Yaroslav Salat-Petrlik: Czech Communist internationalist and Soviet Party functionary

Abstract

Based on the documents from Russian archives, the article considers Yaroslav Salat-Petrlik’s participation in the revolutionary events in Russia in 1917–1918, especially in the establishment of Soviet authority in Zadonsk in Voronezh province. Significant attention is paid to the activities of Salat in Moscow as a secretary of the Central Executive Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Group and as a chairman of the Central Czechoslovak Bureau of Agitation and Propaganda. The author also analyzes his underground revolutionary activities in 1919–1920 in Czechoslovakia and his work in the Comintern. The author points out the reasons that caused Czechoslovak communist leaders and Soviet diplomats in Prague to criticize Salat’s activities. As a result, he had to stay in the USSR at party work. In 1922–1936 he headed the Soviet party educational institutions in the North Caucasus, the Volga region and Central Asia. In these regions, Salat also led the agitation and propaganda work of the Communist Party. He always followed Stalin’s political line in everything, took an active part in the fight against Trotskyism and later the “Trotskyist-Zinoviev bloc”. However, it did not save him from the arrest in 1936.

Received: 16.05.2023.
Revised: 01.08.2023.
Accepted: 12.09.2023.

Citation
Stankov N. N. Yaroslav Salat-Petrlik: Czech Communist internationalist and Soviet Party functionary // Slavic Almanac. 2023. No 3–4. P. 93–111 (in Russian). DOI: 10.31168/2073-5731.2023.3-4.05