Klement Gottwald
Klement Gottwald | |
|---|---|
 Klement Gottwald in 1948 | |
| Born |
23 November 1896 Vyškov District, Moravia, Austria-Hungary |
| Died |
14 March 1953 Prague, Czechoslovakia |
| Nationality | Czech |
| Ideology | Marxism–Leninism |
| Political party | KSČ |
Klement Gottwald (23 November 1896–14 March 1953) was a Czech communist who was the first president of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and the fifth general secretary of Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.
Ideological views
Revisionist views before his turn to Marxism-Leninism
In beginning and before taking power he would hold revisionist views, upholding Yugoslavia as a socialist state, believing Czechoslovakia should have "Czechoslovak rode to socialism" and believing that people's democracy is different to the dictatorship of the proletariat as well as upholding class collaborationist views.
"what had been foreseen theoretically by Marxist classics, namely, that there exists another path to socialism than by way of a dictatorship of the proletariat and the soviet state system. Going by this path are Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Poland, and also Czechoslovakia."
"Today it [the working class] governs, along with the mass of the peasantry, the urban middle classes, the working intelligentsia and a part of the Czech and Slovak bourgeoisie"
Turn to Marxism-Leninism
Later on Gottwald would uphold the Marxist-Leninist tendency after meeting with Joseph Stalin. The nature of people's democracy would later be called out as being in reality same as dictatorship of the proletariat by Dimitrov which would further set in the ideas of Marxism-Leninism into Gottwald, completely leaving behind his ideas on such topics and going as far as to delete mentions of it in new editions of his quotes.