of a General Secretary” and focused on the postwar General Secretary\u00a0of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party\u00a0Rudolf Sl\u00e1nsk\u00fd.\u00a0Sl\u00e1nsk\u00fd was one of 14 leaders arrested in 1951 and put on\u00a0trial\u00a0in November 1952, charged with high treason.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lukes highlighted that in addition to being\u00a0one of the founders of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party and its postwar Secretary General,\u00a0Sl\u00e1nsk\u00fd was the most Stalinist among the Stalinists in the Communist realm.\u00a0<\/span>Sl\u00e1nsk\u00fd was one of the top communist victims of the postwar Stalinist purges, according to Lukes. <\/span><\/p>\n

According to Lukes, the standard explanations for the purges include that they were used by Stalin<\/span>\u00a0as an instrument of discipline, that they coincided\u00a0with Moscow\u2019s shift in the Middle East from supporting Israel to its Arab neighbors — made evident by anti-Semitic themes in some of the trials, and that\u00a0Stalin\u00a0wanted to indicate that there would be no toleration for any specific road to socialism.<\/p>\n

Lukes said that the Slansky purge was a product of the collision of\u00a0Sl\u00e1nsk\u00fd, the brothers<\/span>\u00a0Noel and Hermann Field, and the intelligence agency OKAPI. Noel Field\u00a0was a Soviet GRU agent\u00a0<\/span>whose activities before and after World War II allowed the Eastern Bloc to use his name as prosecuting rationale during the<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Sl\u00e1nsk\u00fd\u00a0show trial.<\/span><\/p>\n

During his trial, Sl\u00e1nsk\u00fd was found guilty of “<\/span>Trotskyite-Titoist-<\/span>Zionist\u00a0activities in the service of American imperialism” and publicly<\/span>\u00a0hanged in<\/span>\u00a0December 1952. According to Lukes, his last words were\u00a0<\/span>\u201cThank you. I\u2019m getting what I deserved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Igor Lukes<\/a>\u00a0writes primarily about Central Europe. His publications deal with the interwar period, the Cold War, and contemporary developments in East Central Europe and Russia.\u00a0 His work has won the support of various other institutions, including Fulbright, Fulbright-Hays, the Woodrow Wilson Center, IREX, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. \u00a0In 1997 Lukes won the Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching at Boston University.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Pardee School Research Seminar Series is a forum for faculty and students to discuss and receive feedback on ongoing research. The series is a mix of presentations, works-in-progress sessions, and research workshops.\u00a0Faculty and students based at BU and elsewhere are invited to present and attend the Research Seminar Series. Anyone interested in presenting should\u00a0send an e-mail with name, affiliation, and a presentation description, with \u201cPardee Seminar\u201d in the subject line, to:\u00a0<\/span>Mahesh Karra<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prof. Igor Lukes delivered a presentation focused onthe postwar General Secretary of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party Rudolf Sl\u00e1nsk\u00fd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11588,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8411,8432],"tags":[10745,1169,10441,10718],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32444"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11588"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32444"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34504,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32444\/revisions\/34504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}