The Slansky trial was a show trial against elements of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia who were thought to have adopted the line of the maverick Yugoslav leader Josip Tito.

On November 20, 1952, Rudolf Slansky, General Secretary of the KSC, and 13 other Communist leaders or bureaucrats, 11 of them Jews, were accused of participating in a Trotskyite-Titoite-Zionist conspiracy and convicted: 11 were executed and 3 sentenced to life imprisonment.The state prosecutor was Josef Urvalek .

The trial was the result of a split within the Communist leadership on the degree to which the state should emulate the Soviet Union, and was part of a Stalin-inspired purge of “disloyal” elements in the national Communist parties in Central Europe, as well as an antisemitic purge of Jews from the leadership of Communist parties. Klement Gottwald, president of Czechoslovakia and leader of the Communist Party, feared being purged, and decided to sacrifice Slansky, a long term collaborator and personal friend who was the second-in-command of the party. The others were picked to convey a clear threat to different groups in the state bureaucracy. A couple of them, inparticular Svab, and Reicin, were brutal sadists conveniently added for a more realistic show.

Those put on trial confessed under duress or after torture to all crimes and were sentenced to punishment. Slansky attempted suicide while in prison. The people of Czechoslovakia signed petitions asking for death for the alleged traitors. The harsh treatment given to those on trial was a way of showing that the Communist Party would stop at nothing and that potential dissidents could expect no mercy.

Many other political trials followed on sending many innocent victims to jail and hard labour in Jachymov uranium mines and labour camps.