Not long ago, I found myself reading reviews of a book about those executed by Czechoslovakia’s communist regime—an edition prepared by the Liberal Institute for the Study of Communist Crimes. What I found there startled me. Of the 263 people executed after political trials, roughly one in five had committed acts of sabotage, carried out assassinations, or engaged in terrorist attacks. The largest single group was involved in espionage. In third place were those who had prepared armed uprisings. These were not simply bystanders or passive victims; they were fighters against the regime—brave people, often successful in their own grim terms, sometimes taking the life of a local communist notable.
Had these same stories played out in the United States, and had these people fought in the same way against a democratic government, it’s hard to imagine the outcome would have been much different. The gallows would likely have claimed most of them there as well.
This is not to excuse the brutality—or the frequent irrationality—of the terror visited on the innocent, nor the excesses of the Gottwald regime as a whole. The persecution of decorated veterans of the Second World War was indefensible. So were the trials of “conspiratorial centers” that never existed. Even Gustáv Husák narrowly escaped execution, and he was no enemy of communism.
But in the broader historical frame, we must remember that this was a moment when the regime was fighting for its life, and that determined actors stood on both sides. Had the communists lost, their opponents would not have spared them either. These are the kinds of historical situations in which anyone with even a modest sense of moral proportion recognizes the need to close the book, draw a line, and acknowledge that there were no purely good or purely evil players. Only the opportunists make their careers by rekindling the embers of an old conflict.
For the record, my own forebears stood on the side of the victims. And none of my relatives ever carried a Communist Party card.