Crime and Punishment in Communist Czechoslovakia: The Case of General Heliodor Píka and his Prosecutor Karel Vaš 1

Abstract Shortly after the Communist Putsch in February 1948, General Heliodor Pika, deputy chief of the general staff and former head of the Military Mission in the USSR, was arrested by the Communist‐controlled security services and accused of high treason as a British spy. He was to be sentenced on trumped‐up charges and executed in 1949. This was the beginning of bloody purges in Czechoslovakia under the Communist regime. The story becomes more complex, allowing a rare insight into the mechanism of pseudo‐justice in that country, by the fate of Pika's prosecutor, Karel Vaš, who alternates in the role of crime perpetrator and crime victim.