Trials and the State

Trials and the State

THE CZECHOSLOVAK POLITICAL TRIALS, 1950-1954, edited by Jiri Pelikan. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 360 pp. $10.95.

During that remarkable spring of 1968 when most Czechoslovak Communists were striving toward a “socialism with a human face,” the Party leadership set up a commission “to make a final inquiry into the notorious political trials of the 1950s.” The report never saw the light of day in Czechoslovakia because a long winter arri...