Zápisnice o výsluchu Viliama Širokého na Ústredni štátnej bezpečnosti
The Transcript of Viliam Široký’s Interrogation at State Security Headquarters in 1941

Summary/Abstract: This set of documents contains the written record of an interrogation of the Slovak Communist official Viliam Široký (1902–1971) at State Security Headquarters (Ústredňa štátnej bezpečnosti – the political police of the Slovak State) in Bratislava in June 1941, and two additional documents. In the First Republic Široký worked as a secretary of the regional and district committees of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (CPCz) in Slovakia. He edited the main Slovak Communist daily, Pravda, and was active in the apparat of the Communist International. In 1935 he was elected a deputy to the Czechoslovak National Assembly, in 1938 he became the Chairman of the regional leadership of the Party in Slovakia, and, after the Party was banned, he moved to Moscow. In June 1941, shortly before Germany invaded the Soviet Union, he returned to Slovakia, but after a brief period underground he was arrested and spent the rest of the war in prison. After the Liberation he became Vice Premier of Czechoslovakia and Chairman of the Slovak Communist Party, and, later, in the 1950s, Premier and Minister of Foreign Affairs. He helped to bring in the Stalinist terror and to organize the show trials, for which, in 1963, he was stripped of all his offices. From the transcript published here it is evident that after his arrest in Slovakia Široký communicated to his interrogators important information about the resistance movement and gave them contacts to members of the resistance, which led to their arrest. As the editors of the document point out, after the war the existence of the incriminating transcript was kept secret, but in the early 1950s it did not slip the attention of the secret-police investigators when preparing the show trials. In this connection, people stopped talking about the formerly praised resistance activities of Viliam Široký.

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