Klement Gottwald

Klement Gottwald was the first president of CSSR and the fifth general secretary of KSČ.

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 peoples democracy is different to 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 Stalin. The nature of peoples 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.