Rudolf Salzmann Slánsky (1901-1952) was one of the founding members of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and played a leading role in the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948. In the purges of "national Communists" ordered by Joseph Stalin, he was hanged, charged with treason and other crimes in 1952.

Slánsky was born on July 31, 1901, in Nezvestice near Pilsen, in Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He came from a Czech-Jewish middle class background; his father was a small village trader. Slánsky himself was educated at the Commercial Academy in Pilsen. After World War I he moved to Prague, capital of the new state of Czechoslovakia, associating with other leftist intellectuals in the so-called "Marxist Club" and joining the Czechoslovak Communist Party when it was established in 1921.

Thereafter, he rose rapidly in the party hierarchy, concentrating his efforts in youth activities and journalism. He...